A group of students from Leaders in Interpersonal Violence Education (LIVE) and a Title Mine representative sat down in a conversation with author Jessica Valenti Tuesday before Valenti spoke in Graham Chapel that evening.

Valenti and her sister Vanessa founded the blog “Feministing” in 2004, which launched her to national acclaim as a feminist writer and authority. Her latest book, “Sex Object: A Memoir,” was a New York Times Bestseller. Currently, Valenti is a columnist on “Medium.”

In her career as a writer, Valenti has been a journalist, columnist, blogger and author. The conversation was immediately shaped by the topic of her latest project, which “focuses on the seven or eight core motivations that motivate misogynists” in “modern misogyny.”

“We have been building to this very cool feminist moment where more and more people understand what feminism is,” Valenti said.

In this book, preemptively titled “The Misogynists,” she hopes to construct a conversation around how we reach out to boys and talk to young men about feminism, “because, [while] there is a baseline understanding of feminism,” she wants us to find and create cultural spaces to include them within this sphere.

“If we are not building explicitly feminist communities that draw in young me—and not to say that feminism isn’t for young men, because it is—we just haven’t figured out how to create cultural spaces for them that they know where to go to,” Valenti said. “One of the great things feminism did for women, and young women in particular, was give women an alternative to the mainstream culture.”

Further, she noted the differences between this support for women and men.

“There are all these different communities for feminists, female feminists mostly,” Valenti said. “There is no similar culture for young men and boys who are looking for the alternative to mainstream idea of what boys and men are supposed to be.”

After the discussion surrounding her upcoming book, Valenti weighed in on the Washington University campus climate, specifically the 2018 Title Mine Rally. She was thoroughly impressed by the University response, considering the typical lack of response from other universities that she is used to hearing about.

She listened to students’ questions revolving around campus activism and how to get people involved, specifically those who might not see the purpose or understand why they should take action and make the choice to not be complicit in misogynistic behavior.

“We are in this bubble in feminist journalism,” Valenti said. “And we take for granted that a lot of these people know these terms and know what these things mean.”

She implored us to make a connection, because if people understand the fundamentals, then they can be reached, even if they don’t identify or label themselves as feminists.