Women's Rights in Law

As I watched the movie RBG, which follows Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s journey in law (and life), I was captivated by the arguments that Ginsburg made in court. Clearly, she was an incredibly intellectual being, as the arguments that she made are quite convincing. I can’t help but wonder how people successfully argued against many of them. By generalizing and widening the points she wanted to make from small, specific cases to arguments for women and men’s rights as a whole, she took on an entirely different and far more important role. I thought it was interesting that, as Mr. Satow mentioned, out of the many cases that Ginsburg took on, the only two that weren’t voted out were cases to expand the rights of men. Although, of course, it’s great that men are gaining the rights in adoption and child custody and such that they deserve, it is a little disappointing that when the women’s rights arguments came up, they weren’t able to go through as easily as the men’s—no doubt, due in part to the nearly all-male court.

Thinking on the names Ginsburg collected over the years, “Notorious RBG”, stands out as one of the most well-known of them, and upon looking up “notorious”, I was surprised by the definition; As dictionary.com puts it, someone notorious is “well-known for some bad or unfavourable quality, deed, etc.” Knowing the definition makes me wonder how the name came about in the first place—makes me wonder if the name came around as a joke or as a reclamation of a name her doubters created.

As Mr. Satow gave his lecture, I tried to think about the trends of the laws. It seemed that many of the laws in question came down to stereotypes: the man is meant to provide for the family, the woman is meant to marry young, the man is expected to mature slower, the woman is expected to be bad at finances, etc. The trouble with these is that stereotypes are not always accurate—and even when some do, it’s tough to make a blanket statement anyways, since a stereotype is just that: a stereotype. Plenty of people don’t fit into the same stereotype as others. Luckily, it seems many of these have been reconsidered under intermediate scrutiny, although I’m sure that there are many more to go. Among the list of considerations that Mr. Satow brought up were laws discriminating through menstrual product taxes, alcohol age, and age of consent. I found these the most interesting, because the arguments for the laws do seem slightly more based in reason. For example, should menstrual products be taxed, if medical items are typically not taxed? Well, in part the question has to do with what else is taxed or not. If items like bandages or injection needles are taxed, as it seems that they are sometimes, then the question of whether menstrual products should be is a far more legitimate question. However, it disproportionately affects women, making them pay more, so I do feel that the tax should be removed. Either way, being able to delve into discussions around laws such as these was a nice exercise that I think should be discussed more in typical history or civics classes.