Bathrooms
Ultimately, it is a fact of life that evolution in the tearing down of discriminatory practices eventually comes around to bathrooms. From “Whites Only” facilities to the debate over transgender bathroom access, progress in the world of ending discrimination seems to always wind up having something to do with toilet imagery:
“When Ruth Bader Ginsburg started Harvard Law School in 1956, she was one of nine women in a class of five hundred men. Only one of the teaching buildings had a women’s bathroom.”
War Imagery
More than once in her life, Ginsburg was described as a warrior. And war imagery is situated at the center of what is perhaps the epicenter of her advice to people. The engagement is not direct and explicit, but allusive enough to make people think that there are more disputes and conflicts fought in this world without tanks and fighter jets than with them:
“Work for what you believe in, but pick your battles, and don’t burn your bridges. Don’t be afraid to take charge, think about what you want, then do the work, but then enjoy what makes you happy, bring along your crew…”
One Woman’s Discrimination…
Ginsburg presents in one concrete and vivid piece of imagery the enormous battle she faced in dealing with gender discrimination. Who could possibly be in favor of discrimination except for seriously deranged people, right? And yet, gender discrimination was systemic. Therefore, either almost the entire male population of America for most of its history was deranged…or they genuinely did not see their prejudicial behavior in negative terms:
“When I first got into the business of striving for gender equality, most men thought there really is no such thing as discrimination against women. All the barriers were regarded was protections.”
The Biggest Problem Facing America Today
Ginsburg relates an anecdote about being asked a question by a student doing a research project. The student wanted to know what, specifically, Ginsburg would identify as the greatest problem facing America as it confronts the new millennium. Her answer is situated contextually within comparative imagery:
“My mind raced passed privacy concerns in the electronic age, terrorist threats, deadly weapons, fierce partisan divisions in our legislatures and polity. I thought of Thurgood Marshall’s praise of the evolution of our Constitution’s opening words, 'We, the people,' to embrace once excluded, ignored, or undervalued people — people held in human bondage, Native Americans, women, even men who owned no real property.”
