Ariel Levy’s Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture was critiqued by Valenti. She agreed with me when she says, ‘she fails in that she seems to have little sympathy for the women she interviews’ and ‘telling young women they’re being taken advantage of isn’t necessarily the best way to effect change.’ And she goes on to say ‘there is a middle ground between rabid antiporn Dworkinizing and Girls Gone Wild vapidity.’
Girls Gone Wild – a popular example of deplorable “humilitainment” and exploitation Valenti condemns as one of ‘the most sexually predatory groups in America today
it’s a roving band of would-be rapists and assaulters who get treated like celebrities wherever they go.’ Here, it’s shown a few of those employed by GGW were in fact criminals, one of which was a serial rapist.
Repressing sexuality and shaming people for having it creates a guilty hunger for outlets, like porn (oh, the hyporcrisy), thereby encouraging sexual liberation to fulfil those needs
And that the movement requires the prevalence of raunch to stay relevant, because if they succeed by sanitising the world and abolishing women’s rights, what more do they have to campaign for, or against? If they no longer have a cause, they have no power. I’m not entirely sure about this last part. Maintaining the new social order of oppression (with dissemination of propaganda, and so on) would require effort and resources, and someone has to be in charge of that, right?
*It occurs to me that when [vaginal rejuvenation] surgery is performed on women in Africa, we call it female genital mutilation, but in the oh-so-enlightened United States, we call them designer vaginas. You know, American women are empowered.
A footnote has never made me so angry. There should be no sarcasm or snark in that paragraph. American women ARE empowered. They CHOOSE to have surgery by TRAINED SURGEONS in CLEAN HOSPITALS. In Africa, the barbaric practice of FGM primarily consists of a clitoridectomy forced on millions of girls between infancy and age 15 often in unsanitary conditions by butchers, leaving them with long-term serious consequences. Tell me, what American woman would choose to have their clitoris removed? I recommend she read Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.
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Another footnote is also not quite right, critcising an anti-choice columnist ‘who actually asserted that abortion providers and Chinese people eat foetuses!’ This is true. Mary Roach visited China to find they actually do. Just because it sounds outrageous, don’t dismiss it as untrue.
I wonder if Valenti has ever read Mary Roach because their evocative informal writing styles are quite similar, containing many, many footnotes and personal choices and accounts of their lives. Personal taste will dictate if readers will like this style, for me, it worked like a charm.
Bias. Although I’ve never encountered American abstinence-only sex education or the other explored issues, I’m sure there is some degree of bias. I can’t say for certain how much because Valenti does a brilliant job of reinforcing her points with as much evidence as she can find, but her frustrations prevented her from researching my first two points of criticism. What else has she overlooked, or perhaps exaggerated?
There’s no question Valenti makes an impassioned plea to the public to change attitudes. However, understandably, her use of exclamation points increases with her frustration and incredulity at the people, institutions and cultures she criticises. Snark becomes more noticeable, translating into an attack on the “enemy” rather than a call to open dialogue with them. Though it’s quite clear previous clashes between sides show few are willing to understand the points Valenti makes and that this book is actually a way of bypassing The Enemy to the public, the very people she wishes to inform, hoping to ignite discussion and encourage meaningful changes throughout society.