AClu insults women, memory of rbg
Changing ‘woman’ to ‘person’ erases Ginsburg’s intentions
Last week, the ACLU issued a public statement in recognition of the one-year anniversary of Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death. The statement included a quote from one of Justice Ginsburg’s most famous comments about women’s rights, but it was edited to change what she actually said.
The correct quote is: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a woman’s life, to her dignity … When the government controls that decision for women, women are being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for her own choices.”
What the ACLU wrote was: “The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a (person’s) life, to (their) dignity … When the government controls that decision for (people), (they) are being treated as less than a fully adult human responsible for (their) own choices.” They erased the fact that Justice Ginsburg was speaking about women.
That the ACLU would want to erase women is not surprising. They have been hostile to women’s rights since forever, save for the occasional token lawsuit that rarely makes a difference, or makes things worse, like the lawsuit they filed against Betsy DeVos that helped weaken Title IX.
They aggressively fought against the Equal Rights Amendment in the 1950s and 60s, claiming women did not need equality and that the chronic problem of unequal pay was “nothing but a universally bad habit.” Then they inexplicably started supporting the ERA in 1970, only to become involved in cases that led to the ERA’s demise.
Changing RBG’s quotes is stunningly stupid because it exposes the ACLU’s anti-women core; something the ACLU generally tries to hide. It is also deeply disrespectful of Justice Ginsburg, who used words like “women” and “her” to express the unique suffering women endure AS WOMEN, not men. Imagine the ACLU quoting Martin Luther King saying: “I have a dream that one day little () boys and girls will be holding hands with little () boys and girls,” when what he actually said was, “I have a dream that one day little black boys and girls will be holding hands with little white boys and girls.”
The pressure to erase words like “women” from American culture is supported by a lot of money, ostensibly to ensure that non-binary people feel included, but the truth is much simpler. Monied interests want to erase the word “women” to inhibit their political power as a class of people. If the goal were truly to help non-binary people, we could just ADD words like “non-binary” to make sure nobody feels excluded.
Not using the word “women,” which would mean we also cannot use the word “men,” will not help people who choose to live their lives as something other than their biological reality. If a biological woman who lives as a man suffers discrimination because he is a man, the law will protect him as a man. And if he suffers discrimination because he is a nonbinary person, the law will protect him as a non-binary person. Elimination of the word “man” will undermine his rights, not advance them.
If groups like the ACLU continue this nonsense of erasing words like “women,” “men,” “boy” and “girl” from society, what’s next? Does the song, “I am Woman” by Helen Reddy become “I am Person.” Do we have to sing: “No Person No Cry” by Bob Marley; “American Person” by the Guess Who; “Black Magic Person” by Santana; “Pretty Person” by Roy Orbison; “(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Person” by Aretha Franklin; “When a Person Loves a Person” by Percy Sledge; “My Person, My Person, My Spouse” by Marty Robbins; “Brown-Eyed Person” by Van Morrison; “Waiting for a Person Like You” by Foreigner; “Surfer Person” by the Beach Boys; “Stand By Your Person” by Tammy Wynette; “Mx. Tambourine Person” by the Byrds; “It’s a Person’s World” by James Brown; “Where the People Are” by Connie Francis, and “Southern Person”
by Neil Young?
Will protesters soon show up at Brigham and Women’s Hospital to demand that it be renamed Brigham and Persons? Can the National Organization for Women and League of Women Voters keep their names? Do we have to remove “women” and “woman” from our laws? In Massachusetts alone, the word appears in over 500 places, often for the purpose of protecting women from discrimination that would otherwise be allowed given that women still lack full equality under the federal Constitution.
Regardless of the true agenda here, no label-maker will ever erase women as a class of people. If by some well-funded nightmare, the word “women” does disappear from our linguistic landscape, women will rise up stronger and more united than ever before, because nothing ignites a movement better than an organized attempt to erase it.