A Feminist Gets It Wrong

Feminist Jessica Valenti complains (here) that now that she is older, she isn’t getting any catcalls from men anymore as she walks down the street. She says that this bothers her a little. Why?

But when you’re brought up to feel that the most important thing you can be is attractive to men, the absence of their attention – even negative attention – can feel distressing.

Why should this feeling of distress be the result of being brought up in that way? Can’t there be another reason? We are social creatures, after all, and being invisible is generally not something we desire.

There, Jessica, I fixed it for you. You don’t have to worry about how your feelings conflict with feminism or that patriarchy’s reach is more powerful than you expected. And let me add that there are plenty of us who have felt invisible for most of our lives (so count yourself lucky that you had some good years). There is even a book about it by a black man, Ralph Ellison. Do you think his feelings were somehow caused by patriarchy?