Friday, November 20, 2015

Quotes of the Day

An conversation between Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Gloria Steinem?  Yes, please.

Just try to mostly ignore the male moderator.  At one point he references the blatant discrimination Ginsburg faced when law firms refused to hire her after she graduated from law school at Columbia first in her class. He says:
"You remind me of my grandmother’s line: Rejection is the best thing that can happen. It pushes us. There might not be a Ms. magazine or Notorious R.B.G. without it."
Hmmm, categorizing systemic discrimination against millions of women as simple "rejection" that "pushes us" to do better?  Gloria Steinem for the win:
"But there might not be a need for a woman’s magazine, and there might be a court that actually looks like the country. There’s no virtue in injustice."
Later, when talking about gender roles and marriage, Ginsburg makes a salient point about marriage equality's legacy to the women's rights movement:
"It’s a facet of the gay rights movement that people don’t think about enough. Why suddenly marriage equality? Because it wasn’t until 1981 that the court struck down Louisiana’s 'head and master rule,' that the husband was head and master of the house. Marriage was a relationship between the dominant, breadwinning husband and the subordinate, child-rearing wife. What lesbian or gay man would want that?"
In all, the interaction between Ginsburg and Steinem during the conversation is great, as they build each other up and compliment one another throughout.

Early on, the moderator asks Ginsburg if she was a Ms. reader, after which she responded, " I certainly was. From the first issue. I thought it was wonderful."  Later, Ginsburg mentions working on a book about civil procedure in Sweden, and Steinem chimes in: "For which she learned Swedish. Is that not incredible?"

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