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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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Jessica Valenti
Age: 46
Born: 1978
Born: November 1
Author
Journalist
Writer
New York City
New York
Definitely
Bells
Genius
Influenced
Thinker
Also
Feminism
Accessibility
Cultural
Hooks
Feminist
Bell
Critics
Critic
Biggest
Hook

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Making women the sexual gatekeepers and telling men they just can't help themselves not only drives home the point that women's sexuality is unnatural, but also sets up a disturbing dynamic in which women are expected to be responsible for men's sexual behavior.
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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.
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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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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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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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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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...idea at play here is that of “morality.” When young women are taught about morality, there’s not often talk of compassion, kindness, courage, or integrity. There is, however, a lot of talk about hymens
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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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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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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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
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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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I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world.
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 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