Sex Object: I know I'm meant to be the bigger person

Sex Object is a memoir of resignation. Valenti writes about her life and mostly her experience being treated as a sex object before being treated as a person. It's an experience many women face and she focuses on how this sort of behavior can wear a person down. Some women who write online face an onslaught of constant abuse and are often expected to respond with sarcasm and humor.

Pretending these offenses roll off of our backs is strategic--don't give them the fucking satisfaction--but it isn't the truth. You lose something along the way.

This is not the most uplifting story. There's no silver lining and no real redemption. She starts with cat-calling and guys pressing up against her on the subway, going through her own sexual experiences, and eventually having a daughter and worried about her navigating this world. How your identity gets caught up in this treatment as a sex object.

A high school teacher once told me that identity is half what we tell ourselves and half what we tell other people about ourselves. Bu the missing piece he didn't mention--the piece that holds so much weight, especially in the minds of young women and girls--is the stories that other people tell us about ourselves. Those narratives become the ones we shape ourselves into.

The book doesn't offer solutions how to handle or respond to this kind of treatment. It's why it's a memoir instead of a self-help book. It's instead and opportunity to just acknowledge what happened, how it is tiring and how a funny quip isn't always the answer.

I know I'm meant to be the bigger person; I know you're not supposed to hate people because hate is bad for your soul. But so is getting called a cunt every day for ten years. 

It's hard to get excited over this book. It's good, and I'm glad I read it, but it's not a happy read.

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Title quote from page 141

Valenti, Jessica. Sex Object: A Memoir. Harper Collins, 2016.