Jessica Valenti still doesn’t get it
Jan 7th, 2008 by Rebecca
*headdesk*
Jessica Valenti of Feministing has unveiled a new, revised, call for submissions for her anthology proposal, Yes Means Yes. As with her first project, Full Frontal Feminism, some of the ideas behind the anthology are pretty problematic, and she’s been called out on it - aptly - by more than a few folks - imfallingup, Blackamazon and Firefly, among others.
I’d really hoped that Valenti had learned something from the first time this happened, but it appears that the galloping blindspots she has around her own privilege aren’t going away anytime soon. Her revised proposal (linked above), refers to “criticism”, but neither refers to any specific people, tries to engage them or show that she’s listened. She doesn’t even link directly to any of the criticism, except to a collection of blog posts collected by Ravenmn, who in comments there promptly asks her to take the link down. Her “revised” list, to boot, looks remarkably similar to the first list. Has she actually changed even any of the points which imfallingup, Blackamazon et. al. called her out on from the original proposal? I might have missed one or two, but it certainly doesn’t look like it as far as I can see.
It was Feministing that introduced me to the feminist blogosphere back in the day, but it drives me batty that Valenti still doesn’t get it when she’s called out for publishing material that is dripping in privilege, and just goes marching on to her next controversy.
As a rank outsider let me ask:
What are these gaping blindspots that still exist?
Read the links, hon. It’s a long story, and one which I suspect most people reading this would already be familiar with.
sorry, just realised I was being a dumb arse nor reading the links and edited my comment, doh.