As a lifetime member of the tribe of “girly swots”, I naturally took an interest in Boris Johnson’s use of the jibe (in a cabinet paper, with reference to David Cameron) when it hit the headlines recently. Which element, I wondered, as girly swots will, was the greater insult? To be feminine (or effeminate) or a hard worker? Weak or an intellectual? Can you be the latter without being the former? Are we, in fact, in tautological realms? No – because to be a girly swot is different from (and worse than) being a plain swot. What has become clear to me is that, whatever the whys and wherefores of the phrase, the girly swots themselves – albeit of a slightly more proactive type than me – are coalescing into a force to be reckoned with.
The lineup looks like a Marvel comic strip waiting to happen. It would surely be led by Spider-Woman – Lady Brenda Hale. By day, a mild-mannered baroness. Also by day, the first female head of the supreme court and deliverer, when needed, of hammer blows to overreaching governments, prime ministers and their not-quite-as-machiavellian-as-they-thought advisers via unanimous verdicts that declare their attempts to hijack the national rule of law “unlawful, void and of no effect”. Flanking her are Joanna Cherry, the Scottish National party MP who brought the case in Scotland in favour of which Hale and co ruled, and Gina Miller, businesswoman (I like this as her superhero name, if we can’t fit Big Fan of Parliamentary Democracy on her cape) and campaigner who has now won two national-annals-worthy cases against the government. Then there is Greta Thunberg, who is speaking truth to an increasingly resentful power about the desperate state of the planet and confronting the need for radical overhauls of everything humanity has done, and is doing, to it. And, finally, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who is taking care of all other business, creative anarchy a speciality. Chosen weapons – books, intelligence, wit and memetastic brooches.
Perhaps the time of the girly swots is finally here for much the same reason as the world of culture is opening up to a greater degree for women. Just as the latter’s systems have become unsustainable in the wake of the Cosby, Weinstein and assorted other now-public scandals, so, too, are other areas falling as egomaniacal men push past even the very generous limits they have traditionally set themselves in the way of tolerable corruption, incompetence, self-indulgence and greed.
And, you know, girly swotitude will bear a range of meanings. It can be a broad church that shelters anyone – old, young, male, female and all points in between – who prefers to think before acting. Who doesn’t feel it is beneath them to consider a range of options or consult others they feel would know better about a particular subject or useful insights into a knotty problem. Who tends towards introversion rather than extroversion and lives quite happily without a overweening need to be noticed and who would prefer to leave things that aren’t broken unfixed. We’ve tried it the other way, and frankly it has not gone well. Girly swot team – assemble.
• Lucy Mangan is a Guardian writer
