Monday, November 14, 2016

On Jessica Valenti

Hat tip for this story to The Politically Incorrect Australian. Jessica Valenti is a prominent American feminist. She has written a memoir called Sex Object which has been memorably reviewed by Robert Stacy McCain. It's worth reading the whole review (it is blunt in its language).

Let me give the briefest of summaries of Valenti's life to date. She followed the modern girl path of spending her teens and twenties as a party girl seeking sex with the most alpha men she could get (she preferred tall, blue-eyed, fair-haired men) and taking drugs. She was snorting coke during the period she founded the feminist website Feministing. When she hit her 30s she did the done thing and got married. She has, apparently, been somewhat ruined for marriage though:
Andrew and I have been going to couple’s therapy, both for my anxiety and because Andrew is so mad at the space the anxiety takes up in our relationship. Our default mood is low-level annoyance toward each other with a propensity to turn into full-blown rage at the smallest thing.

I feel like I might hate him and I suspect he feels the same.

It reminds me again that we do not choose the best people to run our culture. Our young women are supposed to look up to and emulate someone with mental health issues and a history of drug and alcohol abuse.

If it were me, I would not be putting myself forward as a role model, at least not until I had got myself sorted out.

The other reminder is that we now have to deal with a culture in which there exist women who want to be players but who also want to keep the option of becoming wives and mothers. It's an odd game that modern feminists are playing: they want a player culture of their own, whilst stridently opposing one for men. Robert Stacy McCain touches on this in his review - he identifies the double standard by which it is "progressive" for women to act like players but "sexist" for men to do the same. To put this another way, the ideal for a feminist is to allow free rein to her own sexuality whilst keeping a lid on the expression of male sexuality (the traditionalist preference is for both to be directed toward higher ends).

4 comments:

  1. I think it's also part of the whole drive to stop men putting themselves out there, reducing the available 'leaders' resulting in an environment of "well if she wants to lead" mixed with "anyone who questions her is a misogynist".
    How many left wing female politicians get full passes for things that male counterparts would be strung up for? Far Too many.

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  2. That was a fascinating read. The comment later about "The Partisan Nature of ‘Feminism’" was also well thought out.

    Thanks for this, Mark.

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  3. I hadn't the faintest idea that she lived this way. I'm quite dumbfounded tbh. In her own writing she speaks with a tone of great authority and moral self-righteousness about how society should organise.

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    1. In her own writing she speaks with a tone of great authority and moral self-righteousness about how society should organise.

      Hard-line feminism seems to be associated with some degree mental illness. Seriously. Moral self-righteousness is often a sign that a person's private life is disastrously chaotic. If you've made a total mess of your life it's very convenient to be able to blame it on the patriarchy.

      I suspect that this is true of many of the most extreme SJWs.

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