Before we being today I think I need to make a confession. I do not have a vagina. At least not one of my own. I have played with other people’s but I’m pretty sure that’s not that same. I bring this up just so we can avoid any confusion. I also bring it up so that we’re clear on another point; since I don’t own one I have no say on what to do with them. Beyond the mutually consensual stuff. In other words, if you want me to do something with your vagina and I’m willing to do so, then we’re good. But I can’t just grab you by the arm and make you do things with your vagina that make you uncomfortable or could cause you harm. As much as I am occasionally called a misogynist jerk – mostly because I’m such a vociferous fan of naked women – even I can grasp these simple truths.

Here in America there are lawmakers, all white and all male, who are trying very hard, if you’ll pardon the expression, to control the vaginae of women they’ve never even met. Some of the stuff, like the mandatory transvaginal ultrasound, sounds a lot like rape to me. Well what else do you call it when you forcibly sodomize women without their permission?

But, as bad as those things are women do have something they can do about them. They can vote. That’s it. If you don’t like something you have the right to go out and cast your vote to enact change.

That’s why I find this story slightly more disturbing. In England, a land with more historical queens than a Ru Paul birthday bash, they have removed women from any reference to money. That’s right, no money for you vagina owners. Emily Dugan, a proud vagina owner in her own right who works at the Independent, reports that the British government is removing the last woman from their money and replacing her with Winston Churchill.

Not a well known feminist in case you slept through history class.

Forget the gender pay gap: the latest feminist concern is the gender money gap. If the Bank of England sticks to the plan it announced on Friday, Winston Churchill will oust the social reformer Elizabeth Fry as the “face” of the £5 note, leaving the Queen as the only woman to feature on the UK’s currency.

Politicians and feminists are among those already campaigning for the Bank to reverse its decision. Online petitions are underway and one of the Chancellor’s close aides intervened on Sunday to demand that women now be considered for other bank notes.

Amber Rudd MP, the Parliamentary Private Secretary to George Osborne, and chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sex Equality, said: “It would be a mistake not to feature women on any banknote, so let’s find a space on another banknote.”

Ceri Goddard, the chief executive of the Fawcett Society, said: “It’s disappointing that another female face wasn’t added to the banknote roll call but it beggars belief to actually remove the only one we had. Despite the odds being stacked against them there is happily no shortage of exceptional women they could have picked.”

Caroline Criado-Perez, a feminist campaigner who started the Change.org petition, said: “It’s yet another example of how the country we live in just doesn’t seem to value women’s contribution. The note being replaced isn’t even the oldest one – that was Darwin – which is why it seems completely unnecessary.”

There have been 16 historical figures featured on banknotes since the portraits were introduced in 1970 – including only two women: Florence Nightingale was on the £10 note from 1975 to 1994, and in 2002, Fry was introduced on the £5 note.

The Bank of England would not comment, but a spokeswoman pointed out that the proposed Churchill notes would not be introduced until 2016, and that a final decision had not yet been made.

‘Indisputable contribution’: notable contenders

Octavia Hill,  social reformer

Hill ensured a female hand in  the shaping of Britain’s social housing. With the backing of John Ruskin she bought up properties in London and rented them to low-income workers.

Frances buss, educator 

At a time when needlework was considered enough education for girls, she fought for more. A teacher at 14, she attended lectures at Queen’s College in Harley Street before founding the Camden School for Girls  in 1871.

Mary Jane Seacole, pioneer nurse

After being turned down by the War Office, the mixed-race, Jamaican-born nurse made her own way to the Crimean front line, where she tended to wounded British soldiers.

Tanni Grey-Thompson, athlete

One of the most successful Paralympians, winning 16 Paralympic medals, she is also a disability rights campaigner, a presenter and a parliamentarian. Made Baroness Grey-Thompson of Eaglescliffe in 2010.

Rosalind Franklin, scientist

The unsung hero of DNA, Franklin’s X-ray images of the double helix provided the data that Francis Crick and James Watson used to build their hypothesis. She died four years before the Nobel prize was awarded.

Millicent Garrett Fawcett, suffragist

Fawcett led the constitutional faction of the universal suffrage movement and advocated a more peaceful means of winning the vote than some of her contemporaries.

The agency in charge of this has no obligation whatsoever to pay any attention to the protests. They can suffer no repercussions. They are appointed to their posts. That seems to be a theme in a lot of cases like this. A small group of clueless tools just govern by fiat and wonder what all the fuss is about. After all, don’t people realize that these people are smarter than everyone esle?

They must be, by their logic, since they got these jobs and you didn’t.

So what have we learned? Move the hell out of any red state and telling British women that you’re a fan of Millicent Garrett Fawcett will probably get you laid.