Valenti Quotes

As a kid, I wasn't sure that I would ever get married - I was not the kind of little girl who played at being a bride. ~ Jessica Valenti

Women who are harassed, at work, on the street, or even online, are subject to the same rigid purity standards as women who are sexually assaulted, Just by virtue of being out in public, we're overstepping certain boundaries. ~ Jessica Valenti

There's no one right way to parent, and there's no magic combination of genders that produces the most well-adjusted child. We all do the best we can at loving our kids and building our families. ~ Jessica Valenti

I grew up in Long Island City. When I was growing up, my parents owned a women's clothing store in Queens. It was for older women. I got my bras there, until I realized I didn't want those huge, taupe bras. Everything was beige, with massive amounts of hooks. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

You come to a point where you give up on holding yourself to a perfect feminist ideal - it just feels stifling. ~ Jessica Valenti

I don't think that there's a guy behind the desk at every newspaper saying "No, woman" and sending her on her way, but that's what's systemic about it, right, like that people don't quite realize that maybe they're attracted to a male op-ed more than a female op-ed, or because of networking they know this person from going out to a bar with them. ~ Jessica Valenti

The important thing is that we are participating-whether it's by running, voting, or supporting (financially or otherwise) candidates who make a difference to women. Don't leave shit up to others, 'cause that's how we get fucked over. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

Feminism isn't simply about being a woman in a position of power. It's battling systemic inequities; it's a social justice movement that believes sexism, racism and classism exist and interconnect, and that they should be consistently challenged. ~ Jessica Valenti

Left to their own devices, Valenti and his son Kyle tended to live like a couple of undergrads in some low-rent fraternity house. ~ Andy Mangels

Even the notion that women should have children at all is based on the idea that a woman's inherent and most important role is that of mother. Shockingly, men's 'innate' roles are a lot more fun than the ones bestowed on women. ~ Jessica Valenti

It's not always easy being a full-time feminist - especially as a young woman - when you're constantly being told that what you do is irrelevant. I'm on the defense all the time. ~ Jessica Valenti

A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film's quality? ~ Jack Valenti

I enjoyed 'Roswell' a lot, and I had a lot of fun playing Jim Valenti. I had never done a show that lasted as long as that - that one lasted three years. ~ William Sadler

In a political struggle, never get personal - else the dagger digs too deep. ~ Jack Valenti

No one today knows what is indecent. ~ Jack Valenti

I think the biggest obstacle I still have to overcome is myself, and just kind of struggling every day with what to do with the work and where to go next. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one. ~ Jack Valenti

People aren't comfortable thinking of women as people. Like we're not people, we're women, and that means something completely different, especially when you have power. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

But no one wants to listen to our sad stories unless they are smoothed over with a joke or nice melody. And even then, not always. No one wants to hear a woman talking or writing about pain in a way that suggests that it doesn't end. Without a pat solution, silver lining, or happy ending we're just complainers -- downers who don't realize how good we actually have it.

Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legends and narratives that shape everything we do, but women's pain is a backdrop- a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting that story means we're needy or shellfish, or worst of all, man-haters - as if after all men have done to women over the ages the mere act of not liking them for it is most offensive. ~ Jessica Valenti

Shit is fucked up when it comes to appearances and women. We're expected to be hot - but if we are, we're vain and stupid. And if we're not hot we're useless. Kind of hard to get around. But we're not stupid. We know that we're doing damage to ourselves - not only to our bodies but also to our mental well-being. And it's not worth it. ~ Jessica Valenti

Whether you call it Attachment Parenting, natural parenting, or simple maternal instincts, this false "return" to traditional parenting is just a more explicit and deliberate version of the often unnamed parenting gender divide. Whether you're wearing you baby or not, whether you're using cloth diapers or teaching your four-week-old to use the toilet; it's still women who are doing the bulk of child care, no matter what the parenting philosophy. Putting a fancy name to the fact that we're still doing all the goddamn work doesn't make it any less sexist or unfair ~ Jessica Valenti

Social expectations about what constitutes a good or a bad mother haunt every decision, and the rise of the parental advice industry ensures that moms and dads feel inadequate at every turn. ~ Jessica Valenti

I kind of love that there's not really a feminist canon; or maybe there is, but it's being changed, that it's a constantly moving canon in the feminist blogosphere. I love that. ~ Jessica Valenti

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. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

How insulting is it to suggest the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? ~ Jessica Valenti

Being treated nicely felt wrong somehow, as if we were acting out what a relationship should be rather than being in it. For men who hate women, an admission like this one is proof that see, women want a guy who treats them like shit but that's not true either. What is closer to the truth is that when confronted with the love you deserve, it is easier to mock it than accept it. ~ Jessica Valenti

The desirable virgin is sexy but not sexual. She's young, white, and skinny. She's a cheerleader, a babysitter; she's accessible and eager to please (remember those ethics of passivity!). She's never a woman of color. SHe's never a low-income girl or a fat girl. She's never disabled. "Virgin" is a designation for those who meet a certain standard of what women, especially young women, are supposed to look like. As for how these young women are supposed to act? A blank slate is best. ~ Jessica Valenti

For women especially, virginity has become the easy answer- the morality quick fix. You can be vapid, stupid, and unethical, but so long as you've never had sex, you're a "good" (i.e. "moral) girl and therefore worthy of praise. ~ Jessica Valenti

Men in their hearts hate women. It doesn't matter how much we love them. They hate us ~ Jessica Valenti

I always go with the dictionary definition of feminism, which is just social, political and economic equality for women. ~ Jessica Valenti

Whether it's repro rights, violence against women, or just plain old vanilla sexism, most issues affecting women have one thing in common - they exist to keep women 'in their place.' To make sure that we're acting 'appropriately,' whatever that means. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

Ignoring men, whether romantically or rhetorically, is existential violence to them. ~ Jessica Valenti

And there's an argument to be made that if intentional and thoughtful parenthood is an indicator of parental and family happiness, then having gay parents - parents who weren't able to "accidentally" have a child - may be, in fact, among the better circumstances there are for a child. ~ Jessica Valenti

When abstinence curricula contain information about sexual abuse or assault (though they often don't), the message is similar: The onus of preventing sexual assault is on girls, not on men. ~ Jessica Valenti

I think I was in high school, actually, and it was a guidance counselor or someone said, you know, you're just too loud; like you need to just stop talking so much and stop being so opinionated; like no one wants to listen to you because you're really annoying. And I'm glad that I didn't shut up, because it seems like people are listening. ~ Jessica Valenti

I've always found the idea of 'saving' your virginity intriguing: it's not as if we're packing our Saran-wrapped hymens away in the freezer, after all, or pasting them in scrapbooks. But packed-away virginities aside, the interesting - and dangerous - 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 (though the preferred words are undoubtedly more refined - think 'virginity' and 'chastity'): if we have them, when we'll lose them, and under what circumstances we'll be rid of them. ~ Jessica Valenti

When you ask most American parents why they want to have kids, it's to bring more joy into their lives. So, when you don't feel that all-encompassing joy, it must be that something is wrong with you. I think it's dissatisfaction that the expectation was different than the reality. ~ Jessica Valenti

I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president. ~ Jack Valenti

If feminism wasn't powerful, if feminism wasn't influential, people wouldn't spend so much time putting it down. ~ Jessica Valenti

I think that we're our own worst enemies in a lot of ways, especially when it comes to doing work where you're criticized a lot or doing work where there's a lot of hater directed at you; and to not constantly second-guess yourself. ~ Jessica Valenti

We say "misogynist"; I've written that "misogyny kills," but the world falls flat on your tongue - it's too academic sounding, not raw or horrifying enough to relay the truth of what it means. ~ Jessica Valenti

I think that the ideal of young womanhood as it's seen in pop culture specifically is a really kind of vapid, conceited, concerned with money and looks kind of thing that you'll see in a lot of reality shows. And I think that's really damaging, not just because it's a terrible role model to put forth, but that it also puts across this idea to the American public that this is what young women are like, that this is what all young women in America are like. ~ Jessica Valenti

If we have no place to go where we can escape that reaction to our bodies, where is it that we're not forced? The idea that these crimes are escapable is the blind optimism of men who don't understand what it means to live in a body that attracts a particular kind of attention with magnetic force. ~ Jessica Valenti

As much as I disagree with Sarah Palin, there's no denying that she was the victim of sexism. ~ Jessica Valenti

There is something to be said for the power of figureheads. After Hillary Clinton became secretary of state, a record number of countries posted female ambassadors to the U.S. - some of whom have dubbed this 'the Hillary effect.' ~ Jessica Valenti

The Internet is the new public space. And because women are out in public, people don't like that in much the same way that if you're walking down the street you get harassed. I think the same kind of thing happens online, and I think that's why a lot of women are hesitant to put their voice out there. ~ Jessica Valenti

Washington and Hollywood spring from the same DNA. ~ Jack Valenti

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? ~ Jessica Valenti

The Doctor is all of us, he lives and dies as all of us, and we need him to – because no matter the anvil-imagery of the Doctor as Christ, this is actually a far older and far simpler story than that. Everything changes. We all regenerate. I am not the same woman who first saw Rose ascend. Years go by and I become someone new, with the same memories but a new face, a new self. ~ Catherine Valenti

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

The purpose of the word "slut" is: controlling women through shame and humiliation. Women's bodies are always the ones that are being vied over for control - whether it's rape, reproductive rights, or violence against women, it's our bodies that are the battleground, not men's. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

Social media is not just another way to connect feminist and activist voices - it amplifies our messages as well. ~ Jessica Valenti

Beautiful' is bullshit, a standard created to make women into good consumers, too busy wallowing in self-loathing to notice that we're second-class citizens. ~ Jessica Valenti

A high school teacher once told me that identity is half what we tell ourselves and half what we tell other people about ourselves. But the missing piece he didn't mention - the piece that holds so much weight, especially in the minds of young women and girls - is the stories that other people tell us about ourselves. ~ Jessica Valenti

According to pop culture, women are either searching for a man, with a man, or getting over one. ~ Jessica Valenti

I think feminism has always been global. I think there's feminism everywhere throughout the world. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

I have not lived for millennia to be bested by a half-blood whore and her puppet prince." ~ Valenti ~ Pippa DaCosta

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

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

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

Women politicians have definitely been known to fuck over other women. Democratic Louisiana ~ Jessica Valenti

Wanting to be liked means being a supporting character in your own life, using the cues of the actors around you to determine your next line rather than your own script. It means that your self-worth will always be tied to what someone else thinks about you, forever out of your control. ~ Jessica Valenti

There's a reason why the assumed goal for women in virginity-movement screeds is marriage and motherhood only: The movement only believes that's the only thing women are meant for. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

My problem with the wedding industry started when I studied in college and liked to have the television on in the background, and 'A Wedding Story' on TLC always came on, and I'd get irritated that the story of two people making a lifelong commitment to each other could be encapsulated in a half-hour show about the party they throw. ~ Jessica Valenti

The only purpose of an engagement ring is to show you 'belong' to someone, and your man makes bank. ~ Jessica Valenti

Edgar Allan Poe once called the death of a beautiful woman "the most poetical topic in the world" and I've often found myself wondering how many woman writers who have killed themselves or let themselves be otherwise obliterated were trying, somehow, to fulfill this most popular of narratives. We're most valuable when we're smiling, dead, posing, our words hanging on the page with no real body behind them. I'm ~ Jessica Valenti

My least favorite form of street harassment is when a guy asks why I'm not smiling. It's related to that: Women aren't allowed to be quiet or stoic or shy - or, hell, just in a bad mood - without being criticized. Women are bitchy and frigid if we don't seem accessible at all times, for the most part to men. We're supposed to be perpetually friendly. Who wants to live up to that? And seriously, when was the last time you heard a quiet woman described as "deep"?
Men who are serious are just that - serious. Think laconic cowboys and Clint Eastwood-style movie heroes. Strong and silent is a desirable personality trait for men - women, not so much. Because where silence in men is seen as strength, silence in women (if not seen as bitchy) is seen as weakness - she's shy, a wallflower. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

The public's nerves are raw and edgy. You have to be discreet and understanding about the films you are showing. ~ Jack Valenti

Stress from blogging keeps me up at night. ~ Jessica Valenti

Something you hear a lot is that feminism dead. But if feminism is dead, why do people try so hard to kill it? ~ Jessica Valenti

I'm talking about the soul-crushing drudgery of day-to-day parenthood that we're too embarrassed to talk about. The boredom, the stress, the nagging dissatisfaction, and the sense of personal failure that parents feel when raising a kid isn't all it's cracked up to be. Perhaps worst of all is the guilt that so many women buy into because they're too ashamed to admit that despite the love they have for their kids, child rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking. ~ Jessica Valenti

Instead of focusing on men and focusing on what we can do to prop them up, people seem really incredibly focused on the fact that women are doing well and maybe that's not such a good thing. ~ Jessica Valenti

Bra-burning never happened. It was completely made up by the media. A couple of women protesting a Miss America pageant threw some bras into a garbage can, and somehow that became this longstanding idea of feminists as bra-burners. ~ Jessica Valenti

Yes, we love the good men in our lives and sometimes, oftentimes, the bad ones too- but that we're not in full revolution against the lot of them is pretty amazing when you consider this truth: men get to rape and kill women and still come home to a dinner cooked by one. ~ Jessica Valenti

There have been women who stumbled across Feministing randomly, through a bizarre Google search or something, and had no idea what feminism was. They thought it was something older women do, or bought into the hairy bra-burning man-hating stereotype 100 percent. Anything that deviates from that is very exciting for them. ~ Jessica Valenti

When women's sexuality is imagined to be passive or "dirty," it also means that men's sexuality is automatically positioned as aggressive and right-no matter what form it takes. And when one of the conditions of masculinity, a concept that is already so fragile in men's minds, is that men dissociate from women and prove their manliness through aggression, we're encouraging a culture of violence and sexuality that's detrimental to both men and women. ~ Jessica Valenti

What's the worst possible thing you can call a woman? Don't hold back, now.
You're probably thinking of words like slut, whore, bitch, cunt (I told you not to hold back!), skank.
Okay, now, what are the worst things you can call a guy? Fag, girl, bitch, pussy. I've even heard the term "mangina."
Notice anything? The worst thing you can call a girl is a girl. The worst thing you can call a guy is a girl. Being a woman is the ultimate insult. Now tell me that's not royally fucked up. ~ Jessica Valenti

Yet despite all these things we know to be true- despite the preponderance of evidence showing the mental and emotional distress people demonstrate in violent and harassing environments- we still have no name for what happens to women living in a culture that hates them. ~ Jessica Valenti

Now, should we treat women as independent agents, responsible for themselves? Of course. But being responsible has nothing to do with being raped. Women don't get raped because they were drinking or took drugs. Women do not get raped because they weren't careful enough. Women get raped because someone raped them. ~ Jessica Valenti

I think virginity is fine, just as I think having sex is fine. I don't really care what women do sexually, and neither should you. In fact, that's the point. I believe that a young woman's decision to have sex, or not, shouldn't impact how she's seen as a moral actor. ~ Jessica Valenti

If You Cannot Protect What You Own, You Don't Own Anything! ~ Jack Valenti

Because while my daughter lives in a world that knows what happens to women is wrong, it has also accepted this wrongness as inevitable. ~ Jessica Valenti

It is called the First Amendment ... Simple words marching in seried ranks. Compact, concise. To the point. Clear and pure. It's freedom's music. ~ Jack Valenti

If what you own cannot be protected, you own nothing. ~ Jack Valenti

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

While falling in love is fun, it's not everything, and it's not the antidote to an unfulfilled life, despite what Reese Witherspoon movies may tell you. ~ Jessica Valenti

I do think that more people are feminists than they realize. ~ Jessica Valenti

The truth is that we don't need everyone to like us; we need a few people to love us. Because what's better than being roundly liked is being fully known - an impossibility both professionally and personally if you're so busy being likable that you forget to be yourself. ~ Jessica Valenti

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

Men take what women make and claim it as their own.Men don't love childrenThey kill them in a heartbeat to hurt a woman ~ Jessica Valenti