| Today marks the first anniversary of the death of the legendary legal visionary, who was the first female tenured professor at Columbia Law School and the second woman to serve as a justice on the U.S. Supreme Court, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg ’59. |
| RBG has been called a lot of things: a trailblazer, a role model, the “Notorious RBG.” To us her most fitting description is “feminist icon.” During her life she worked to break down stereotypical gender norms, fought against patriarchy as a whole, recognizing how it oppresses men and women alike, and destroyed misconceptions about feminism in order to uplift anyone who felt marginalized. |
I know that I was horrified when she died, so unprepared for it, and so angry when that Cheeto pushed through a Stepford Wife to replace her.
AND I KNOW THIS TOO:
We will never progress in our gender until women start agreeing to some basic fundamental things, like, our bodies should be our own. Regardless about how you personally feel about terminating a pregnancy, no woman on Earth can be truly free if she doesn’t, first and foremost, have the final say about her own physical body, and her safety in that body. That is the first thing. We MUST own us; we MUST have the final say about us. I am the mother of an adopted child, and I am so grateful her mother carried her to term, but I still support the right of ALL women, everywhere, to be the ultimate owners of their bodies. I have no business telling you what to do with your hair, or your face, or your clothes, or your uterus, or etc. And you don’t have any business prescribing to me, or another women, and ALL those who are not women have even less business telling women what to do.
So, try to come to grips with this one thing: ALL adults should own their own bodies. To be an adult is to, fundamentally, be trusted with yourself. And like everything in life, some of us will do better than others, but that does not negate our absolute right to own our own choices, successes, and fuck-ups.
May Ruth, one of the hardest working humans, male or female, who ever lived, live on in us, in women, and in the starlight that glows over us all every night, and in the bright sunlight that lights our days.
And may Ruth remind me to keep teaching my daughter to be an autonomous woman who knows she can make her own choices and own the consequences of them. And may Ruth remind me to turn my own head back to what is important to me, put my nose on that grindstone, and keep working toward my goals, and working hard. Life is for accomplishing things. You’ll sleep when you’re dead…. lol.
