Having and Eating Cake

 BEFORE AND AFTER I was born, my father, a successful tort lawyer in practice with my grandfather, evidently led quite an exciting social, meaning "sexual' life. He had his women. The trauma of having been raised by a puritanical fire and brimstone mother, the trauma of military service during world War Two, and the stress of the legal profession conspired to inspire him to drink to escape, and the women soon followed. My mother, raising two very young children, just took it as it came; in those days divorce was less an option, and a far more difficult one. Many men of my father's generation automatically regarded women as play things, possessions,,,,, and extra marital affairs for them were optional side pleasures. By law, wives were their husbands chattel property, and could little of any significance, things like open bank accounts or obtain credit cards, without their husband's permission. My parents, though they did well in hiding their problems, unintentionally discouraged me from marrying by the example they set. The state of gender equality and inequality has been utterly transformed since my nineteen sixties childhood, and millions of people deserve credit for the fundamental change. none more so than Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who won five of the gender discrimination six cases she before the Supreme Court before joining the court herself as an associate justice.All of her cases involved gender discrimination against women. In one case, she effectively argued that women should be able to obtain credit cards without their husband's consent. Today it is very difficult to imagine that as recently as only fifty years ago women were denied access to credit cards, bank accounts, many social clubs, and many professions dimply because of their gender. The world has changed, in many ways for the better. Finally, the full potential of more than half the population is being realized.The secret to Ginsburg successful crusade for women's rights is that she understood that gender discrimination often victimized men also, and her fight was for gender equality across the board.For example, under law, men, unlike women, were not allowed to receive surviving spouse benefits from social security. Ginsburg's work changed that. Tragically, the person nominated by Trump and the hypocritical power grabbing Republicans will almost certainly not be devotedly committed to equal gender rights like Ginsburg, will not carry on her work and tradition, and the crusade is far from complete. Instead, it seems likely that the new right wing justice will work to roll back the clock n the name of social Darwinism and a free market society, thus negating much of Ginsburg valued work. What that means is that another brave crusader will eventually have to step forward to do it all over again.