Quotes from Jessica Valenti

My informal writing style is a political choice, because I want feminism to be more accessible.

Dismissing socialization and gender roles as piddling compared to this amorphous idea of 'maternal imperative' is part of the reason progress is stalled for family-friendly policies.

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?

Child-rearing can be a tedious and thankless undertaking.

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?

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

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

It seems odd that we continue to worry about the reputations of men who are accused of sexual wrong-doings.

I think that the ideal of parenting can make people unhappy. It's that this lie that they're being told by society that parenting is one thing - and when parenting is something completely different - that's what makes them unhappy.

It's become impossible to enjoy most quality television shows because the hurt or endangered women device is so frequently used.

Women do not get raped because they weren't careful enough. Women get raped because someone raped them.

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.

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.

I think people resist feminism because they're scared. I think for women, they're scared of being picked on or of being called out.

I grew up definitely a feminist, but I didn't call myself a feminist until I took my first women's studies class in college.

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

If you're fighting to limit other women's rights, then you can't really call yourself a feminist.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.