Jessica Valenti Quotes - Page 5

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• I'm glad that we have a history at all and that we can talk about feminist history. But I do think that it doesn't really pay attention to the complexity and the nuance that is feminist thought.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, Feminist, Attention

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Whether people identify as feminists or not, if they're doing work that furthers a feminist cause, I think that's wonderful, like if it works for me, right, it works for the movement.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, People, Feminist

  Source: bigthink.com

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• One of the things I really like about doing work online, and the thing I like about the work I'm doing now, is that I get to meet feminists all the time and I get to read new feminists every day on the blogosphere.

  Jessica Valenti

  Feminist, Online

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Obviously Feministing is kind of a women's space in a certain way, even though we have a lot of male readership and people who don't identify as women.

  Jessica Valenti

  Space, People, Males

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Something I say a lot when it comes to anti-feminist stereotypes is that they exist for a reason. The stereotypes of feminists as ugly, or man-haters, or hairy, or whatever it is - that's really strategic. That's a really smart way to keep young women away from feminism, is to kind of put out this idea that all feminists hate men, or all feminists are ugly; and that they really come from a place of fear. If feminism wasn't powerful, if feminism wasn't influential, people wouldn't spend so much time putting it down.

  Jessica Valenti

  Powerful, Hate, Smart

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I think anyone who wants the social, political and economic equality for women can call themselves a feminist. It does get trickier, of course, when you see anti-woman politicians or pundits claiming the feminist label while working hard to dismantle feminist gains.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, Political, Feminist

  "'Life is messy, and it's okay if you are too": Jessica Valenti on "Sex Object'". Interview With Sara Nelson, www.amazonbookreview.com. June 9, 2016.

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• Something you hear a lot is that feminism dead. But if feminism is dead, why do people try so hard to kill it? Something just isn't making sense there. So I think when young women hear like, hey, someone's trying to get something over on me, you know, someone's trying to deliberately keep me away from a movement that could make my life better, I think that really resonates with them.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, People, Feminism

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• For a lot of women who don't go to college, or for a lot of women who aren't in New York or D.C. or someplace where there's like a large feminist organization they can get involved in, they may be doing feminist work, right, like locally or with a grassroots organization or in their own lives, but if they don't have that support system and if they don't have that availability to feminist language, I think we're missing out on something.

  Jessica Valenti

  New York, College, Thinking

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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?

  Jessica Valenti

  Men, Two, Differences

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• We've been growing our readership every month, and we're kind of like, where are they all coming from? This is wonderful! And I think one of the best surprises was that you hear so often that young women don't care about feminism, that young women don't identify as feminists. But really, the majority of our readers are young women. So to see so many young people kind of get involved and really take to Feministing.com was a really exciting thing.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, People, Feminist

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• There was no real strategic decision about editorial tone. It was kind of a write whatever you want to write, and we'll see how it goes. I think that we lucked out in that all of the women who started writing at Feministing.com were really funny, and I don't think that's something people are used to seeing or hearing when they read feminism. You know, you think feminism and you kind of think academic, women's studies, dry, humorless; there are all of these stereotypes that go along with what feminist thought is and what feminist writing is.

  Jessica Valenti

  Real, Writing, Thinking

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I remember at the time - right before we started Feministing.com - doing a Google search for the term "young feminism" and the term "young feminist," and the first thing that came up was a page from the National Organization for Women that was about 10 or 15 years old. And it just struck me as so odd that there was all of this young feminist activism going on, but that it wasn't necessarily being represented online, that the first things in a Google search to come up were really, really old. I think to a certain degree we really filled a gap, and that's why we got such a large readership.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, Feminist, Google

  Source: bigthink.com

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• I think that it's incredibly important that we're actually paying attention to the feminism that's going on on the ground in different countries and see what we can do to support the work that's already going on, as opposed to kind of assuming that we know best for women in other areas.

  Jessica Valenti

  Country, Thinking, Support

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world. I think, though, for Western feminism and for American feminism, it not so surprisingly continues to center Western feminism and American feminism. And I think the biggest hurdle American feminists have in terms of taking a more global approach is that too often when you hear American feminists talk about international feminism or women in other countries, it kind of goes along with this condescending point of view like we have to save the women of such-and-such country; we have to help them.

  Jessica Valenti

  Country, Thinking, Feminist

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• When it comes to people who are saying really extreme things online, we have the tendency to think that they are just kooks, or that you shouldn't pay attention to them, you shouldn't take them seriously.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, People, Attention

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jessica Valenti

  Men, Thinking, Brain

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think we get into very dangerous territory when we start to define who can and cannot be a feminist. It's such a slippery slope, and I have no interest in being the feminist police!

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, Feminist, Police

  "'Life is messy, and it's okay if you are too': Jessica Valenti on 'Sex Object'". Interview With Sara Nelson, www.amazonbookreview.com. June 09, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jessica Valenti

  Girl, Daughter, Writing

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I ask myself a lot how other women can be against the ideology that has to do with women empowering other women. Going along with the access of power and the status quo and forging a special position and the thought process that goes: I am not like those women. When it comes to things like assault, for example, perhaps it makes them feel safer. It's the denial: I'm okay. This won't happen to me. Acknowledging that the world is a profoundly unsafe for women is a scary thought.

  Jessica Valenti

  Empowering, Scary, Special

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I think it's important to let kids be kids and be cautious about accelerated sexuality as pressure to mature too quickly. My hackles go up when I see a teacher making kids feel like they are older, special, mature. Let kids be kids.

  Jessica Valenti

  Teacher, Kids, Thinking

  Source: therumpus.net

  4 Copy quote

• I do think that we have this incredible opportunity because being on-line - the Internet is a relatively new space - we do have this incredible opportunity to change that dynamic, to make sure that women are present in all sorts of spaces, not just women-only spaces.

  Jessica Valenti

  Opportunity, Thinking, Space

  Source: bigthink.com

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• What bothers me the most about the way that people appropriate feminist language is that they are the same people who are - you know, anti-feminists - they're the same people who say that feminism is ruining the family, yet when it behooves them to, they'll say Sara Palin's a feminist - when all of a sudden it works in their favor.

  Jessica Valenti

  People, Feminist, Feminism

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• People seem to think, because of the way that the media has appropriated third-wave feminism or young feminism, that all young feminists are about is like pole dancing and girls gone wild and how empowering it is. Like they'll start calling anything feminist.

  Jessica Valenti

  Girl, Thinking, Media

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jessica Valenti

  Girl, Ideas, Feminist

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

• I think feminism is taking off. It's just not visible in the way that we would like it to be.

  Jessica Valenti

  Thinking, Feminism, Way

  Source: bigthink.com

  4 Copy quote

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