Are We Living in a Feminist Dystopia?
The Sam Sanders Show
KCRW & Sam Sanders
4.9 • 709 Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2025
⏱️ 48 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, writer Anne Helen Petersen unpacks the idea of Feminist Exhaustion — a term she coined to describe the burnout, backlash, and disillusionment many women feel toward the hollow promises of modern feminism. Sam and Anne explore how pop culture shaped (and warped) our ideas of empowerment through shows like Scandal, Girls and basically every recent Nicole Kidman project. Plus, they dive into the evolution from girlboss to tradwife, and ask how future generations can redefine what feminism means.
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The Sam Sanders Show is a production of KCRW and Sam Sanders Productions.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, listeners, it is the season of giving. |
| 0:03.0 | Get that warm, fuzzy feeling. |
| 0:05.1 | Make a donation, pick out some cozy KCRW merch, or send meals to local food banks. |
| 0:11.1 | Donate now at kCRW.com slash give. |
| 0:20.3 | Hey, y'all, it's the Sam Sanders show from KCRW. |
| 0:24.0 | This week, a chat with one of my favorite thinkers, Anne Helen Peterson. |
| 0:29.9 | She writes a newsletter on Substack called Culture Study. |
| 0:33.9 | In this newsletter, Anne Helen recently wrote this detailed, brilliant explainer, breaking down this idea I'd never heard of before. |
| 0:42.1 | Feminist exhaustion. |
| 0:43.8 | There's so many shows that, like, to me, they are actually feminist dystopias. |
| 0:49.1 | They are people living out these lives that are ostensibly feminist. |
| 0:54.0 | Like, I have it all. I'm successful. |
| 0:56.4 | I am juggling marriage and career. |
| 0:58.7 | And everything sucks. |
| 1:00.9 | For Anne Helen, feminist exhaustion means two things. |
| 1:04.3 | One, the term feminism has been so overused that it's lost its meaning. |
| 1:09.8 | And two, a lot of women who fought for a very long |
| 1:13.0 | time for feminist ideals, they are increasingly delusioned because it feels like on the whole |
| 1:19.2 | they're losing ground. Feminist exhaustion is what happens when it feels like feminism has failed. |
| 1:26.9 | As soon as I read this essay, I began thinking, |
| 1:29.7 | where have we seen this in popular culture? How do you portray feminist exhaustion? And what |
| 1:36.2 | audiences even like that? So this episode, Anne and I talk about that, how feminist exhaustion |
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