Ode to RBG
By Lily Elwood
Photo Courtesy of Medium.com
I knew who RBG was when I was younger, but I didn’t really know much about her work or understand the impact it had on my own life and the lives of all women. During the 2016 election campaign, I began researching feminists who had changed the game in the United States, and who were still championing women’s rights in recent years — Gloria Steinam, Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and of course, Ruth Bader Ginsburg. People know her as Notorious RBG, a woman who was fighting for the rights of the unheard even when she lost her husband and while she battled cancer. People knew her as the woman who overcame gender-based discrimination at Harvard for taking what many believed to be an man’s spot, and used her degree to battle the Supreme Court for others who had faced discrimination too. She had incredible will to, persevere and to be kind and strong in the face of adversity. Reading about her work inspired me to become politically activated; to go to marches and protests, to call and email my representatives about issues I care about, to write articles about politics, to organize walkouts and committee meetings, to be a part of real, enduring change in our country.
When the news broke that Ruth Bader Ginsburg, powerhouse Supreme Court justice and champion for women’s rights, had passed away, I was out to dinner on campus with my friends. It was an experience I will never forget; we were sitting in one of the tents set up on campus eating dining hall food when the group of students at the table behind us began screaming and yelling. A friend of mine checked her phone and whispered, “Ruth is dead”. Slowly, each table in the tent received the news and, devastated, we all mourned together for a moment. I called my mother when I returned to my dorm and she picked up the phone sobbing. We cried together for some time, trying to process what this would mean for the country; it was difficult for us to picture a bright future now that Ruth was gone.
Photo Courtesy of Vulture.com
Ruth and her story were special to me and my mother, and our admiration for her was shared. Ruth was confirmed to the bench two years after my mother graduated from law school, and by then RBG had already argued equality cases before the Supreme Court as a lawyer. They told her story during the confirmation hearings; she had been one of nine women in her law school graduating class, and once she graduated she was unable to get a job at a law firm despite having been top of her class. She worked for the ACLU and built her career against great opposition from the beginning. She won rights for women by championing men’s rights in custody hearings over their children in divorce, which was simply brilliant. Men couldn’t argue against her when she was fighting for their rights too, and logically, if men have rights in divorce regardless of sex, women also should have rights regardless of sex. My mother was awed by what RBG overcame, especially because the field of law was still pretty sexist when my mother went to school. Ruth paved the way for people like my mother to go to law school and work in law, and all women have her to thank for the ability to have our own credit cards, sign a lease, buy a house, hold a job, and choose to have children or not, among many other things. We owe it all to her.
My mother and I, along with hundreds of thousands of others, mourn her loss deeply, but we must continue to fight for what is right and protect the freedoms that she fought so hard to give us. She advanced the movement for equality so far on her own, and we must sustain her mission together. May her memory be a revolution.
