Jessica Valenti is one of the most successful and visible feminists of her generation. As a columnist for the Guardian, her face regularly appears on the site’s front page. She has written five books, one of which was adapted into a documentary, since founding the blog Feministing.com. She gives speeches all over the country. And she tells me that, because of the nonstop harassment that feminist writers face online, if she could start over, she might prefer to be completely anonymous. “I don’t know that I would do it under my real name,” she says she tells young women who are interested in writing about feminism. It’s “not just the physical safety concerns but the emotional ramifications” of constant, round-the-clock abuse.
This is a strange, contradictory moment for feminism. On one hand, there’s never been so much demand for feminist voices. Pop stars such as BeyoncÉ and Taylor Swift proudly don the feminist mantle, cheered on by online fans. After years when it was scorned by the mainstream press, the movement is an editorial obsession: Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In,” Lena Dunham’s “Not That Kind of Girl,” Roxane Gay’s “Bad Feminist” and Amy Poehler’s “Yes Please” occupy, and sometimes top, bestseller lists. “Stories about race and gender bias draw huge audiences, making identity politics a reliable profit center in a media industry beset by insecurity,” Jonathan Chait recently wrote in New York magazine — a proposition that would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
[For more of this story, written by Michelle Goldberg, go to http://www.washingtonpost.com/...8a01a6692_story.html]
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