No one is saying men can't have opinions about sexual harassment. (IF ONLY) Just that women's opinions about something that disproportionately impact them are more important. It's not difficult: the person who has to deal with an issue on a daily basis is more of expert than someone who never has to…
Catalog
Jessica Valenti
Jessica Valenti (born November 1, 1978) is an American blogger and feminist writer, founder of the Feministing blog in 2004. She is the author or co-author of six books on women's issues: Full Frontal Feminism (2007), Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (2008) with Jaclyn Friedman, He's a Stud, She's a Slut (2008), The Purity Myth (2009), Why Have Kids (2012), and Sex Object: A Memoir (2016). Her work has appeared in Ms., The Nation, The Washington Post, TPMCafe, Alternet and The Guardian. In 2011, The Guardian, where Valenti works as a daily columnist, named her as one of their "top 100 women" for her work to bring the feminist movement online. 2Background Valenti was raised in Long Island City, Queens in an Italian American family. Her father was a Buddhist. Valenti graduated from Stuyvesant High School. She received her master's degree in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University. On October 3, 2009, she married Andrew Golis, the deputy publisher of Talking Points Memo. 2Writing and blogging Valenti founded Feministing in 2004, while she was working at the National Organization for Women's legal defense fund (now Legal Momentum), Homa Khaleeli writes in The Guardian's top 100 women that the site shifted the feminist movement online, triggering the creation of blogs and discussion groups, creating a heyday for feminism just as its death was being announced, as Khaleeli puts i
Most of all - there is nothing 'frail' about coming forward to talk about abuse. That shit is hard and brave.
Our standard for sexual behavior has to be more than what’s legal or illegal - it needs to be about what’s right. I’m sure we’re going to hear lots of stories in the coming months about actions that aren’t against the law, or that don’t warrant repercussions. That doesn’t mean that women weren’t…
Being an awkward girl with a big nose never protected me from harassment. If anything, especially when you're young, not being 'conventionally attractive' can mean you're treated as if you should be grateful for the attention. I know it makes some women feel safer if they attack other's choices -…
Plenty of people get wasted and manage not to assault others. Lots of folks struggle with alcoholism and drug addiction without harassing women.
If you’re upset about the assault & harassment women deal with, think beyond the impact of an individual experience - consider what this horror does to us cumulatively over a lifetime... This isn’t just about one man or one horrible experience. It’s about women being shaped by a lifetime of…
The problem isn’t men and women being alone together, it’s abusive men and their communities that look the other way. I find 'solutions' like these so troubling because they’re based on the idea that the only thing stopping men from harassing is opportunity.
If you are tempted to say that masturbating in front of women is not THAT bad on the spectrum of sexual assault, please don't.
I worked at a mall throughout college. Let me tell you, you have to be one serious fucking creep to get mall security to do something about it.
In decades of research on rape, no one has found a link between what a woman wears & her chances of being attacked. The only relationship between clothing and sexual assault is how much a victim will be blamed, period.
If you have a story to share about harassment/abuse, do it now - I think we have a month, tops, before the wave of support moves against us. It's both that a sexist culture won't let this many men be held accountable & that hopelessness is going to start to set in. When it's SO MANY men, the…
...so many men think of sexual harassment as an issue of women's hurt feelings rather than our ruined ambitions and careers is a huge part of the problem.