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Sunday, April 21, 2019

On The Basis of Sex (2018)

There is nothing about the story of Ruth Bader Ginsberg's trajectory to the Supreme Court that I do not like, and the documentary about her last year told a lot of it very well.  This movie focuses on her time at law school up to her arguing a case before the Supreme Court as a young lawyer with her incredibly supportive husband.
The movie opens with her being significantly out numbered by her male peers in law school, the discrimination that occurred for women, from in the classroom up to the public humiliation the dean subjected them to, and her amazing resilience in the face of all that.  She then went a step further--when her husband was diagnosed with testicular cancer and given a very grim prognosis, she set about making him successful, but going to his classes and teaching him the material covered.  The woman does not sleep.
Upon graduation she cannot get a job with a law firm, so she teaches at Rutgers and yet yearns to make a difference.  Her husband, the tax attorney, helps her to find a case where she can.  The tax law would not allow a deduction for the expenses of an unmarried male caregiver, only a female. She sees that the best way to overturn laws that disadvantage women is to take on one that disadvantages men. It was probably just an oversight; the writers of the tax code failed to consider that an unmarried male might have the care of an elderly parent. But Charles Moritz did. And the government, under the direction of Dean Griswold, now at the Justice Department, make a very big mistake. Instead of amending the rule, they decided to fight. They underestimated Ruth Bader Ginsburg.  And she went on to systematically dismantle legislation that discriminated on the basis of gender.

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