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You're not too fat. You're not too loud. You're not too smart. You're not unladylike. There is nothing wrong with you.

Jessica Valenti

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Jessica Valenti
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: November 1
Author
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Unladylike
Fats
Loud
Smart
Wrong
Women
Nothing

More quotes by Jessica Valenti

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The cultural insistence that parenting is the 'most important' job in the world is a smart way to satiate unappreciated women without doing a damn thing for them.
Jessica Valenti
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If you're fighting to limit other women's rights, then you can't really call yourself a feminist.
Jessica Valenti
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You have to have your personal life, and at the end of the day I think what people forget, especially when you're online, is that you're a person too, right, and that you're not this ideal of feminism, that everything you do like feminism just like falls in your wake.
Jessica Valenti
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If you go to places like YouTube, it's a cesspool, and a lot of the comments are really horrifying and misogynist and harassing.
Jessica Valenti
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If there's an article about sexual assault, if there's a video about feminism on YouTube, you're going to get the most horrible, disgusting comments ever. And sometimes the comments are pornographic, and sometimes the comments are really harassing. So I think that it's kind of a difficult place for women to write sometimes.
Jessica Valenti
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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
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People are not going to give up marriage. But we can try to make it more fair. We can try to change that institution and make it more equal.
Jessica Valenti
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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.
Jessica Valenti
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If you don't identify as a feminist, you're missing out on this whole community that's out there that could really help you with your work, help you with your personal life, and just give you support.
Jessica Valenti
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The biggest thinker that's influenced my feminism is definitely Bell Hooks, who's a feminist cultural critic, because of her accessibility but also just because she's a genius.
Jessica Valenti
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If your husband is cheating on you, it doesn't mean that you need to get prettier -- it means he's a scumbag.
Jessica Valenti
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Present-day American society-whether through pop culture, religion, or institutions-conflates sexuality and morality constantly. Idolizing virginity as a stand-in for women’s morality means that nothing else matters-not what we accomplish, not what we think, not what we care about and work for. Just if/how/whom we have sex with. That’s all.
Jessica Valenti
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I think that online harassment has become so ubiquitous on the Internet that a lot of women do feel safer, whatever that means, in spaces where they know like people are not going to bother them in that kind of way.
Jessica Valenti
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I always go with the dictionary definition of feminism, which is just social, political and economic equality for women. And that's kind of a strategic thing on my part, because I think that it's the hardest definition to argue with. You know, who doesn't want that? Everyone wants equality for women.
Jessica Valenti
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Child-rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking.
Jessica Valenti
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I think people resist feminism because they're scared. I think for women, they're scared of being picked on or of being called out.
Jessica Valenti
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And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I'm betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.
Jessica Valenti
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According to the virginity movement, men have no self-control when it comes to anything sexual.
Jessica Valenti
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As I grew up and began identifying myself as a feminist, there were plenty of issues that continued to make me question marriage: the father giving the bride away, women taking their husband's last name, the white dress, the vows promising to obey the groom. And that only covers the wedding.
Jessica Valenti
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Women do not get raped because they weren’t careful enough. Women get raped because someone raped them.
Jessica Valenti