Alisa Valdes Was Abused at the Hands of The Man She Swoons Over in The Feminist and The Cowboy
Latest
Just last week, Alisa Valdes’ memoir The Feminist and the Cowboy hit bookshelves (and three weeks ago we addressed the anti-feminist nature of the book, a sad departure for Valdes author of The Dirty Girls’ Social Club). Today, Valdes has basically disavowed the thesis statement of the entire memoir in a blog post that has since been removed—at her agent’s behest, she told Salon in an email—confessing that “cowboy” Steve was actually a verbally and physically abusive shitbag and she feels really terrible about the whole thing. They’ve split, thank God.
“[W]hile I set out to write a memoir that was a love letter to a man I was deeply in love with, a man who challenged me in myriad ways, a man who changed my life profoundly, a man I respected and honored greatly at the time, what I actually wrote was a handbook for women on how to fall in love with a manipulative, controlling, abusive narcissist.”
She explicitly made clear that the sinister undertones of the chick-littish memoir, about the “liberation” he gave Valdes from her stifling feminist values and her total submission to him, are worse than anyone possibly could have imagined. During one fight, she said, he “simply dragged me down the hall to the bedroom, bent me over, and took me, telling me as he did so that I must never forget who was in charge.” In the book, episodes like this are glossed over and touted as totally hot submissive sex, but it’s clear now that Alisa knew it was a violation.