The books sound interesting (though I do wish we could have a moratorium on the use of the word ‘sassy’ in connection with… well, anything, really). I don’t know whether ‘old-fashioned notions of purity’ WRT women’s sexuality are as prevalent here as they are in the US, but they’re certainly damaging wherever they occur.

Re. your analysis of the Brand/Baillie incident: I agree that there were sections of the press whose outrage was based on the assumption that there could be nothing more mortifying for a grandfather than to find out that his adult grandaughter is having consensual sex. However, I think other aspects of people’s outrage (specifically, the unilateral rupturing of Baillie’s privacy, and the DJs’ abuse of their considerable cultural positions) were both justified and, indeed, informed by feminism.

The word “sassy” made me cringe too.

Otherwise, I like the idea of critically intervening in the gift book market, and think it would be good to have more reviews here.

I was also mystified by the lack of sympathy received by the Satanic Slut. She could not possibly have expected that having a sexual relationship with a public figure whose comedy act consists entirely of autobiographical material about his sexual exploits could possibly have thrown her ‘private’ life into the public domain.

#3 – That’s not a million miles away from the “she should’ve expected to get raped if she walked home alone in a rough area” line of reasoning.

Besides, even if she had done a cost-benefit analysis before sleeping with Brand and decided in a deliberate and considered fashion that the opportunity to sleep with an annoying and possibly disease-ridden tv personality outweighed the chance the encounter would become public, that doesn’t mean the sexist response of many, many commentators was justified or should go unchallenged.

Actually, it IS a million miles away from saying a rape victim ‘asked for it’. There’s absolutely no suggestion from anyone that Brand forced himself on anyone, unless you know otherwise?

To suggest Baillie should not be treated as a responsible actor in this is to infantilise her (just as all those who persists in describing her as a ‘grandaughter’, which suggests ‘youth’); and your comment about Brand being ‘possibly disease-ridden’ suggests a puritanical attitude to sex that Vallenti is addressing in the second book.

No, Tim F is right.

The End

<3 Valenti.

The future of feminism. Her & Penny Red, that is.

Shatterface, aren’t you confusing Baillie’s consent to sex with Brand with her consent to having her sexual performance discussed on air? (The second being something that she, er, didn’t consent to.)

Tim, I like your blog. (Dagnammit, this site needs some emoticons!)

And while we dismiss those who have sex as dirty it is also impossible to objectively tackle the abuse of women in the sex industry.

That depends on whether you regard such women as employess with rights, or as victims by the very nature of the work they do. One leads to intervention only when abuse occurs (or seeks to prevent abuse while allowing employees to continue working), the other assumes the work is a form of abuse in itself, regardless of what employees say themslves.

Valenti’s books sound interesting, but I worry that they will make the same mistake so many post-second wave feminist books on sexual behaviour end up doing: treating sexual practices and behaviour merely as a subset of feminist politics, rather than looking at how sexual poilitics gives us a more nuanced understanding of sexual conduct. In other words: in a culture that privileges monogamy, non-monogamy is subject to disapproval – it’s only then that the differences between male and female non-monogamy become an issue. (In short: neither monogamy nor non-monogamy can be claimed as feminist strategies for dealing with the double standard or with making men ‘behave themselves’)

(8): No, I’m stating that having a sexual encounter you later regret is not the same as being raped, and knowing that Brand’s previous sexual ‘conquests’ have formed part of his act should have tipped Braille off.

I agree that the press have a double standard where male and female promiscuity is concerned but her whiney, poor me, sack this beast immediately schtick might have elicited some sympathy if she didn’t make her own promiscuity an essential part of HER act too. This was a case of two adults consenting to sex and then trying to exploit that for their own purposes: Brand for a joke, Braille for victimhood.

No, Tim F is right.

The End

Indeed,

Shatterface, you may bend your reasoning into amazing pretzels, while you remain – blaming the victim. Surely it doesn’t need explaining —–again?

“No, Tim F is right.

The End”

I can barely think of a comment more holistically masculinist in its construction than that one. Its brilliant.

What the HELL is this? Am I to expect that in three months time the comment section will decide to start discussing Damian McBride? OR perhaps we’ll kick it a bit more old school and start discussing Cherie Blair’s choice in advisor….

The book sounds very muddled by this account. Maybe it makes sense on the other side of the Atlantic, but I don’t recognise this cutlure of disgust towards sexual women. Certainly, the Brand/Ross debacle was nothing to do with the fact that Baillie had had sex but all to do with the the invasion of her and her grandfather’s privacy. Baillie’s reputation was not sullied y the incident, Brands and Ross’s was. Brand was forced to give up a lucrative job and was hounded by the media, not because he had sex with her, but because he had no right to sneer about it in public (and to his credit, he admitted it was pretty low rent). That is all perfectly compatible with the sort of feminism that I recognise. It looks to me that Valenti is needing to construct phoney examples because she can’t find too many in the real world. I completely agree that religious chasity movements are often deeply sinister, but she wants to make a broader case than just that religion is (often) mysogynistic.

@7 – thank you darling! mwah. x