Virginie Despentes (1969-)

Who is she?

Virginie Despentes is a French feminist writer. Before being writer she was a prostitute, clerk in a music shop and critic of pornography films. She also wrote and directed, along with Coraline Trinh Thi, a film about her book Baisez-moi. She left home and became a squatter (she became immersed in the punk culture) and was raped when she was doing hitchhiking. Her characters suffer lots of miseries and injustices, toxicomania and violence, as rapings or terrorism. She is widely known because of her feminist essay King Kong theory, where she talks about the French sex industry and the fame and infamy that she suffered when she wrote Baisez-moi. Her language is tough, she didn’t mess around elaborating or decorating very much the sentences, she uses a colloquial language not fearing the use of words that some people might consider vulgar.

What has she written?

·         Baisez-moi (1993)

·         Les chiennes savantes (1997)

·         Les jolies choses (2008)

·         Teen spirits (2002)

·         Bye bye blondie (2004)

·         King kong theory (2006)

·         Apocalypse bébé (2010)

·         Vernon subutex #1 (2015)

·         Vernon subutex #2 (2015)

·         Vernon subutex #3 (2017)

·         Pretty Things (2018)

What has she said?

‘Consuming pornography does not lead to more sex, it leads to more porn. Much like eating McDonalds everyday will accustom you to food that (although enjoyable) is essentially not food, pornography conditions the consumer to being satisfied with an impression of extreme sex rather than the real.’

Why should we not forget her and her work?

Her King Kong Theory is a must-read for every feminist reading.Not only the themes that she discusses are interesting, but also her writing style. It seems that she is another one of the poète maudits of the 19^th century, or just another component of the beat generation. She talks about sex, drugs, rapings, making her message reach us pure and straight. Fearlessly.