According to the virginity movement, men have no self-control when it comes to anything sexual.

— Jessica Valenti

And really, how insulting is it that to suggest that the best thing women can do is raise other people to do incredible things? I'm betting some of those women would like to do great things of their own.

— Jessica Valenti

Another abstinence book claims, "A woman is far more attracted by a man's personality, while a man is stimulated by sight. A man is usually less discriminating about those to whom he is physically attracted.

— Jessica Valenti

Antifeminists are the only ones who benefit from their version of working on women's behalf; in reality, they put other women at risk and fail to sole any larger problems.

— Jessica Valenti

Antifeminists are the only ones who benefit from their version of working on women's behalf; in reality, they put other women at risk and fail to solve any larger problems.

— Jessica Valenti

As bell hooks wrote in a 1998 essay, "Naked Without Shame," about black women's bodies and politics, "Marked by shame, projected as inherent and therefore precluding any possibility of innocence, the black female body was beyond redemption." She points out that since the time of U.S. slavery, men have benefited from positioning black women as naturally promiscuous because it absolves them of guilt when they sexually assault and rape women of color. "[I’t was impossible to ruin that which was received as inherently unworthy, tainted, and soiled," hooks wrote. Women of color, low-income women, immigrant women-these are the women who are not seen as worthy of being placed on a pedestal. It's only our perfect virgins who are valuable, worthy of discourse and worship.

— Jessica Valenti

As Feministing.com commenter electron-Blue noted in response to the 2008 New York Times Magazine article “Students of Virginity,” on abstinence clubs at Ivy League colleges, “There were a WHOLE GOTTA us not having sex at Harvard. . . But none of us thought that that was special enough to start a club about it, for Pete’s sake.

— Jessica Valenti

As I grew up and began identifying myself as a feminist, there were plenty of issues that continued to make me question marriage: the father 'giving' the bride away, women taking their husband's last name, the white dress, the vows promising to 'obey' the groom. And that only covers the wedding.

— Jessica Valenti

Be as pissed off as you want to be. Don’t hold back because you think it’s unladylike or some such nonsense. We shouldn’t be shamed out of our anger. We should be using it. Using it to make change in our own lives, and using it to make change in the surrounding lives. (I know, I’m cheesy.) So the next time someone calls you emotional, or asks if you’re Posing, call them on their bullshit.

— Jessica Valenti

Because even subversive sarcasm adds a cool-girl nonchalance, an updated, sharper version of the expectation that women be forever pleasant, even as we're eating shit.

— Jessica Valenti