I certainly think writing the book was courageous. Maybe Valenti was excising maybe the idea is to shock people who DON'T know the world is like this maybe I'm being too unappreciative or too judgey. That makes for powerful reading if you're looking for a catalog of the things women experience daily, but it's not revelatory and I'm not sure of the point if the intended audience is already an educated and aware one. It's episodic, and all the episodes are the same thing. It reads like an ongoing series of articles that aren't coherent, and aren't driving toward a point there's not a through-line or thesis. (Closing with the litany of horrifying comments she's gotten, so you leave the book having just read them, was especially immersive and familiar.)Įventually, I realized that was my problem with the book: I don't think it's very good as a book. In fact, about half way through, I got frustrated and asked a friend why I was reading the book when the experience of reading it in many ways mirrors walking down a city street. Large parts of the book made me feel like I needed a shower, or like I'd walked out my front door: it's not so much that she's revealing uncommon experiences as that one of the points of the book is how these experiences accumulate for women and on women's bodies, and are NOT uncommon. I've had a hard time parsing what I think about this book, because Valenti says so many important things that need to be said I've wanted to support its project, and I've wanted to make sure my ultimate ambivalence to it isn't some kind of backwards blaming of her or it for her reporting of the revolting things done and said to her.
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