Jessica Valenti, women’s history month speaker at the Benwood Auditorium at UTC, said that women may think the fight for women’s rights is long over, but it’s not. Women watching the media and shows like “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” are “basking in a girl power moment that doesn’t exist,” she said.
“It’s a mirage of equality that we have been duped into believing is the real thing, because, despite the indisputable gains over the years, women are still being raped, trafficked, violated and discriminated against [in] not only in the rest of the world but here in the U.S.,” Valenti says.
Valenti, who has been called the “poster girl for third-wave feminism” by Salon, is the author of three books: “Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters,” “He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut…and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know,” and “The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women,” which is being made into a documentary.
Valenti is also the founder of Feministing.com, which is the most viewed online publication of its kind. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian, The American Prospect, Ms. Magazine, and Salon Magazine. She has won a Choice USA Generation award, was featured as one of ELLE Magazine’s “IntELLEgentsia,” and was named one of the Left’s Top 25 Journalists by The Daily Beast. She has appeared on “The Colbert Report” and the “Today Show,” among others, and was recently profiled in The New York Times Magazine.
During her speech given at UTC, entitled, “Feminism: Alive, Well and Changing the World,” Valenti said that feminism activism is still necessary because women are being shot dead in the streets of America, such as the case in 2009 when George Sodini opened fire outside of Pittsburg killing three women and injuring nine others, where afterwards investigators read from his blog that he specifically targeted women. Valenti says it’s not just strangers killing women either, as more than 1,000 women were killed by their partners in 2005. Of all the women killed in the U.S., about 1/3 are killed by their husband or boyfriend, and the leading cause of death for pregnant women is death from a partner. Other shocking statistics include that, in Iraq, women serving in the military are more likely to be raped by a fellow soldier than be killed by enemy fire. The number of women raped in 2008 was over 1 million, and women still make only 76 cents to a man’s dollar.
The first question people ask Valenti when they find out she is a professional feminist is, “why?” Just this month, Valenti’s said her reasons for being a feminist include a bill currently circulating that makes abortion illegal even if the mother is dying and an abortion would save her life. She’s also a feminist this month because when an 11-year-old girl was gang raped by 10, 18-year-old men, neighbors said they weren’t shocked because she “dressed like a prostitute.”
“Stereotypes that still exist today of feminists as bra-burners with hairy legs and as man haters keep young women away from feminism,” Valenti said. “Yet, if feminism wasn’t seen as powerful and as a threat, it wouldn’t be discouraged.”
Valenti’s seven-year-old blog,
Feministing, represents the new majority of where the movement has moved because of the online ability to allow a widespread connection from one feminist to another. This means feminists don’t have to be centrally located in areas like New York or Washington, D.C. anymore to be involved.
The blog not only covers the issues of women’s violence and abortion but also racism, homophobia, national issues that infringe on basic rights, and positive stories about women. These articles are important in a time where the public is more likely to hear about “Girls Gone Wild” than women volunteering and making an impact in their community, Valenti said.
The site also features the opportunity to community blog, which means that users can post a blog related to feminism to the site and have 40,000 readers immediately. Some of these bloggers from the community forum have even been interviewed on NPR and had their columns published in newspapers.
Yet the site also receives hundreds of hate emails each week that they run under the anti-feminist title to defuse the hateful content and show that being a feminist doesn’t come without opposition.
Valenti sayid, “With all my books, I wanted to write something that was informal and accessible, that not only dispelled the ridiculous myths about feminism but showed how fun activism can be and how activism can make your life better. I really do believe if we tell the truth about feminism, if we are funny about it and we talk to rather than at young women, they would be more likely to embrace feminism, and that’s actually happening.”
Yet too many people, even women, still think that feminism isn’t necessary any more and that sexism in America isn’t that bad, she said. Women are not realizing that the issues that women face abroad are severe, but they can work on women’s rights both there and here, for all women.
“Women are dealing with these infringes on their rights and the hatred directed at women as if it can be [handled] with a stern talking to and as if the misogyny in our culture is an unruly child rather than systematic oppression,” she said “Are women really supposed to be satisfied with the most basic rights of representation, thrilled to find that our country considers us fully human?”
Part of the results of the online activism from Valenti’s blog include the removal of a line of young girls underwear sold at Wal-Mart that read “Who needs credit cards…” on the front and the similar removal of a t-shirt from an online Web site that read, “No Means No. Unless I am drunk.”
Valenti said that young people are doing feminist work every day in small ways such as calling out a friend who tells a racist or sexist joke. Even these acts are part of the active feminism that Valenti is and will continue to speak out for.