I’m a feminist, but … I went to university in 1997 and in those days Girl Power was all we had. Ladette culture meant that the shorthand for gender equality was matching a man, pint for pint, until you’d drunk him under the table. I had recently fled a patriarchal religious group where I was looked at with suspicion as some kind of feminist troublemaker, so I was bursting with energy to join a movement. I’m sure feminists were active then but I couldn’t find them.
The constant conversations about social change young people have now were certainly not happening. I remember students saying that gender studies were boring because we were already on a level playing field. If anything, too level! I was in the final intake where university was free and I thought it was important to speak out against uni fees, having heard someone heartlessly joke in the Oxford Union: “Pull the ladder up, Jack.” I was one of six who turned up to the official protest with a cardboard sign. My aspirations of being part of a movement for social change withered on the vine.
