Girl Power?

In response to my post 'Tory Tory Tory', some brave soul accused me of being afraid of powerful women, and ended (I hope ironically), with the phrase 'girl power'. What's wrong with women? 'Girl' is a demeaning, disempowering term used to sell poor quality records written by men and sung by women controlled in every way by a shady management team.

Feminism, on the other hand, is about celebrating the achievements of women and combatting the structural and personal attempts by entrenched interests to repress them. Thatcher is certainly not on the side of the angels: did she promote individual women in her party and government? She did not. Did she promote the interests of women as a collective? Again, she did not.

Am I frightened of powerful women? Let's have a look at the list of women I revere, shall we? You may even, Anonymous, have heard of some of them!

Aphra Behn, The Wife of Bath, Mrs. Bandanaraike, Constance Markiewicz, Bernadette Devlin, the Miners' Strike wives and female supporters, Emily Davison, Margaret Atwood, Angela Davis, Ulrike Meinhof, Hermione Granger, Barbara Castle, Rose Cohen, Jane Austen, P J Harvey, Laurie Anderson, Sally Beamish, Nicola LeFanu, Anne-Sophie Mutter, Joni Mitchell, Joan Baez, Kate Roberts, Fflur Dafydd, Hannah Arendt, Gwyneth Jones, Sarah Cracknell, Polly Toynbee, Calvin's mum, Gwen John, Tove Jansson, Kate Atkinson, Laura Cantrell, Kathryn Williams, Kate Rusby, Eliza Carthy, Molly Bloom, Dorothy Edwards, Mrs Doyle, Thursday Next, Granny Weatherwax, Lyra, Jessica Mitford, Mary Shelley, Mary Wollstonecraft, Fanny Burney, Aunt Agatha, Florence, Helen Walsh, Sarah Waters, Elizabeth Browning, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sheri S Tepper, Virginia Woolf, Kate Millett, Storm Jameson, Jan Morris, Helen Clark, Katherine Mansfield, Tiffany Aching, Millie Jackson, Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Further suggestions welcome.

Will this do?