Jessica Valenti Quotes

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Jessica Valenti

Profession : Writer

Birth : November 1, 1978

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

The widely held belief that the heterosexual nuclear family is best for children has long been used as a smoke screen for homophobia and as a talking point to quash marriage-equality efforts.

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

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

Jessica Valenti

Wedding fever is one of the scariest diseases I have ever seen.

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

When I started blogging in 2004, I responded to every comment no matter how nasty the reader was. I was generally polite, believing that these critics would be so charmed by my professionalism that they would see the error of their misogynist ways and swiftly run out to read a bell hooks book. Ha!

Jessica Valenti

The implications of likability are long-lasting and serious. Women adjust their behavior to be likable and as a result have less power in the world. And this desire to be liked and accepted goes beyond the boardroom - it's an issue that comes up for women in their personal lives as well, especially as they become more opinionated and outspoken.

Jessica Valenti

I've seen straight, partnered women explain their decision to stay at home by noting that childcare would have taken too much out of their paycheck - as if this cost was just theirs to bear!

Jessica Valenti

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.

Jessica Valenti

One of the difficult things, especially about blogging, is that you put all of your personal out there, into the political. And what's been difficult, for me at least, is trying to keep some of the personal for myself.

Jessica Valenti

People ask me a lot, 'Well, can you be pro-life and be feminist? Can you be conservative and be feminist?' And I think that, yeah, maybe personally you can be those things. But I think if you're advocating for legislation, or if you're fighting to limit other women's rights, then you can't really call yourself a feminist.

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

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

I think talking is as casual as blogging, and sometimes writing can be as casual as talking. My informal writing style is a political choice, because I want feminism to be more accessible.

Jessica Valenti

There's something really terrible about having your BlackBerry next to your bed or having your laptop in the living room when you're talking to someone. The biggest source of stress in my life is the screen, the blogging.

Jessica Valenti

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.

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

Women are brought up to believe you are going to be the better parent and you know what's best. I don't think that's necessarily true. As much as we have to ask men to step it up, we have to take a look at ourselves and be willing to give up some of that parental power.

Jessica Valenti

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

Jessica Valenti