Quotes from Jessica Valenti

Parents expect their children to be their soul mates in the same way they expect of their spouse—they want children to make their lives and families complete.

As different as we all are, there's one thing most young women have in common: We're all brought up to feel like there's something wrong with us. We're too fat. We're dumb. We're too smart. We're not ladylike enough ... Fuck that. You're not too fat. You're not too loud. You're not too smart. You'r not unladylike. There is nothing wrong with you.

You just remember to say, "Screw them.

What is closer to the truth is that when confronted with the love you deserve, it is easier to mock it than accept it.

What is crazy about killing a woman in a culture that tells you that women's lives are worth nothing?

In fact, no group of parents—married, single, step, or even empty nest—reported significantly greater emotional well-being than people who never had children," she said. "It's such a counterintuitive finding because we have these cultural beliefs that children are the key to happiness and a healthy life, and they're not.

Who would I be if I didn't live in a world that hated women?

Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legend 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 selfish, 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.

Sometimes we call these men domestic abusers when the victim is someone they know, but when they kill strangers to them, we just call these men crazy. Lone wolves. Unbalanced. But here's the thing - what is crazy about killing a woman in a culture that tells you women's lives are worth nothing?

If being premenstrual is "innocence," does that make those of us with periods guilty? And this really gets to the heart of the matter: These concerns aren't about lost innocence; they're about girlhood. The virginity movement doesn't want women to be adults.

As Robert Jensen wrote in 'Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity,' 'Pornography as a mirror shows us how men see women. Not all men, of course--but the ways in which many men who accept the conventional conception of masculinity see women. It's an unsettling look in that mirror.

Let's face it--the beauty queens and young girls touting virginity pledges are simply purity porn stars. Whether it's actual porn or mythologized purity, the end goal is to be desirable to men, and what women may actually want for themselves, sexually or otherwise, is lost.

The thing is, naked women aren't the problem--a woman believing her only value is sexual is what's dangerous. It's not only women's sexuality that we have to watch out for, it's the way men construct it.

Whether you're wearing your 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

But the myth of sexual purity still reigns supreme, and it grossly affects the way American society thinks about violence toward women. So long as women are supposed to be "pure," and so long as our morality is defined by our sexuality, sexualized violence against us will continue to be both accepted and expected.

I truly believe that the drift toward blaming feminism is the most telling shift in this national dialogue. Blaming feminism, women's equality, for rape reveals the crux of the issue. Because it's not concern that's driving media coverage of women's drinking too much--it's sexism.

The idea is that women are supposed to do all they can to limit men's access to female sexuality (and women themselves, really), and men are meant to do all they can to convince women otherwise. This sets up a sexual dynamic that assumes women don't want to have sex and therefore need to be convinced to do so--and that this "convincing" is a natural paer of seduction. But too often, underlying this model, what is called "seduction" is actually coercion.

The idea is that women are supposed to do all they can to limit men's access to female sexuality (and women themselves, really), and men are meant to do all they can to convince women otherwise. This sets up a sexual dynamic that assumes women don't want to have sex and therefore need to be convinced to do so--and that this "convincing" is a natural part of seduction. But too often, underlying this model, what is called "seduction" is actually coercion.

Men's pain and existential angst are the stuff of myth and legends and narratives that shape everything that we do, but women's pain is a backdrop - a plot development to push the story along for the real protagonists. Disrupting the story means we're needy or selfish, 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.

Who would I be if I didn't live in a world that hated women? I've been unable to come up with a satisfactory answer, but I did realize that I've long been mourning this version of myself that never existed.

So where does this come from, this dirty double standard? Pathologizing women's bodies and sexuality is certainly nothing new; from "hysteria"* to fears about menstruation, women have been considered the "dirtier" sex for a long time *The word "hysteria" actually comes from the antiquated idea that women's emotional problems were derived from the uterus

But when articles about the sexual infection rates of African American women are one column over from an article about young white women's spring break, a disturbing cultural narrative is reinforced--that "innocent" white girls are being lured into an oversexualized culture, while young black women are already part of it.

Abstinence-only education seeks to create a world where everyone is straight, women are relegated to the home, the only appropriate family is a nuclear one, reproductive choices are negated, and the only sex people have is for procreation.

Dating their daughters? Isn't it possible to encourage fathers to spend more time with their daughters without using language usually reserved for romantic relationships? Neutral, family-based rhetoric would probably be just as effective and would certainly be less, well, creepy. But calling daddy/daughter quality time "dates" speaks volumes about how young women are valued in the virginity movement--for their sexuality