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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

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Jessica Valenti
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: November 1
Author
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Talk
Attention
History
Doesn
Nuance
Thought
Complexity
Really
Feminist
Think
Glad
Thinking
Pay

More quotes by 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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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.
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When are we going to realize that hating other women - no matter how much money they have or how far they've fallen - is just as bad for ourselves as it is for anyone else?
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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 revisit old favorites like 'Buffy' and 'Battlestar Galactica' when I'm bored. I am obsessed with 'Scandal.' I love TV.
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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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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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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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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Life is messy, and it's okay if you are too! We all screw up, that doesn't have to define us.
Jessica Valenti
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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
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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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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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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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I think that blogging and the Internet has completely changed feminism for ever, I think.
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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Child-rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking.
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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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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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