Sex Object: a book that reminds you that you never stop being just that

Remember when someone in school pointed out that your nose was all wrong. And how you stood in front of the mirror every day to count its length in fingers.

And for months after, that was all you could see in your reflection.

Remember when you finally found a "boyfriend" and the cool thing to do would be to give him a handjob.

And maybe even have sex. Maybe take it somewhere else. You weren't a prude. You were cool. And so you did.

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Remember the time the cool girl became the slut.

Cool girl. Slut. Cool. Slut. Cool. Slut.

Remember being torn between both identities. Keeping a ledger in your head of the number of men you'd been with. Do you remember if the tally qualified you as a cool girl or a slut?

Remember the time you went to a gynaecologist for help, and she had an opinion on the way you used your body. It made you feel something that resembled shame.

Remember waking up not knowing what happened? Did you express consent? You're not sure. Was it rape? Let's just hope it wasn't.

Remember the convenient benefit of doubt response popping its head out once again.

Remember the time your Math tutor flitted away mosquitoes from your t-shirt. Remember when another teacher asked you for a hug. Or for you to sit on his lap. And remember not wondering if he has your male peers do the same.

Remember when a colleague chased you around a bar telling you how attractive you are and insisting it was a compliment. Remember it not feeling like one.

Remember becoming pregnant and having strangers touch your stomach because, once again, your body had ceased to be your own.

Remember having doctors place their hands inside your body. And nurses massaging your breasts for the milk to emerge.

Remember reading mean things about yourself online. And repeating to yourself, like a mantra, "They're sad and lonely and there's no truth in their words." But feeling miserable anyway.

Remember looking up the word "frotteurism", and learning that it meant the "practice of achieving sexual stimulation or orgasm by touching and rubbing against a person without the person's consent and usually in a public place". And also learning that you'd met many frotteurs long before you knew there was a word for it?

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Remember noticing a shadow under the streetlights and digging out your phone and talking really loudly.

Remember getting into a cab and knowing that the driver could take you anywhere and do anything to you. But always hoping for the best.

Remember the checklist you always carry in your mind - the things you have "the figure" for, and the things you don't.

Every Woman's Autobiography

The clinching sentence of Jessica Valenti's Sex Object is in her dedication. It reads:

If the world is not a different one for you,

I hope you both will change it.

No pressure."

There isn't a chapter or a note that you will struggle to relate to. In fact, the most compelling power of Sex Object is that it is a book any woman could have written.

With minor variations, the experiences she documents are universal. You'll recognise yourself in most pages. A stronger/weaker/lesser/better version of yourself. And it will make you rethink and question your life experiences.

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Why did you spend a greater part of your life giving that frotteur, that teacher, that partner and that colleague the benefit of doubt? Because that was the easier route?

Has pleasing a man become a habit from your teenage years? Have you become "an expert in feigning whatever it was that they wanted to see?"

What would the world have looked like had sexual violation not been a question of when and how bad?

These are difficult questions. And they demand the deepest introspection.

Often, Valenti will raise the questions and then raise her hands in despair. With over a decade of feminist writing under her belt (Valenti founded Feministing in 2004) she hasn't figured it out yet.