Jessica Valenti

In 2020, Valenti was the co-editor of the anthology Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World with Jaclyn Friedman.

In 2016, Valenti published Sex Object: A Memoir with the Dey Street imprint of Morrow. The book was a memoir, a departure from Valenti's prior books.

Also in 2016, one of the Podesta emails mentions, alongside Valenti's name, a column she was writing for The Guardian.

In July 2016, Valenti announced she was taking a break from social media, after receiving rape and death threats aimed at her then five-year-old daughter. On Twitter, Valenti denounced the harassment as unacceptable. Immediately after that, Valenti made her Instagram account private.

University of Wisconsin–Madison law professor Ann Althouse criticized Feministing in 2006 for its sometimes sexualized content. Erin Matson of the National Organization for Women's Young Feminist Task Force told The Huffington Post the controversy was "a rehashing of a very old debate within the feminist community: is public sexuality empowering or harmful to women?"

In 2012, Valenti published Why Have Kids? A New Mom Explores the Truth About Parenting and Happiness.

Valenti left the site in February 2011, saying she wanted it to remain a place for younger feminists.

In 2009, Valenti published (via Seal Press) The Purity Myth: How America's Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, about the way ideals about women's sexuality are being used to weaken women's rights. A documentary film based on the book, called The Purity Myth, was released in 2011 by the Media Education Foundation.

In 2009, Valenti married Andrew Golis, former deputy publisher of Talking Points Memo, former general manager of Vox Media, and currently the Chief Content Officer for WNYC.

After graduating from college, Valenti worked for the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund and for the Women's Environment & Development Organization. She wrote a blog for NARAL Pro-Choice America and also taught at Rutgers University from 2008 to 2010.

In 2008, Valenti published He's a Stud, She's a Slut and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know.

In 2008, Valenti was the co-editor of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape with Jaclyn Friedman. The anthology featured a foreword by comedian Margaret Cho.

Her work has appeared in Ms., The Washington Post, AlterNet, as well as other publications. Valenti wrote for The Nation from 2008 to 2014. Since 2014, Valenti has written regularly for The Guardian, where she is a columnist.

In 2007, Valenti wrote Full Frontal Feminism, where she discusses the ways in which readers can benefit from being feminists.

Valenti's writing has appeared in Diane Mapes' Single State of the Union: Single Women Speak Out on Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness (2007), Melody Berger's We Don't Need Another Wave: Dispatches from the Next Generation of Feminists (2008), and Courtney E. Martin and J. Courtney Sullivan's book, Click: When We Knew We Were Feminists (2010).

Valenti has been the target of online threats and harassment throughout her career. In a 2006 blog article by Liz Funks at HuffPost, Funks wrote about online attacks made about Valenti after a group photo that included Valenti at a luncheon with former President Bill Clinton went viral, focusing on her outfit.

In April 2004, Valenti co-founded Feministing with her sister and a friend while she was working at the National Organization for Women's legal defense fund (now Legal Momentum). Homa Khaleeli writes in The Guardian's top 100 women that the site shifted the feminist movement online, triggering the creation of blogs and discussion groups, creating a heyday for feminism just as its death was being announced, as Khaleeli puts it. She writes that Valenti "felt the full force of being a pioneer," her involvement with the site attracting online abuse, even threats of rape and death.

Valenti was raised in Long Island City, Queens, in an Italian-American family. She graduated from Stuyvesant High School in New York City in 1996 and attended Tulane University in New Orleans for a year, and then transferred to the State University of New York at Albany, graduating in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in journalism. In 2002, Valenti received a master's degree in Women's and Gender Studies with a concentration in politics from Rutgers University.

Jessica Valenti (/v ə ˈ l ɛ n t i / ; born November 1, 1978) is an American feminist writer. She was the co-founder of the blog, Feministing, which she wrote for from 2004 to 2011. Valenti is the author of five books: Full Frontal Feminism (2007), He's a Stud, She's a Slut (2008), The Purity Myth (2009), Why Have Kids? (2012), and Sex Object: A Memoir (2016). She also co-edited the books Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (2008), and Believe Me: How Trusting Women Can Change the World (2020). Between 2014 and 2018, Valenti was a columnist for The Guardian. She is currently a columnist for Medium.