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Hearing the Beastie Boys speak out against sexism made me feel like if these men who had once sung about getting girls to 'do the laundry' and 'clean up my room' could understand, maybe the rest of the world would follow suit. It made me hopeful in the best way.

Jessica Valenti

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Jessica Valenti
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: November 1
Author
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Way
Getting
Clean
Beastie
Would
Understand
Girls
Sung
Men
Girl
Follow
Laundry
Like
Speak
Room
Sexism
World
Best
Rooms
Suit
Feel
Boys
Hopeful
Feels
Rest
Suits
Made
Maybe
Hearing

More quotes by Jessica Valenti

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[Virginity is] a cultural ideology that conflates passivity - the act of not having sex - with superior morality.
Jessica Valenti
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It used to be that if someone was to get involved in feminism, it was probably because they were already interested. They were already interested in feminism they were already interested in being an activist, and they found their way to like a NOW meeting or to a consciousness-raising group or something like that.
Jessica Valenti
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Stress from blogging keeps me up at night.
Jessica Valenti
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My informal writing style is a political choice, because I want feminism to be more accessible.
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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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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Sex for pleasure, for fun, or even for building relationships is completely absent from our national conversation. Yet taking the joy out of sexuality is a surefire way to ensure not that young women won't have sex, but rather that they'll have it without pleasure.
Jessica Valenti
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At the end of the day, though, the entire basis for consent laws doesn't make sense. We're not old enough to decide if we don't want a baby, but we are old enough to have one?
Jessica Valenti
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You know, people ask me a lot, well, can you be pro-life and be feminist? Can you be conservative and be feminist? And I think that yeah, maybe personally you can be those things. But I think if you're advocating for legislation, or 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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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
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There's something really terrible about having your BlackBerry next to your bed or having your laptop in the living room when you're talking to someone. The biggest source of stress in my life is the screen, the blogging.
Jessica Valenti
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I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world.
Jessica Valenti
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I think day care is terrific. Kids get to be around other kids, and they're playing, and they're teaching each other. When I was in college, my summer job was being a preschool teacher. I loved it, and after that experience, I said I can't wait to put my kid in day care because I could see how much they loved it.
Jessica Valenti
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I think that blogging and the Internet has completely changed feminism for ever, I think.
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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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 think it is effective when activists work from the margins, and I think that's the best way to go about it. And I do think that it's increasingly being more effective with the work that's being done online, that it is a bit more democratized, that whatever kind of activism is being done, it's not necessarily coming from one centralized place.
Jessica Valenti
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I've been thinking a lot about Lady Gaga and what she means for feminism. I think - I find her completely fascinating, and I really like what she has to say.
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