Hope for Feminism's Future: Jessica Valenti

Last night, Jessica Valenti, founder of feministing.com, graced Indiana University with her presence giving a brief talk about her two books, and the third, forthcoming book The Purity Myth.  To an almost-full auditorium of young people of all genders, races, ethnicities, and sexualities, Jessica offered her take on the continued importance of feminism, especially among our youth.  Although rather subtle, one key point of her talk was that today’s feminists must continue to fight the same issues of their foremothers – sexual double standards, misogynistic representations of women, perpetual exotification and infantilizing of women of all ages, etc, etc.  But, these old issues (and many new) are tackled with new strategies – blogging.  Her website, feministing.com, has grown from a individually-led project to a blogosphere community of young feminists.  Again, though not an explicit point, Jessica highlighted that blogging and other advances of today are great ways for our rising generation to educate others and themselves and to create change.  Given the depressing decline of feminism in the US, or at least the number of people willing to identify themselves as feminists without the fear of being labeled a hairy, man-hating lesbian communist (what labels are there for men who identify as feminists?), targeting youth through aspects of their unique generation (i.e., blogging, texting, instant messaging, cellphones) may prove easier to engage them than more traditional methods.

In general, I was impressed by Jessica’s talk.  Her down-to-earth and personable demeanor made the possibility of doing what she does, or something like that, much easier and accessible.  One anecdote that stung a bit for me was her decision to leave graduate school after receiving a master’s degree because she felt that such educational training was not accessible to everyone, and thus not worth her effort.  (More specifically, she found graduate school rather alienating after she struggled to have conversations with her mother, who had less than a high school education, about Michel Foucault.)  My stance on the academy is constantly in flux, so her point stood out to me – but I won’t dwell on that here.  Her talk, if I were to give it a title, would be “Why Feminism Still Matters” or something along those lines.  Everything she showed through her Powerpoint slides were contemporary images, yet the messages about women and gender were nothing new.  The difference, however, is made in using images of today’s youth, rather than trying to convince them through rhetoric and messages of the 1960s and 1970s. 

When she concluded her talk, a rush of about 20 people headed for the microphone to ask her questions during the Q&A portion.  (I often read too much into things – so, of course, I noticed that the first person to rush to the microphone was a man, a person of the dominant gender group, at a talk about feminism.  A similar observation at Cornel West’s lecture held not too long ago, also at IU, was that of a white person who rushed to the microphone at a talk on race and racism.  I just find it ironic…)  I admit, many of the questions irritated me – “pornography.  What are your views on it?”  Many of the questions struck me as “so Gender Studies 101”.  But, now as I reflect, I recognize that most do not pursue educational training that includes discussion of gender.  Like Jessica, I did not begin getting such training and thus developing a feminist consciousness until the start of college – the point where many of the talk’s attendees are.  But still, most of them will not ever take a gender studies course – and, I highly doubt they will see gender sneaking its way into other disciplines (excluding many of the social sciences and arts and humanities).  This point is striking in itself – at the only university with a PhD-granting program in Gender Studies, still so many students don’t even know the difference between sex and gender!

My ramblings aside, Jessica’s work gives me hope.  Maybe we will actually see a crystallizing third wave of feminism, rather than simply naming something that has failed to emerge as a powerful force.  Or, like other movements, maybe the scattering of everyday people engaging in activism in their own way (e.g., blogging) is the right direction.  We need not expect that we will see a revival of marches on Washington, rallies, feminist consciousness raising sessions, and so forth, when we have feminists in places that create change as well, just not as visible (and thus less likely to be attacked) as those good ol’ days of the euphemistic bra-burning.  Regardless of structure, the message remains: feminism still matters just as much as it has in the past.