Feminist Fatigue

by Laura Thomas

As a woman in her early twenties, I have the common sense of a toddler and the get-up-and-go of a teenage boy. However, I do wish I were politically active; I dream of quoting philosophers instead of The Simpsons and I long to coherently express rage at social injustices instead of stuffing my gob with food.

To the detriment of my social life, I spent my free time at university starting an insightful journey into feminist theory. I was excited about approaching the rest of my life as a braver person with a renewed social awareness. Then I contracted a serious case of feminist fatigue, otherwise known as lazy bitch syndrome. I have a thirst for knowledge that is limited only by my being an impatient reader.

Now here I am, beyond the valley of student existence; as the theory I read slowly filters into practical use, the books are gathering dust and I’m escaping the bleak reality they describe with trashy TV. I find myself taking the long route home from work and making an extra effort to be sociable, in the most part as a distraction from the crushing reality that I live in my childhood home with my mother and her cat.

My laziness isn’t restricted to reading about feminism, just to ram the point home it has taken over two months for me to write this article. Yes, you read correctly; it took two months for me to write about writing in a claustrophobically self-obsessed style. At the end of this paragraph I was considering sarcastically warning a successful author to watch their back, but I genuinely can’t think of any names without Wikipedia or a hunt round the garage where all of my books have gone to die.