claims about what's 'natural' have long been used to reinforce traditional gender roles and values. ... 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 ValentiSex 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 ValentiIf 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 ValentiI think my biggest career mistake has been taking on too much. And I think this is kind of - I think it's related to the Internet world, where you're always multitasking and you have a million windows open and you feel like you can do a lot at the same time.
Jessica ValentiLife is messy, and it's okay if you are too! We all screw up, that doesn't have to define us.
Jessica ValentiI 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 ValentiIt just struck me as really odd that there were all of these conversations going on about what young women were up to. Were young women having too much sex? Were young women politically apathetic? Are young women socially engaged or not? And whenever these conversations were happening, they were mostly happening by older women and by older feminists. And maybe there would be a younger woman quoted every once in a while, but we weren't really a central part of that conversation. We weren't really being allowed to speak on our own behalf.
Jessica Valenti