Jessica Valenti

HuffPo blogger and author says “Women Had It Better in the Sixties”

There are so many things wrong with Anna David’s post, “Women Had It Better in the Sixties,” it’s hard to know where to begin. First of all, it really should have been titled “Straight White Women Had It Better in the Sixties,” cause you know…fucking civil rights and all that. But even if David had included a caveat about race, sexuality, etc - this post simply reeks.

David says that “most of what today’s ‘feminists’ do is at best a waste of everyone’s time and at worst a dangerous distraction from where we really should be focusing.” Apparently she’s pissed that feminists focus on equal space in the op-ed pages (who needs to be a public intellectual, anyway?) and sexualization in the media. Instead, she thinks feminists should be talking about sex and singledom. (Because apparently feminists don’t already do that. Ahem.)

But it was this nonsense that almost made the throw my laptop across the room (emphasis mine):

To be honest, I’m bored silly by the so-called empowering women out there today, who seem to be either full of crap entirely, far more into self-promotion than they are into women-promotion, or hiding their other issues under the umbrella of feminism. (When I did a story with another writer for a magazine that wanted to shoot us rather scantily clad, the other writer pitched a fit, saying that she was a feminist and dressing sexy for a photo would be exploitative; after she left, everyone agreed that her real issue was with her weight and body in general. But why admit that when you can just lean on good old feminism instead?)

Seriously? Fuck you. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to having the flu and using feminism as an excuse for my disgusting body.

Thanks to slanina75 for the tip.