Victoria Smith explains why we have to resist this crap.

At risk of promoting another outburst, I’d suggest that Bridges doesn’t deserve to be on Vogue’s list, either. Much as I’m aware this will lead to charges of being “exclusionary” — indeed, trolling feminists was likely part of the point — I don’t think that we should let these things pass. If it matters that women have power, and that exceptional women are recognised, then it also matters to recognise how and why we need lists like this.

I’ve been thinking “trolling feminists was likely part of the point” myself. First I was thinking “Why do they keep doing this shit???” – “they” being all the news outlets and political groupings and NGOs and so on – and then I was realizing the only possible reason is because they want to piss us off. They want to rub feminists’ noses in the fact that we can’t have feminism any more because men have found the perfect way to sabotage everything we’ve ever done. “Hahaha sucks to be you, doesn’t it, bitches.”

Female power lists — like women-only shortlists, or female-only literary prizes — exist as a response to exclusion. Their original purpose was not to offer a Barbie-pink, No Boys Allowed, pyjama-party version of male power, on the basis that women — being girly and feminine — find the latter boring. When women object to the presence of male people on lists that were created as a corrective to female marginalisation, we are not being spoilt mean girls, whining about the presence of someone who’s a little bit different. We are rejecting the expectation that women rely on the benevolence of male people to have anything of our own. 

And they are telling us over and over and over that we don’t get to reject that expectation. Not any more, bitches.

The inclusion of Bridges on a woman’s power list doesn’t just mean the exclusion of someone who deserves to be there. It changes the nature of what the list means, undermining the very justification for its existence.   

I am not sure Vogue particularly cares about this. I do, though. Ironically, the presence of a male person on a women’s power list — in a world where women still have so little power in relation to men – demonstrates the need for women’s power lists. Just not those in Vogue.

Or a long list of other publications and NGOs and so on.