Name: Mallory Foutch's review of Sex Object by Jessica Valenti
Item: Sex Object
Rating: 3
Author: Mallory Foutch

Jessica Valenti

No longer maligned as a fascistic movement of man-haters or declared dead on national magazine covers, feminism is now the zeitgeist. Beyoncé calls herself a feminist in forty foot lights; democratic candidate Hillary Clinton stumps for women’s rights on the 2016 campaign trail; and a vibrant conversation is happening in real time across social media. “Gutsy young third wave feminist” (New York Times) and Guardian US columnist Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation for over a decade and is widely credited with sparking the online wave of the women’s movement. In Sex Object, Valenti focuses on funny, painful, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments from her own life that illuminate what it’s like to be a woman today. Structured in three acts to follow the arc of what a woman’s life is supposed to be focused on—Bodies, Boys, Babies—Sex Object explores drugs, sex, harassment, assault, bad boyfriends, too-nice boyfriends, abortions, birth, class anxiety, impostor syndrome, work, death threats, resistance, and family. Feminism is once again “having a moment" and Sex Object shockingly illuminates the contemporary female experience—and the woman who is helping to shape it.

A Memoir

Sex Object

Mallory Foutch

Isabella 

very raw and uncomfortable to read, but it perfectly captures what women has to go through in their everyday lives. as a book, i think it's a bit disjointed; felt more like reading a stream of consciousness or a collection of essays rather than a memoir. loved the theme tho, and i still think people should still give it a try.

Jeannette Ordas

Highly recommended. The first section of the book does a damn fine job describing what it's like to be a woman, sexism and feminism. The second part is more memoir-ish about her kinda fucking up and figuring things out. The third part dealt mainly with giving birth and the honesty and hardships of being a mom with depression and anxiety to a premature baby. I liked how honest, unflinching and blunt Valenti is.

Maggie Gordon

I've had to sit and think about this book for a few days. It's not very good. I wish there was an exact middle rating on Goodreads because I would stick Sex Object in the 2.5 star category. It's not a badly written book or an uninteresting book; but it's certainly a confused book. 

Jessica Valenti starts by setting up Sex Object as a call-out against men's objectification of women. This is familiar ground for her given her background as founder of feministing.com, and her previous books as well. This initial section is also the strongest part of the book, balancing the heavy emotional aspects of this discussion with hard analysis. However, I was uncomfortable with this setup knowing that this book was meant to be a memoir. How do you use a memoir to craft a feminist movement against a huge systemic problem? In short, you don't. The powerful statements of Valenti's introduction are disconnected from the rest of the book which weakens the overall work substantially. 

It is not that Valenti's memories of being objectified from an early age are not powerful. However, the plural of anecdote is not data. To delve so deeply into her own experiences erases the myriad of ways that objectification happens to women and undermines her attempts to frame this as a universal problem. Valenti is a conventionally attractive woman, and even though she received negative comments about her nose, she experienced a very particular type of harassment, and she never properly acknowledged this point. Furthermore, are her experiences even that universal for attractive women? The level of public harassment she experienced was intense and not something that any of my friends have experienced. I do not mean to imply that Valenti is exaggerating about what happened to her. I have no reason to believe that she is making anything up. However, given this book is about responding to a systemic issue, she needed to acknowledge that her experiences were not everyone's experiences, which is pretty tough to do in a memoir. The type of book she was writing simply does not fit the message she was trying to craft. 

As Valenti moves into discussing her young adulthood, I grew more uncomfortable with the way this book was positioned. She talks about some rather terrible things that happened in her life, failing at university, abusive relationships, sexual assault, and drug addiction, but doesn't clearly tie these incidents back to the idea of male entitlement in a way that makes sense. Sure, I can see how the patriarchy undermined her self of self-worth, but these problems doesn't necessarily stem directly from the patriarchy. This is the section of the book that I think criticisms about "white feminism" will apply to. Despite all her problems, Valenti was still a teenager that went to a high school for gifted students, she was accepted into decent universities, had a loving and supportive (though at times complicated) family, and created and maintained strong networks of people to help her in her professional life. Many of her problems were caused by her own choices, and while sometimes she was constrained in what she could do, she still have far more opportunities than many other people. Some of these problems I struggle to even relate back to systemic gender inequality. Doing substantial amounts of cocaine while running feministing.com, getting a book deal, and being a fairly well-respected feminist figure? While I concur that being a feminist does not make you immune to the effects of gender inequality, I needed to see more critical self-analysis in this section, and more direct connections to her overall point. Even as a memoir it jumps around too much and lacks the type of reflection that makes this genre of writing interesting and insightful to read. 

The last section of the book is a detailed account of the traumatic birth of her daughter. Honestly, while it is engaging and well-written, I have no idea why it was included. Having PTSD because your kid was born prematurely does not easily fit within the male entitlement theme. It's a good story to tell, but as a part of this work. 

Sex Object was an interesting, but not a good read. It was too confused and lacked sufficiently deep reflection. It was trying to be several different books at once. Given what was going on in Valenti's life at the time, I understand how her book could have gotten away from her, but this is what editors are for!

Yoomi

3.5 stars
I'm rounding up.
This book should have come with trigger warnings. If you've been a victim of sexual abuse or sexual assault, if you've had a difficult abortion, if you've had a late term loss in pregnancy, you may need to read carefully. I had a hard time with this book and read it in parts. It's raw and honest and at times I had to put it down. But stories like these are necessary. Women shouldn't have to hide or keep quiet. We have every right to be angry.

That being said, there were times when I wondered, what is the point that she's getting at? It wasn't until the very end, the chapter titled "Chocolate", when she tells the story about her daughter, that I got it.

Caitlin Berger

Gosh. Can't overstate the importance of reading this book. If I were to go through even a page's worth of shit Valenti went through....I don't even know what I'd do. And the worst part is that *most* women do go through this shit. Literally the definition of I can't even.

Brook

A sad but good memoir about being a straight cis woman in a world of misogyny. I dunno. It was sad, and well-written, and sometimes funny. I'm sad for straight people now, but mostly sad for women in general- we get shit on so much by men, and it blows.

Nikki Cannon

Samantha Plakun

Sophia Sadoughi

Megan Parrott

Kaelan Chambers

hileahrious

Allie Reynolds

Brittany Hartway

Monique Baham

Amy Thibodeau

Jacqui Siroia

Laura

New York Times Bestseller “Sharp and prescient… The appeal of Valenti’s memoir lies in her ability to trace objectification through her own life, and to trace what was for a long time her own obliviousness to it…Sex Object is an antidote to the fun and flirty feminism of selfies and self-help.” – New Republic Hailed by the Washington Post as “one of the most visible and successful feminists of her generation,” Jessica Valenti has been leading the national conversation on gender and politics for over a decade. Now, in a memoir thatPublishers Weekly calls “bold and unflinching,” Valenti explores the toll that sexism takes on women’s lives, from the everyday to the existential. From subway gropings and imposter syndrome to sexual awakenings and motherhood, Sex Object reveals the painful, embarrassing, and sometimes illegal moments that shaped Valenti’s adolescence and young adulthood in New York City. In the tradition of writers like Joan Didion and Mary Karr, Sex Object is a profoundly moving tour de force that is bound to shock those already familiar with Valenti’s work, and enthrall those who are just finding it.

Mallory Foutch &
Sex Object by Jessica Valenti

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