Got done earlier today reading through Robert Stacy McCain's year-and-a-half-old, long form review of Jessica Valenti's Sex Object (published in 2016), which amounts to a considerable public service for those of us determined to avoid memoirs from people who have no right to be taken seriously writing them (e.g.). Valenti, who turns 40 this year, has mostly had a career based on holding the right opinions and airing them on Twitter and on various blogs, including her now-former project, Feministing. But the disturbed, and at times depraved individual behind her writing has evaded the public eye.
Her
(mis)adventures take her through New Orleans party school Tulane (at
$50,000 a year!), where she flunks out, to turn back up at SUNY Albany
(the inevitable Woody Allen gag
is worth recalling). She wastes her time with rich dissolute boys,
"chiseled" boy toys, and a litany of other bedroom mistakes. We understand where her penchant for blaming everything bad that happens to women on men comes from, because the other choice — taking responsibility for her mistakes — is beyond her capacity. (As McCain puts it, "One
of the amazing things about the patriarchal oppression of women is how
guys with too much money so easily locate women with an appetite for
free cocaine.") She hates her husband, and fears (probably rightly) that he reciprocates ("I feel like I might hate him and I suspect he feels the same"). The penalty for being Jessica Valenti is being Jessica Valenti.
No comments:
Post a Comment