Our very own Jessica Valenti, founder and editor of Feministing.com, has published her first book Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters; released late April 2007. The book has since sparked discussions across the political spectrum.
Jessica has a Master's degree in Women's and Gender Studies from Rutgers University. In addition to founding Feministing.com, Jessica is a co-founder of the REAL hot 100, a counter campaign to Maxim magazine's Hot 100, that instead highlights the important work young women are doing across the country. She has worked with such organizations as NARAL Pro-Choice America, Legal Momentum (formerly NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund), Planned Parenthood and the Women's Environment and Development Organization (WEDO). Her writing has appeared in Ms. magazine, Salon, The Guardian (UK), Bitch, Alternet, The Scholar & Feminist and Guernica.
Here's Jessica...
What inspired you to title your book Full Front Feminism? And what kinds of comments have you received about its cover?
I was tossing around a lot of title ideas in my head before we came to Full Frontal Feminism. (We meaning me and the folks at Seal Press.) I think I liked FFF the most because my tone is very in your face and uncensored. And the idea of a “full frontal� feminism—a stripped down, tell-it-like-it-is kind of political discourse—is something I find really attractive and think is important for the movement. Also, I’m a dorky fan of alliteration.
Ah, the book cover—the bane of my feminist existence! Obviously there have been a lot of negative comments about the cover, and for good reason. And I’m glad that it’s being talked about; it’s just put me in a very difficult position. On the one hand, I think a lot of the criticisms are right-on. But on the other, this is my book cover and I have to sell it and stand by it! The only thing I’ve found really disheartening about the conversation going on about the cover is that some people have made assumptions (judging a book by it’s cover, ha!) about the content of the book without having read it.
How have others in the feminist community responded to Full Frontal Feminism?
I’m all for constructive criticism, especially with something like feminism—where I think you need to be constantly checking yourself, your privilege, and finding the spaces where you can improve. But when I see people making comments about me personally, making assumptions about who I am and where I come from, I obviously don’t find that productive. It’s too bad, because there are plenty of interesting critiques out there that could have been the starting points for useful conversations, but they’re being lost in the mix. And now it seems like the way the conversation is actually playing out in the blogosphere is more damaging than anything else.
To be perfectly honest—I also think that having an online presence before the book came out has been a negative in some ways. When you have an online identity, it allows people to create a narrative for you—one that makes them feel comfortable. So, if this created narrative and says that I’m some sort of uber-entitled hetero rich white girl, someone who embodies all that’s wrong with mainstream feminist politics, then it’s easier to imagine that the book is an extension of that. It’s more difficult and uncomfortable to imagine that the book is actually inclusive and complex—which I think it is. I don’t say this to downplay my privilege, which I’m constantly thinking about when writing, but to point out that looking at a picture of me and reading a short bio doesn’t reveal all that much about who I actually am. That’s why I get into a lot of my own personal life in the book—like a lot of women, my lived experiences have informed my feminism in a huge way.
Or you can create a narrative for yourself, which I have to some extent—I’m a pretty funny gal and I play on that. But then that makes it easier for people to say that my work is fluffy—and ignore the fact that I’ve done academic work, international work, and that Feministing and this book are individual projects in a larger career and lifetime of feminism. It’s been difficult to negotiate all of that, but also really illuminating as well.
But that said, you can’t please everyone. I wrote a very personal primer on feminism that I’m hoping will resonate with a lot of people, but I certainly don’t expect it to resonate with everyone. And that’s OK. But I’m not going to beat myself up about it or respond to every bad review or criticism that comes my way. That’s just not useful. But I have to say that I’m really proud of the book. It came from my heart and I wrote it with complete honesty and love of feminism—and I think that’s what going to get across most to readers.
And at the end of the day, I’m really interested to hear what those readers think. While I’ve heard from some young women who found the book wasn’t for them, the majority of feedback I’ve gotten from women who have read the book has been overwhelmingly positive. One high school girl emailed me to tell me that she now calls herself a feminist because of the book and that she bought copies for all of her friends. Another young woman at a book event said she especially liked the book because she thought it was “homo-inclusive.� Things like that make everything worthwhile.
Full Frontal Feminism explains feminism and the current movement’s dilemmas, one of them being a disconnect with the very audience it’s trying to reach: young women. Can you talk more about your call for younger leadership in the feminist movement in the U.S.? And how you feel your feminist activism differs from the activism of second-wave originated national feminist organizations?
I think that the young feminist community is an amazing thing that is, unfortunately, extremely underappreciated and unrecognized. I mean, there already is young feminist leadership in the U.S., it’s just not talked about much. I’m thinking specifically of grassroots feminist organizations that do local work. There are so many incredible organizations, such as The Pro-Choice Public Education Project and Girls For Gender Equity that are headed up by young women, women of color, queer women—but they don’t tend to get a lot of play in the media. Or the mainstream movement, for that matter.
I think there’s a tendency to look at feminist organizing as only valid if it’s adhering to a certain second-wave framework—national work, DC-based, etc. I think when we start to give local work and community work more credit and recognition, we’ll start seeing an increased visibility of young women leaders.
Your personal stories and observations throughout the book really put a face to the negative effects of not respecting and acknowledging the different social intersections within feminism—class, race, sexuality, etc. Do you think many young women do not take feminism seriously because so many feminists, especially older feminists, fail to see these intersections and how all women’s issues are essentially not the same?
I don’t think that it’s they don’t see the intersections, as much as it is that it’s uncomfortable for some folks—especially those in positions of power—to recognize their privilege and be willing to work it out, especially publicly. I think that feminism in general is so ripe for backlash that a lot of the “old guard� is hesitant to talk about the problems of racism, classism, homophobia, etc. in the movement because they feel like they’ll be giving ammunition to all of the rabid antifeminists out there. But I think that history shows that failing to recognize the intersection of oppressions—and failing to have that inform your work—is ridiculously detrimental. And regarding young women—I do think that this may be a reason why some younger women aren’t necessarily participating in solely “feminist� activism or defining it at such. For a lot of young women, it’s queer activism, or anti-racist work or labor issues. But I feel like the collaborations and links that are being made within all these movements, and within feminism, is creating a much more valuable and progressive paradigm.
What is the bottom line you hope readers will come away with after reading your book?
That feminism is not only alive and well, but that it’s energetic, fun, transformative and that it has the potential to change their lives and the lives of the people around them.
Have you taken Full Frontal Feminism on the road yet? What kind of feedback have you received?
I just had my first book event sponsored by the Center for New Words in Boston! It was great; it was really a lot of fun and the audience was fantastic. I think that going out and talking to women in person makes such a huge difference. So far, the feedback has been great from the women I’ve met—in Boston and elsewhere. But mostly what I’m excited about is that people are using the book as a jumping off point to talk about how we can do better in terms of outreach to young women (and men) and how we can bring feminism back into the mainstream conversation in a positive way.
Can you talk about your founding of Feministing.com? How did the blog come about and what were your intentions? Has the goal of the blog changed in any way?
About three years ago I was working at a national women’s organization, and I was feeling kind of disillusioned about the mainstream movement, especially concerning younger women’s role in it. I was also getting frustrated with how the media covered stories about young women. My boss at the time was Bill Scher from LiberalOasis, and he basically convinced me to start a blog. So I did...and I convinced my sister and a couple of coworkers to write for it.
I don’t know that we had a really firm idea of what we wanted to do with Feministing. We knew we wanted to create a space for young women where they could talk about feminism and I think on a personal level, a lot of us wanted to vent! I think that after my coworkers (who later went on to law school) left the blog and Samhita and Ann came on, we really started to think about what else we could do with the site. We realized that the tone of the blog and the way that we wrote appealed to a wider range of women than we thought—so a big part of the blog became about presenting feminism in a way that was relatable and fun.
Now I think we’re at this point where we want Feministing not only to be a news source and forum for feminists, but also to be a location for online organizing and feminist thought. Personally, I’m really interested to see how we can work better with activists on the ground—that’s why I’m so psyched about our “Voices of…� series.
So, I don’t know that the goal of the blog has changed, but it’s definitely expanded.
Any plans for a second book in your future? And what do you envision it being on?
Yes! Thought it’s kind of a secret. Eh, screw it...it’s about the myth of sexual purity and how it affects young women. I’m really excited about it.
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Just wanted to let folks know that I'll be away from the computer tonight and much of tomorrow because I'm out celebrating the lovely Gwynn Cassidy's (of the real hot 100) bachelorette party and shower this weekend...
So I'll be back to answer comments later on tomorrow. A big thanks to Celina for convincing me to do this interview. Have a fun weekend!
Congratulations on your book, Jessica! It's on my list of things to read. And the book about sexual purity sounds awesome. I've thought for a while that the sexual purity issue is behind a lot of awful things like abstinence only education, rape-victim blaming, and anti-abortion nonsense, so I can't wait to read it.
Cool interview. I *finally* finished the book & I plan on lending it out to my friends who are all "I'm not a feminist but..."
What I like about the book is that it discusses the shortcomings of the feminist movement & offers advice to fix the shortcomings.
My only complaint was something that you brought up, that the light tone makes it easier to dismiss.
Obviously there have been a lot of negative comments about the cover, and for good reason.
What, more than just from Ann "Breasts And Banality Of Evil" Althouse?
What, more than just from Ann "Breasts And Banality Of Evil" Althouse?
Have you ever checked out her blog? Someone said that her blog featured pics of her with lots of cleavage. I checked it out, was duly horrified, & was tempted to complain about how her blog was about nothing but breasts & that is bad. But I had to sign up for something or other to post & I knew she would just ban me anyway.
I just did a search for feminism on flickr and found this: http://l.yimg.com/www.flickr.com/images/spaceball.gif
Thought you might want to see it.
I don't know why that isn't coming up, this one seems to work tho: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jillnic83/501727318/
Great job, Jessica. I bought your book a few weeks ago and read it pretty quickly. Even though I'm in my later 30s, I really enjoyed it. Been recommending in the women's rights groups I'm in.
Keep up the good work.
Hi Jessica,
I read and very much enjoyed the book. I can't emphasize enough how wonderful it's been to have the Feministing community these past few months (I happened to start visiting regularly just before the SCOTUS abortion ban decision & I think you all saved my sanity!)
Vis-a-vis some of the bad press & unproductive discussions that have gone on about FFF. I think there has always been a rather rocky relationship between feminist activists en mass and the women that become visible spokespeople for the movement. Women get "chosen" by the mainstream media as voices of feminism, and are suddenly asked to speak for an entire movement full of varied individuals, perspectives, and causes. We all want "our" feminism to be articulated to the general public. Inevitably, you're not going to please anyone!
I myself had a few moments of "oh, but that's not how I think about . . ." while reading your book. I had to remind myself to step back and remember that your voice is your voice :).
As you pointed out in your interview above, internal disagreement is scary when you're trying to bring about political and social change. But I think that we should all take a deep breath and remember that (respectful) disagreement and diversity can often make for more vibrant social activism . . . and (most importantly) models the sort of future feminism is working toward.
Returning to the book specifically, I'd be interested in hearing what others made of your chapter on feminist history & your thoughts on the relationship between the "old guard" feminists who cut their teeth in the 1970s movement and the younger generations. In my personal experience, the narrative of generational tension over-simplifies the current state of feminist activism. I have many wonderful, flawed, feminist mentors who are in their 40s, 50s, 60s, and older. I also know wonderful, flawed younger women who are much less astute about issues of race/class/gender than these older women; younger women who are much more committed to retaining a rigid age-based hierarchy of power. So while I understand the importance of young women coming together and speaking about their specific age-based experience, I also don't understand the animosity many young feminists seem to express toward women who were part of the "second wave." These women have a lot of experience, wisdom, and solidarity to share with us. The energy we spend rebelling against our elders could be energy spent working with them to rebel against a still-entrenched gender system.
Women's history is my once and future field (I'm on hiatus between a women's studies/history undergrad and grad school right now) and I feel like you simplified the complex strands of 1970s activism. I understand that a lot simplification is necessary in a book like yours (you're just trying to give a thumbnail sketch) . . . but the overall effect felt a little too "that was then--now we know better." 1970s activists worked hard--and continue to work hard today--to make feminism more than just a "middle class, straight, white women's movement." Certainly, privileged women were disproportionately given media attention, and it was their agenda that was most rapidly mainstreamed. But there were radical feminists, lesbian feminists, separatist-feminists, womanists, anti-poverty activists . . . the 1970s movement was almost as unruly and diverse as the movement is today. And I think a major strength of the modern feminist movement (since the mid-20th-century) has been it's willingness to engage in self-analysis and listen to the voices of other "isms."
Maybe, in more political arenas, there is a tendency to build a defensive wall around feminist positions and present a united front? I know people have expressed this concern about the pro-choice movement, for example (that it drowns out any complex internal discourse with an uncompromising legal position). But in my own personal experience I have heard a lot of vibrant conversations about the diversity of feminism and the internal differences within the movement. Am I just spending so much time with feminists that I'm not aware of how the movement is being perceived? And how much blame should we, as a movement, bear for the way the mainstream media chooses to portray us?
Hope you're having a great weekend away from the computer. I am looking forward to seeing how this thread develops in the week to come.
congrats, jessica! hope you sell a million copies!
ps, i'm a big fan of bill scher, and he of me, too. just met him for the first time last fall when i was in nyc!
Way to go, Jessica. I look forward to doing a review of the book over at my little shack, but please make your way down here for a book signing to the benighted culture-less hick lands between the Chesapeake and Potomac! Best, Bruce
Great work, Jessica. This is echoing Bruce, but have you ever thought of taking the book on the road? Or speaking at high schools? I'm a senior in high school and the head of my school's (teensy-tiny) Women's Studies Club, which is so small because there are only about a dozen people in the 2000-person school who will call themselves "feminists."
We really could use your voice (really, really loudly, hopefully) being heard by the student body! The Women's Studies Club is, despite my attempts and club-member's attempts, still not very cool at all. I wish I could mandate FFF for everyone in my school to read and absorb. Honestly!
Full disclosure - I haven't read the book, and am just catching up on all the *discussions* of it popping up all over the blogosphere in the last several days, and they've been so compelling I'm sure as hell going to read it now! Thanks for linking to some of those conversations, and thanks for your analysis annajcook, i think that's among the most thoughtful, constructive comments I've seen thus far.
I can't imagine what it must feel like to be at the center of all this (and I'm talking about personal / juvenile attacks, not mere criticism of the book). Yeah, I know what people inevitably say...public figure...should expect it...need a thick skin...etc., etc. But I'm sure that no amount of expectation or abstract preparation can prepare you for the real consequences of notoriety, and DAMN I can only imagine how much it hurts sometimes, even when you do have a great support system and even given the partial detachment this medium may allow. I trust you are bolstered by the many positive comments I have seen here and elsewhere, about the book and your other work. And I saw your comment somewhere else (in response to expressed concerns of some former visitors here who are POC) about plans to have more of a dialogue re: comment moderation here, and I think that's a great idea. I know y'all are busy with other jobs and commitments, but I've often wondered whether the tone of some threads could be humanized or otherwise enhanced if ALL the feministing contributors commented regularly, in each other's threads. Although I suppose then you would get criticized for defending one another and making it an *echo chamber*. Can't win, I'm sure.
So, no comment on the book since I'm uninformed there, but thanks on a very personal level for Feministing, because I found it when I *really* needed it, and please do keep up the clearly earnest, congruent, and responsive (if not perfect, because nothing is) work.
Just wanted to quickly say that I loved the book. Didn't agree with everything, but I'm really looking forward to giving this book to my (now 7-yo) daughter when she's older. She's already excited about it, and fww, she really likes the cover too.
It captures so many things that I wish I could say to the teenagers that I know, but don't always have the appropriate time/context/etc to bring up the subject. In that sense, it is truly an awesome piece of work.
Thank you, Jessica!
Congratulations Jessica! I'm loving the book and can't wait to pass it along to my friends. You added a much needed younger women's voice to the feminist movement, and you did it an authentic and accessible way. *Thank you!*
Jessica said:
I think what you say right here is a strong indication that Feministing should morph to a forum format rather than simply being a blog with the ability for readers to comment. Ever since I started actively reading Feministing, I've thought it was itching to be far too interactive to stay just as a blog. There are SO many readers and SO many commenters, and it is difficult to grow in a simple blog format.
You say that you want Feministing to be a forum for Feminists and a place to organize. In order to do that, the commenters/posters need to be able to be more interactive. We need to be able to contact one another and follow up on posts/threads. It is so hard to keep up on old posts here without actively looking through the archives. Or you have to manually click on the comments bit to see if anyone has commented on the front page of posts here. Or if you try to revive an old post on here, it tends to go unnoticed as there's no way to see that it's been revived unless you happen to be on the home page at a time when it's one of the five most recent posts. So much conversation gets lost and dies off far too soon.
I also know there are posters whose posts I pay attention to more than others. Having a forum would make it much easier to distinguish everyone's posts and would create more of an online community feeling.
I don't think there'd be a problem with the Feministing writers starting threads just like you create posts currently. Maybe you could make it so that only you writers make posts on the latest news like you do now, but maybe there could also be other general threads that desperately need to be continuously discussed, like the recent birth control one showed. Another good example would be to have a thread on sexuality.
A music and lifestyle forum I'm on used to have a news subforum in which bands' newslists via email were sent in and automatically created as a thread in the news subforum. Then we could reply to the posts and create a conversation about the latest news. It wasn't that popular on this massive forum, so I can't link to that subforum, but I truly believe it could work with Feministing and its writers could still post the latest news and commentary like you do now, but just in a forum format.
I really have this great dream visually of how it could look! Maybe your web designer (Deanna?) has been looking it already. I do hope so. Feministing has grown so greatly in popularity and usage that I think you should be proud and take it to the next level.
Jessica-
First, belated congrats on the book.
Second, I finally got my hands on it and I've been reading it all day. I'm up to the section about our beauty cult. I just wanted to say that I'm really enjoying it. It reads like a conversation with my best friend, and I will be recommending it as a feminist primer to a few people I know. I especially like your Resources section, as you provide a means to actually get involved.
Anyway, thanks for all you do and keep up the great work. Also, looking forward to the next book.
(A very too long post and late in coming but it happened now so yeah).
Dear Jessica Valenti!
I just finished reading your book Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters and though I am actually a young white man, 22 or so, I wanted to respond to your book, as your project and feminism generally are crucial to the struggles we are fighting in this world of ours and because in reading it I was challenges to think about where we need to go as feminists and as progressive change-makers generally. (As a quick about me: I am a ‘radical’ community organizer and at this point my main claim to fame would be a free school for social change project called the Experimental College or EXCO: www.EXCOtc.org).
Your book is at its fantastic best when discussing everyday issues with clarity and flair, particularly when it is happy to be badass about it. “I’m better than you in bed and I’ve got feminism to thank for it�. Badass. Sex should be fun, and safe, women are undervalued, set up to impossible standards, harassed, violated, and worse, and we know it, we see it everyday, and in recognizing this and doing something about it we are happier, cooler, and more powerful—this is what feminism is about. This is what I got as the core message of the book and for me that is right on.
The book is also solid in its recognition of the ways in which feminism has overemphasized the struggles of monied, straight white women. Being upfront about those issues and discussing how oppression is different based on race, class, and sexuality was great, and you did a particularly good job with making sure to include queer issues, a perspective that has had increasing influence on my own work, particularly through drag/gender performance (see below).
That being said, I thought the book was weakest in the action piece, a problem we see across all our movements. What do we do? How do we raise hell again? This, my friends, is the task, the challenge, the fun, the work ahead of us! This is how I would like to have seen your book end, as I think it is important to note that we haven’t really figured out new strategies and tactics that are effective in making change, though certainly you and those you mention are miles ahead of many in terms of hipness and tactics—blogs for one! I also thought the cell-phone-picture snapping of harassers was frigging amazing.
So while perhaps I am unusual in enjoying being challenged to figure out how to raise hell, I do think it is the task at hand. It is this that I would like to address in the rest of this piece, and it is this that I am curious about your thoughts (and the thoughts of whoever else is out there!).
The need to reconsider strategy was made salient to me in your section on voting, where you touch on where many young people feel that it doesn’t matter who wins elections. And while I understand, and in some ways am sympathetic to the approach that “shit! it does matter�, I feel like the problem is that we haven’t successfully created a politics of everyday life, so that politics becomes disempowering representational and representative politics—nonprofits, special interests, elections—and that feminism in this mode remains immensely alienating despite its potential and individual impact as a powerfully liberating identity.
This word, identity, to me is in many ways the crux of the problem. Not because identity is limiting or fragmentary, but because identity as a motive and connection isn’t sufficiently strong to be able to create the power and change that we need everywhere, and to feel in our everyday lives. Identity is an electoral concept, or a consumer concept, while power is based in the ability to do things directly, and is rooted in communities or institutions, and institutions on their own maintain, rather than change, the status quo. As such we need to make feminism, and feminist organizing and struggle into feminist communities, feminist relationships, feminist practices, feminist power.
What do I mean by this? I’m not entirely sure myself but let me give you some examples and inspirations from my own research, ideas I am right now trying to figure out in practice.
1) I know that in Italy in the 60s and well through the 70s, the feminist movement set up a huge number of women’s centers, as safe spaces for women to come together, to build community, to support each other, and to fight together for a variety of things, including abortion rights, and as such served as the heart of community change-making and the alternative to a male-dominated workers’ movement.
2) Drag performance is an interesting venue for me, particularly in that it seems to be designed as precisely a safe space for sexuality, a place where sexual experimentation and expression, gender identities or un-identities, of all types can be played out and celebrated. Just as feminism provides a way of seeing through the bullshit, drag provides a collective space to not only mock it and parade its destruction, but also to experiment with new ways of being, in relation to gender and its intersection with a variety of forms of power and oppression.
3) On a negative note, there has been an increasing professionalization of nonprofits, and as such a increasingly clinical approach to victims of all types of oppression, and as such, people come to nonprofits to be served, not to be supported and join the struggle against the forces that have victimized them. As such, nonprofits have been a mode of coping with disempowerment rather than that of building power and community, and the INCITE! Collective, Women of Color Against Violence have put out an amazing book on the topic called The Revolution Will Not Be Funded: Against the Nonprofit Industrial Complex, which has been essential to my attempts to re-think organizing in this crazy globalizing world.
At the core then, I think we need to return to our own histories and draw out not the legislative successes but the things that build the movements that made these successes possible, like self-defense classes, women’s centers, collective daycare, participatory skits on everyday harassment to give men a chance to experience, or witness, what its like in the workplace or in the streets…and to use new things, like gender performance and the internet, for example.
The internet in particular is a power and a risk, in that it allows us to forget the importance of the personal, of relationships, of face to face discussion, local support and community—that which is most important!—even as it allows us to link together, learn from each other, and synchronize action as never before. I am tempted to say that the internet is only really a useful tool only after we have build a community and are in the process of inviting more people in, growing our base and solidarity and projects at the grassroots level. And while this ignores the importance of the internet in getting local people together (something not to be ignored), it is crucial to realize that the trust needed to change our everyday lives cannot be virtual, that the community needed to make the changes we want to see are not sufficiently expressed by a shared identity or value, as anyone who has joined a march and left as lonely and with as many friends as they arrived with can attest.
Lastly, I would challenge us to think economically, to engage directly with what keeps us physically helpless. Not only at the level of yes, lets work so that we can stand on our own, but the fact that we need to work or we will starve, that we are exploited in workplaces, or to say it in another way, that freedom, not love, is the opposite of fear.
Bringing a feminist lens to these problems can make more meaningful an economic movement for worker controlled workplaces and alternative economies, and to make feminism more powerful. Sexual harassment, being paid less, normative maleness in relation to health care and child-care, and the tyrannical structure of workplaces are related, and recognizing and fighting that together has the powerful opportunity to re-articulate some aspects of the feminist project and to convince those who are otherwise alienated from it of its deep relevance for their everyday lives.
The end.
What do you think?
Is it weird that some white dude is writing this? How am I negotiating, successfully or otherwise, the male-feminist category? Do these ideas have the potential I think they do to re-invigorate radical, grassroots, and community based change? Why, why not? What are the key problems, misassumptions, or challenges of such an approach? Am I sufficiently androgynous, masculine, or feminine in my tone?
Love to hear your thoughts and think about who is doing this type of work and how we can build the movement locally, nationally, and around the globe.
All the best,
Yours,
David (Boehnke)
dboehnke(at)gmail.com