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Jessica Valenti

Jessica Valenti Quotes

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Famous Jessica Valenti Quotes

“Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legends and narratives that shape everything that we do, but women's pain is a backdrop - a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting the story means we're needy or selfish, or worst of all, man-haters - as if after all men have done to women over the ages the mere act of not liking them for it is most offensive.”

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Book:Sex Object: A Memoir
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“Edgar Allan Poe once called the death of a beautiful woman "the most poetical topic in the world" and I have often found myself wondering how many women writers who have killed themselves or let themselves be otherwise obliterated were trying, somehow, to fulfil this most popular of narratives. We're most valuable when we're smiling, dead, posing, our words hanging on the page with no real body behind them.”

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Book:Sex Object: A Memoir
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“Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legend and narratives that shape everything we do, but women's pain is a backdrop - a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting that story means we're needy or selfish, or worst of all, man-haters - as if after all men have done to women over the ages the mere act of not liking them for it is most offensive.”

FeminismSexismMisogynyRadical Feminism
Book:Sex Object: A Memoir
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“claims about what's 'natural' have long been used to reinforce traditional gender roles and values. ... Even the notion that women should have children at all is based on the idea that a woman's inherent and most important role is that of mother. Shockingly, men's 'innate' roles are a lot more fun than the ones bestowed on women.”

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Author:Jessica Valenti
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“I saw an article where the manager of the Pussycat Dolls, which is kind of this like striptease band, girl band, said, oh well, the girls are totally third-wave feminist. This is what third-wave feminism is about. Like you don't get to use that word. You don't get to say that something is feminist as a way to sell back sexism to women, as a way to further consumerist ideas.”

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Author:Jessica Valenti
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“Lately, I'm thinking a lot about, in parenting and in my writing, how to create a language about sexism in a way that is attractive and approachable to this age group. I can teach my daughter about not talking to strangers but I can't teach her about how to succeed in a sexist world or even how to exist as a body in a sexist world. I want to begin by asking girls what they want and why they want it? Interrogating that. If this is the sex life you want, what makes you think you want that? I imagine the only way to authentically get at sexuality is by asking those questions.”

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Author:Jessica Valenti
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“There's going to be biological differences between the genders. There's going to be biological differences between two women or two men. There's biological differences between all of us. My concern is, why are we so concerned about it? Why are we so worried about it? Why, whenever a study comes out about men do this one way and women do this one way, or men's brains and women's brains - why are we so interested in that? You know, what makes us so fascinated by differences between the sexes? And I think more often than not that interest is deeply embedded in sexism.”

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Author:Jessica Valenti
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