Thank you so much! It’s a generation, thing! That explains a lot.

I grew up in the most liberal town of a fairly liberal country, where our local heroes included the female founder of a global business empire.

I grew up under Thatcher (a female head of state) in the era of icons like Siouxsie Sioux, the Slits and Sonic Youth. My movie heroines were Ellen Ripley and Sarah Connor, though I mostly wanted to be Helen Hunt’s punky rebel from Girls Just Want To Have Fun.

My adolescence was soundtracked by Hole, Babes In Toyland and Silverfish. At sixth form, they asked me to find myself a work experience placement. I called up a PR company (headed by a woman) and then went straight into full time work for a female boss. A few years later, I joined a diverse engineering team at a global tech giant.

At no point in my life was there any suggestion that I couldn’t do exactly what I wanted to do — or, most crucially, any suggestion that my body didn’t belong to me and that I couldn’t decide what to do with it.

But, when the Spice Girls came out, I hated them.

Girl Power.

Decades of progression revoked in two words and five crudely stereotyped cheerleaders who commodified female aspiration and sold it as sexual subservience.

Going back in time won’t help anyone, so we need to find a route forward. One where relationships are based on genuine mutual respect and pleasure is joyfully given rather than thoughtlessly taken. One where equality for all is an assumed condition of humanity rather than a crude “woke” marketing gimmick.

We were almost there once. We can get there again.