257 of 323 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Feminist Review blog on FFF, April 27, 2007
This review is from: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (Paperback)
Jessica Valenti is a part of the feminist blogger elite, and for good reason. The blog that she was part of establishing, Feministing.com, gets a lot of traffic and is well-known among internet savvy, young, hip feminists. Full disclosure: I read Feministing on a somewhat regular basis. Having read Valenti's writing on the blog - which tends to be oversimplified and, quite frankly, bratty - I was hoping her analysis in book form would show at least a tad more depth. Unfortunately for Valenti, there's a downside to fame; it opens you up for public criticism.
If Full Frontal Feminism is supposed to be the spark that ignites young women to identify as feminists and hop on the movement train, then women are in deep trouble. Valenti writes like a feminist version of Ann Coulter, and let's face it, Ann Coulter is hardly known for her intelligence. Flamboyant and egotistical, much of Valenti's commentary is trite, at best. She makes sweeping generalizations ("When you're a feminist, day to day life is better. You make better decisions. You have better sex."), repeatedly calls her opponents juvenile names [...], confuses "truth" with "opinion," and has apparently done very little actual research to prove her claims, as there is little to no citation of her assertions. At times, she doesn't feel the need to make an assertion at all, responding to the opposition with a facile yet grandiose "Puke," a deliberately ironic "Yeah" or a pithy and useless "Terrifying", as though she has made her case. And despite hackneyed attempts every now and again to mention other marginalized groups, the truth is that this book overwhelmingly reflects the viewpoint of its white, middle class, (primarily, if not entirely) heterosexual, entitled, American, liberal feminist writer.
Valenti doesn't give her readers credit that they can do the thing she most wants them to do: think, analyze, and be critical. This is apparent in the fallacious style by which she presents her perspectives. My personal favorite - taken straight from the right wing, talk radio instruction manual - is when Valenti uses the "straw man," a common misleading bait-and-switch tactic, to "prove" her point (e.g., contending that anti-abortion advocates simply hate sex). A close second is when she uses the most extreme cases as though they weren't the exception to the rule (e.g., making the case for all women to have access to Emergency Contraception because rape victims should have access to it).
Perhaps Valenti believes that young women won't be moved unless they're completely scared to death. Fear is a powerful motivator, but it belittles the audience in the process. Oh, and did I mention that she uses the book as a forum to talk public trash about petty tiffs she's had with other bloggers? If fear doesn't sell you on feminism, apparently Valenti believes taking her side in some inane, personal dispute will.
Full Frontal Feminism is written in sound bytes, each chapter being comprised of smaller (usually) page-long explanations of a given issue: sex education vs. abstinence only, virginity pledges, expensive weddings, unattainable beauty standards, and other typical feminist fare. Apparently, the television has taken its toll (or so Valenti thinks) on the public because there is no sense of organization or logic to the structure of the book. And solutions? Those must have been left for someone else to tackle because you won't find them here, at least not outside of the standard volunteer, give money, and vote.
Now I know I've pretty much run this book into the ground, but I do want to say that I get what Valenti is trying to do here. And it's a really smart idea. She wants to reach out to young women who don't yet identify as feminists and let them know that it's okay, cool even, to be down with the F-word. She wants to tell them that they already believe in feminist ideals and have benefited from the women's movement. She wants to encourage them to continue in that tradition and kick some misogynist ass. That's a really honorable goal that, unfortunately, was a victim of poor execution.
If you're truly looking to find out why feminism matters, you'd be better served to flip to the booklist in the back of Full Frontal Feminism and read some of the titles listed there - including Colonize This!, Listen Up: Voices from the Next Generation, To Be Real, and The Fire This Time - because cool packaging is really great, but if there's nothing of substance inside then what you are selling is just the packaging.
Written by Mandy Van Deven
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41 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Wow, what a disappointment., July 14, 2009
This review is from: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (Paperback)
So... I kinda hate this book. I am young, feminist, type and thought I'd give this book a shot for an easy read but I cannot finish it. The jist of it is the author stating a perceived slight to women and then saying, "wow, that is really sucky right? stupid anti-sex white men telling us what to do." There is no analysis, no measured reasoning. She also has a propensity for using the lazy technique of only stating the most extreme opposing viewpoint.
I actually agree with most of the tenets of this book but the way that the author presents them infuriated me. The book is supposed to be a primer for young women who would like to learn more about feminism but as a young woman, I was offended that Valenti didn't seem to think I was bright enough to read rationale behind the ideas and would blindly follow her. Big thumbs down.
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12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
An Example of How Not To Get People To Agree With You, January 2, 2010
This review is from: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman's Guide to Why Feminism Matters (Paperback)
While Valenti does provide good information in this book. I feel at times she does cross the border into being discriminatory towards certain people. For example, she refers to the Quiverfull religious movement as "wacky." I am a young feminist. However, I do not feel that calling a religion "wacky" is going to earn you any points. That's offensive. Whether you agree with it or not, that is their religion and people do have a choice to have one, which one to have, or to not be religious at all. I truly feel that if you want people to be more open-minded, then, you have to be open-minded as well. I also agree with another reviewer who said that she confuses truth with opinion more than once in this book. She does have a tendency to be rather immature regarding people who disagree with her.
I also agree with the reviewer when they said, "Valenti doesn't give her readers credit that they can do the thing she most wants them to do: think, analyze, and be critical. This is apparent in the fallacious style by which she presents her perspectives. My personal favorite - taken straight from the right wing, talk radio instruction manual - is when Valenti uses the "straw man," a common misleading bait-and-switch tactic, to "prove" her point (e.g., contending that anti-abortion advocates simply hate sex)." I couldn't have said that better. That is exactly how I feel. Now, I am pro-choice. I do not entirely agree with abortion, but I do believe that every woman should be able to make that choice for themselves. Do I hate sex? Hell no. Do my opinions on abortion make me against same-sex marriages (which she also implies you will be against if you don't agree with abortion)? Again, a resounding, hell no.
She makes a lot of unfair generalizations towards people she doesn't agree with, and I'm not okay with that. She is of the opinion that women don't actually want to stay at home and take care of their children, but instead a stay-at-home mom has just been filled with all of these ideas that men are more superior and should be the breadwinners. Sorry Stay-at-home Moms! She fails to realize that some women do actually want to be at home with their children, and not because their significant others or society makes them feel this way. And there ARE stay-at-home dads, as well, even though she fails to mention that and says something along the lines of, "If staying at home with the kids is so great, why aren't men doing it?" Again, just because it's something she doesn't agree with, it's crazy.
I'm not going to say don't read this book. I think that you should read it and form your own opinion on it, but I will say that it made me angrier as I read it. She does make a few valid points ... in an immature, filled-with-generalizations way.
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