More Perfect: Sex Appeal

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Speaker 4 Hey y'all, Lulu here. Okay, so before we get get going with today's show, I'm going to hand it off to producer Sarah Kari, who's going to tell us a brief story.

Speaker 11 Yes, okay, so this is a story that starts in the middle of the night a few months ago in Waco, Texas, when a man named John Lowe is startled awake.

Speaker 12 So I hear a horrible, loud, sort of gurgly,

Speaker 12 gaspy, snoring type sound.

Speaker 11 He turns his head and he realizes it's coming from his wife, Angie, who's lying next to him in bed.

Speaker 12 She is laying flat on her back and her head is tilted way off to the side. But then when I turn to her head, her eyes are wide open, just glassy.

Speaker 12 And I can see her lips are starting to turn blue.

Speaker 12 And I cannot wake her no matter how hard I try.

Speaker 11 He has this horrible realization that his wife is likely having some kind of cardiac arrest. And for an instant, he does what any of us would do.

Speaker 9 He freezes.

Speaker 11 But then...

Speaker 12 This was where the Radiolab episode How to Save a Life came into play.

Speaker 11 John told me that not long before this moment, just a few weeks before, he had heard an episode we released called How to Save a Life, in which doctor slash Radiolab correspondent Avir Mitra told everyone about a new way of doing CPR.

Speaker 14 Sort of a new form of CPR that's trying to make things a lot simpler and it's just hands-on CPR, where it's literally just push hard and fast on the chest.

Speaker 11 Of course, there is a particular method to it. Definitely listen to the episode for more on how to do it.

Speaker 11 But the idea is there's no mouth to mouth, there's no counting breaths, just pushing on the chest.

Speaker 12 That's it.

Speaker 11 Now, John had actually heard about this technique a couple months earlier when he was in a CPR training at work.

Speaker 12 But at the same time, I am, you know, a middle-aged guy, out of shape, overweight.

Speaker 12 I have just kind of always in the back of my mind assumed I would be on the receiving end of

Speaker 12 CPR.

Speaker 11 So he told me that that night with Angie.

Speaker 12 Because I had just listened to that episode of Radio Lab.

Speaker 11 The hands-only technique had sort of been refreshed in his mind. Correct.

Speaker 11 Along with one other thing Avir had said.

Speaker 12 When he was talking about the curve.

Speaker 14 So this is a survival curve.

Speaker 11 He had talked about how when a heart stops, like in a cardiac arrest, it really comes down to time.

Speaker 14 Every minute that passes, your chances of coming back just exponentially decreases.

Speaker 11 Unless you start CPR as soon as possible.

Speaker 12 So I just knew we had to act immediately. This wasn't a, oh, I'll call 911 and wait till they get there kind of situation.
This was, she is going to die unless I start doing something right now.

Speaker 11 And so the part of him that's frozen thaws. He calls 911.

Speaker 12 And while I was on the phone with 911, he's starting to do things that he'd heard about in the episode.

Speaker 11 Getting Angie off the bed and onto the floor.

Speaker 12 Getting his hands ready for the hands-only chest compressions.

Speaker 11 And what it means is that, all in all, starting from the moment that he first notices something going wrong with Angie, I had her on the floor and started chest compressions in maybe 30, 45 seconds.

Speaker 16 Just pushing.

Speaker 2 And now,

Speaker 2 hi Sarah. Oh my god, hello.

Speaker 11 It's clear every second made a difference. How are you feeling?

Speaker 6 I really feel

Speaker 17 very good. Yeah.

Speaker 11 This, of course, is none other than Angie Lowe.

Speaker 18 I would say that I feel better than even before.

Speaker 11 Oh, wow. And what Angie would later learn is that night, John did six and a half minutes of hands-only CPR, no small feet.
And then an ambulance arrived and took her to the hospital.

Speaker 18 And then once I woke up, we were still, both of us, were just in different ways, just processing everything that had happened.

Speaker 11 Over the next few weeks, as she stayed in the hospital to recover, I was feeling a little bit lonely and all of that.

Speaker 18 And so one day, John said, I really want you to hear this episode. And so we listened to it together.

Speaker 11 And she says, it got her thinking about this idea called the chain of survival.

Speaker 18 Where, you know, as soon as that cardiac arrest begins, it begins with identifying the cardiac arrest and then CPR and then the AED with the first responders and the advanced care at the hospital and then the post-care, which is like cardiac rehab, you know, what I'm doing right now.

Speaker 18 And

Speaker 18 with each step being done, your chances of survival just go up and up and up.

Speaker 11 And she and John have both been thinking a lot about all the people that were a part of her chain of survival.

Speaker 12 Once everything was stabilized with Angie and we knew we were in a good place, that she was doing well, we just had this period of just immense gratitude.

Speaker 12 We brought a barbecue, you know, catered barbecue over to the fire department. We bought trays of cookies to bring up to the ICU nurses that took care of Angie.

Speaker 12 We contacted the folks over at the AMR ambulance service to thank them.

Speaker 12 And because Radiolab and that episode really did play a part in this whole experience and Angie's outcome, we were just kind of filled with immense gratitude.

Speaker 12 So I wanted to just let y'all know how thankful I was for everything that you do at Radio Lab, but specifically for that episode and in helping me

Speaker 12 help Angie through that horrible, you know, potentially tragic event.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 17 And we're, you know, we're really private people.

Speaker 18 You know, we're kind of in a sense, we're shy.

Speaker 18 But we knew we had to get the word out to all of you at Radio Lab that people are listening and they're paying attention and that your job is so important.

Speaker 19 That's incredible, you guys.

Speaker 11 I mean, I know I speak for everybody on the show when I say that knowing that we were one small part of that chain of survival is like mind-blowing.

Speaker 11 And just so, I think we were all just so grateful that it made a difference.

Speaker 2 We're so glad.

Speaker 4 And just coasting on that swell of gratitude, we wanted to thank you, all of you listening, whether you ever do chest compressions on someone or not, you are helping keep us alive at Radiolab.

Speaker 4 Simply by listening to the show each week, maybe by sharing it with your friends, perhaps by donating or becoming a member, Radiolab is alive because of you. You are part of our chain of survival.

Speaker 4 And if you are feeling moved to support us, you can sign up to become a member at any time at radiolab.org slash donate.

Speaker 4 On with the show.

Speaker 4 This is Radiolab. I'm Lulu Miller.
It is Women's History Month, sort of a weird time to be celebrating, you know, with the overturning of Roe v.

Speaker 4 Wade, the elimination of certain Title IX protections, and recent attempts to freeze government funding to proposals that use the word woman or women or gender.

Speaker 4 Sort of feels like an avalanche of rights being stripped away.

Speaker 4 And all this kind of got me thinking about how rights are won. You know, sometimes it's straightforward.

Speaker 4 The founding fathers believed certain people should get rights, wrote them down, and boom, there they were.

Speaker 4 But sometimes it is sneakier. And so today, we're bringing you a story about one of the all-time greatest sneaks.

Speaker 4 It is a story of brilliant legal strategy of navigating loopholes and Trojan horses and beer.

Speaker 4 So much beer.

Speaker 4 And so, cheers.

Speaker 4 In honor of a more side-door entrance to legal rights, Happy Women's History Month. Please enjoy a tale from our sister show, More Perfect, that originally aired a few years back called Sex Appeal.

Speaker 12 Wait, you're listening.

Speaker 2 You're listening

Speaker 2 to Radio Lab

Speaker 2 from

Speaker 20 WNYC.

Speaker 20 This is More Perfect. I'm Chad Abum Rod.

Speaker 20 Today, a story from our producer, Julie Longoria.

Speaker 9 So, I've been working on an episode about sex discrimination for like months now. Yeah.
And we're supposed to release it.

Speaker 22 Sexual harassment scandals have engulfed Harvey Weinstein, Senator Al Frankie, and Canadian Louis C.K.

Speaker 9 This week.

Speaker 23 Actor Kevin Space candidate Roy Moore today.

Speaker 9 The story we're going to tell is not about sexual harassment but i can't think straight with all the stuff that's happening look at what's happening with you call that a tipping point you call that a watershed moment thousands posted the claims online using the simple phrase me too this has been happening since the beginning of time but now people are finally talking about it and i can't help but think that we've seen this before

Speaker 9 where this outcry for public change and

Speaker 25 positive ones a backlash they claim there's a war on women out there no one takes them seriously

Speaker 26 If you can't handle some of the basic stuff that's become a problem in the workforce today, right? Like, you don't belong in the workforce.

Speaker 9 Like, we're in our respective corners and we need men to help us. Letting out a big scream.

Speaker 4 How did people not know? But

Speaker 9 when things quiet down,

Speaker 9 will there be a change?

Speaker 20 And what kind of change is the kind that will stick?

Speaker 20 Today's story is about a time in the not-so-distant past when there was a similarly loud, raucous division in our country over sexual equality, and one woman quietly, strategically laid the foundation for real change.

Speaker 27 The Honorable, the Chief Justice, and the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Speaker 27 Oh, yay, oh yay, oh yay.

Speaker 2 All persons having having business before the honorable the Supreme Court of the United States are admonished to draw near and give their attention.

Speaker 2 For the court is now sitting.

Speaker 2 God save the United States and this honorable court.

Speaker 2 Here we are.

Speaker 20 I'm going to ask you an utterly false question, which is, where would you like to start?

Speaker 2 As if we haven't been doing this for so damn long.

Speaker 2 Okay,

Speaker 9 so let me outline the basic dilemma that's at the heart of the story here. And I'm going to put it to you as a question.
Bring it.

Speaker 9 If you were to do a control F in the Constitution, like how many times do you think the word sex comes up?

Speaker 2 Oh.

Speaker 20 That's interesting.

Speaker 2 Six?

Speaker 2 I'm guessing what was the answer?

Speaker 9 It's one, one time in the 19th Amendment, which grants people the right to vote based on sex.

Speaker 12 Really?

Speaker 9 Yes. That's the only time.
That's the only time, which is crazy because we're not going to be able to do that.

Speaker 20 Is there a sex word that's not sex, like gender or something, something?

Speaker 9 Nothing.

Speaker 20 Is there like ladies in the Constitution?

Speaker 2 Women? No.

Speaker 9 Really? Okay, constitutionally, women have a problem, which is that basically we're not in the Constitution, except like in this one little spot.

Speaker 9 So when it comes to discriminating against women, some people have argued that you...

Speaker 9 There's nothing in the Constitution that says you can't do it.

Speaker 28 Certainly, the Constitution does not require sexual

Speaker 28 discrimination on the basis of sex. The Constitution doesn't require it.
It simply doesn't forbid it.

Speaker 9 That's the Lead Justice Antonin Scalia.

Speaker 29 It doesn't. Nobody ever voted for that.

Speaker 29 So where do you get it from?

Speaker 20 There was nothing that said that. I mean, not those words explicitly, but there was nothing that says you can't discriminate?

Speaker 30 Not on the basis of sex.

Speaker 9 That's legal editor Christian Farias.

Speaker 30 We had a 14th Amendment that told people that we're equal under the law, that everyone has the equal protection of the laws.

Speaker 2 But doesn't that say, man, it's kind of, you know?

Speaker 31 They never applied the 14th Amendment to women. They didn't apply the 15th.

Speaker 9 That's Martha Griffiths, Congresswoman.

Speaker 30 When you think about the history of the 14th Amendment.

Speaker 9 As legal editor Linda Hirschman says, the 14th Amendment was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, along with the 13th and the 15th.

Speaker 9 13th Amendment abolishing slavery and 15th Amendment essentially giving black people, really black men, the right to vote.

Speaker 30 If you understand the 14th Amendment to be a part of that trio of amendments, you're like, oh, okay, it was meant to bring equality to black people.

Speaker 31 When the 15th Amendment had been written, which said every citizen could vote,

Speaker 31 in the name of heavens, why couldn't women vote?

Speaker 31 Why did you have to have the 19th Amendment?

Speaker 31 Well, of course, the answer was they didn't consider women people.

Speaker 9 There was this basic assumption in the law that, you know,

Speaker 9 equality for black people is one thing, but men and women,

Speaker 9 they're different.

Speaker 19 It was the case that the Supreme Court had never once met a distinction between men and women it didn't like.

Speaker 9 Wendy Williams, law professor emeritus at Georgetown.

Speaker 9 What are some greatest hits of the ridiculous distinction?

Speaker 19 Okay, here

Speaker 19 there was a case called Bradwell, and it was 1873 or 1904. In that case, a woman wanted to become a lawyer.

Speaker 9 Illinois bars said nope.

Speaker 19 And the justices said that that was a perfectly good rule because the justice system

Speaker 19 could be seen as not appropriate for women. Now, let's jump clear into the next century here.

Speaker 9 1948.

Speaker 19 This case, it was called Gessert v. Cleary, that went to the Supreme Court.
And the issue was whether women could be bartenders.

Speaker 19 The court thought that that was pretty humorous, that it made sense that women could not be bartenders unless their husbands or fathers were in charge of the bar.

Speaker 9 Both those laws, you know, women are not supposed to be at the bar. At either bar.
Yeah.

Speaker 19 Those two cases represent attitudes almost 80 years apart. that women belonged in the private sphere.
That was not only their place, it was built into their bodies.

Speaker 9 And that was the assumption for a long, long time.

Speaker 19 But just about 67.

Speaker 32 There are a lot of women in this country who feel that they're being pushed around.

Speaker 19 Things had started to come to a boil.

Speaker 32 And they have become very vocal. They call themselves the Women's Liberation Movement.

Speaker 33 Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups.

Speaker 9 So, in the late 60s and early 70s, people like Gloria Steinem

Speaker 9 free from the diseases of racism, Audrey Lord, of sexism, of classism, they get some traction, saying, Okay, it's time to put us in the Constitution.

Speaker 25 Hurry up. Some historians say it's a constitutional convention for women.

Speaker 35 I move the adoption of the following resolution.

Speaker 9 And what you see is this push for something called the Equal Rights Amendment.

Speaker 34 The Equal Rights Amendment should be ratified.

Speaker 36 What are your hopes for it? Do you think that it will be ratified next year?

Speaker 25 It will be ratified early next year. I'm quite sure of that.

Speaker 4 In 1975, it will be ratified.

Speaker 9 But it didn't get the votes in 1975 i hope 1976 will be the year

Speaker 9 or in 1976 a special report on the 1977 national women's conference or in 1977 and the movement is stalled

Speaker 20 why what what stalled it well a lot

Speaker 9 but much of the credit goes to this womanly of alden illinois a woman named phyllis Schlafly.

Speaker 23 I would like to thank my husband Fred for letting me come today.

Speaker 23 I love to say that because it irritates the women's livers more than anything that I say.

Speaker 9 She was a lawyer and a self-described housewife who started a movement called Stop ERA.

Speaker 37 The whole thing is misrepresented as a woman's rights amendment. In fact, the principal beneficiary will be men.
It will give men a great opportunity to get out from under their obligations.

Speaker 9 Her position was that the Equal Rights Amendment would actually strip women of the special privilege that they have that comes from being a woman.

Speaker 6 Certainly not.

Speaker 37 I think, though, the laws of our country have given a very wonderful status to the married woman, and the wife has a great deal of many rights.

Speaker 37 For example, she has the legal right to be supported by her husband.

Speaker 9 And she said, if this amendment passes, there will be certain unintended consequences.

Speaker 38 The Equal Rights Amendment says you cannot discriminate on account of sex.

Speaker 38 And if you want to deny a marriage license to a man and a man or deny a homosexual the right to teach in the schools or to adopt children, it is on account of sex that you would deny it and that would be unconstitutional under ERA.

Speaker 9 And that argument caught on.

Speaker 35 I would caution the members of this platform committee that there are things that could happen from the passage of an ERA amendment that none of us would like to see happen.

Speaker 36 I think that families would generation after generation deteriorate. I think that there would be homosexuals who expect preferential treatment.

Speaker 39 He said, Brother, we're all in danger. You got to hear what I have to say.
Cause you know what's going to happen if they pass the ERA.

Speaker 39 There will be women in all of our bathrooms, women using all our stalls. They'll be wasting the paper towels, they'll be hogging the urinals.

Speaker 39 They'll be pushing the old soap skirters, pushing the hot air dryers, too.

Speaker 39 If they pass the ERA, Lord, I don't know what we're gonna do.

Speaker 21 Had the Equal Rights Amendment passed, legal editor Linda Hirschman again, it would have looked a lot like the racial civil rights movement did.

Speaker 21 But the Equal Rights Amendment did not pass.

Speaker 9 It fell three states short.

Speaker 9 To get a constitutional amendment passed, turns out you need three-quarters of state legislatures to say they want it. That is 38 out of 50.
They only ever got 35.

Speaker 10 Dude.

Speaker 9 So the question is, if you want to get equal rights for women written into the law, what do you do? There's no ERA. The women's lib movement sparked a backlash.
Like, what do you do?

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 9 enter stage left.

Speaker 30 There she is.

Speaker 1 It's the notorious RBG.

Speaker 9 Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Speaker 4 RBG can do 20 push-ups and not the so-called girl kind.

Speaker 9 Now, before she was a Supreme Court justice, feminist icon. Or a workout sensation.

Speaker 29 Before all that,

Speaker 19 Ruth Ginsburg.

Speaker 5 She was at the ACLU.

Speaker 9 This was in the 70s.

Speaker 19 And one of the characteristics of Ruth Ginsburg, which exists to this day. Very well.

Speaker 9 You can hear this. It's the first time she argued in front of the Supreme Court in 1973.

Speaker 19 When you'd ask her a question, there would be silence.

Speaker 19 Enough silence.

Speaker 2 Mrs. Ginsburg.

Speaker 19 To make a person nervous and start trying to help her answer the question.

Speaker 19 You had to wait.

Speaker 9 But we can imagine that it was in one of those long pauses that Ruth Bader Ginsburg rescued some of the key principles behind the ERA, repackaged them, and marched them in through a side door. Mr.

Speaker 41 Chief Justice and May had pleased the court, sex like race is a visible characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability.

Speaker 2 Sex like race has been made the basis for unjustified, or at least unproved assumptions concerning an individual's parents into a

Speaker 2 foreigner.

Speaker 20 Wait, so back it up a second. What exactly did RBG do?

Speaker 9 So let me walk you through it now because

Speaker 9 it's beautiful.

Speaker 9 The ERA fight is underway, and RBG and her colleagues are watching this happen, right? And they're getting worried.

Speaker 7 What if the ERA doesn't pass?

Speaker 9 So what are we going to do if that's the case? How are we going to get equal rights for women? So they decided, okay, as an alternate approach, let's go back to to the 14th Amendment.

Speaker 42 The 14th Amendment's immediate objective was to provide national protection for the newly freed slaves.

Speaker 9 You know, which, as we said, was designed from the beginning to be only about race.

Speaker 42 But its sweeping provisions suggest broader objectives. The states were prevented from depriving any person equal protection of the laws.

Speaker 9 Well, it says the word person,

Speaker 9 so that should include women.

Speaker 9 If they could just get the courts to see it that way, then by default almost, we would have a sort of ERA.

Speaker 21 And accordingly, the task was showing that the racially inflected 14th Amendment applied to sex.

Speaker 9 So, what about the law is she trying to change? What does she want the court to say?

Speaker 21 She wants the court to say that sex would be treated just like race.

Speaker 9 And here's why that's so important. When the court sees racial discrimination happening, under the 14th Amendment, it takes a really hard line.

Speaker 9 It looks at it really, really closely, or at least it's supposed to. Whereas other kinds of discrimination, not so much.
Because actually, some discrimination is necessary. The law discriminates.

Speaker 10 It has to.

Speaker 9 It discriminates between 18-year-olds and 17-year-olds, between criminals and non-criminals. There would be chaos otherwise, right? But the courts decided that race is going to be a big red flag.

Speaker 9 They're going to ask governments, legislatures, presidents to have a compelling reason

Speaker 9 to do race discrimination. Otherwise, it's going to be unconstitutional.
You with me so far?

Speaker 20 Yes. To discriminate based on race, you need to pass a really super hard test.

Speaker 9 By the way, the legal name for this test is

Speaker 2 strict scrutiny.

Speaker 9 I know they should have called it like, we mean business or something like that.

Speaker 9 But anyway, the point was that like they took it seriously, which, you know, back in the day, they weren't doing with sex discrimination at all.

Speaker 9 Because when legislatures would come up with these laws, like this women can't be bartenders law, the Supreme Court would be like, you know, you guys probably have a good reason for that.

Speaker 30 It doesn't have to be the reason, it can just be a reason.

Speaker 20 It doesn't have to be very good.

Speaker 30 It doesn't have to be good. They could even maybe even make it up on the fly.
It just has to be a reason for upholding this law.

Speaker 9 Like in the case of the bartender's law, bars are dangerous. Women need more protection.

Speaker 19 And courts would be like, okay, sure.

Speaker 9 So RBG needed a way to convince the court to be as intense about sex discrimination as they were about race discrimination. But how do you convince an audience of men

Speaker 9 who are used to discriminating on the basis of sex, who've been doing it for years?

Speaker 9 How do you convince them that discrimination is a bad thing?

Speaker 4 That's coming up.

Speaker 9 After a quick break.

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Speaker 4 Lulu Radiolab. So just before the break, Ruth Bader Ginsburg needed a way to convince an audience of men that discrimination on the basis of sex is wrong.

Speaker 44 I think people who want to keep women down would like nothing better than to women go off in a corner and speak only to women. Nothing would happen.

Speaker 9 This is her giving a recent talk about her 1970s strategy.

Speaker 44 You need to persuade men that this is right for society.

Speaker 9 Part one of her strategy: choose your words carefully.

Speaker 44 I had a secretary at Columbia

Speaker 44 who said, I'm typing these things for you and jumping out all over the pages, sex, sex.

Speaker 44 Don't you know that the audience you are addressing, the first association of those men with the word sex, is not what you're talking about.

Speaker 9 So

Speaker 44 why don't you use a grammar book term, use gender?

Speaker 9 Because you know, the word sex has a charge to it. Gender is cooler.

Speaker 9 And part two of her strategy, choose your cases carefully. This is all happening in the 70s when RBG is the head of the ACLU Women's Rights Project.

Speaker 9 So she's deciding which kinds of cases the ACLU is going to support as they make their way to an all-male Supreme Court.

Speaker 9 And her strategy was, if we live in a man's world right now, we need to find cases that nine men at this moment can handle.

Speaker 21 So for example, early on in her tenure at the Women's Rights Project, the other lefty lawyers are suggesting that the women's movement needs to take up the cause of lesbian rights.

Speaker 21 And she says, not yet.

Speaker 44 And I think go slow

Speaker 44 is the right approach.

Speaker 9 She said, first, we need to go after that small and insidious idea that the Supreme Court had been keeping alive for years.

Speaker 37 The laws of our country have given a very wonderful status to the married woman.

Speaker 9 That Phyllis-Lafley idea that discrimination is actually good for women.

Speaker 44 Gender classifications were always rationalized as favors

Speaker 42 to women.

Speaker 9 And so, RPG decided not just to bring cases where women were the victims of discrimination.

Speaker 46 Okay.

Speaker 46 My name is Curtis Craig.

Speaker 9 She brought cases where men were the victims. Who were you as an 18-year-old?

Speaker 46 That's a great question.

Speaker 46 I was like any 18-year-old young man,

Speaker 46 invincible, you know, thought I was quite the ladies' man.

Speaker 46 You name it. I mean I.

Speaker 9 He made it into Lambda Chi Alpha at Oklahoma State, and he was living

Speaker 9 at the frat house.

Speaker 46 Our fraternity was primarily made up of wrestlers.

Speaker 13 So it was when you went down the hall,

Speaker 46 you were about to be taken down at any moment. You'd be thrown into the wall and you'd leave a body print.

Speaker 9 What do you mean?

Speaker 6 Like an indentation literally in the wall or like the camera?

Speaker 2 Oh my god.

Speaker 13 Yeah,

Speaker 46 it was amazing.

Speaker 13 There was a lot of partying going on.

Speaker 13 More beer, more beer. More beer, more beer.

Speaker 9 A lot of beer. The yard would be filled with beer cans.
And here's the key. If they wanted to get all that beer,

Speaker 9 they had to enlist the help of the ladies. Yeah, I mean, you know, the sorority sisters.

Speaker 46 Yes, you would have a female buy you beer and you'd go out and party.

Speaker 12 They needed the women to buy the beer? Yep.

Speaker 9 Why? Because in Oklahoma state at the time.

Speaker 44 Oklahoma had a very silly law. Girls could buy beer at age 18, but the boys had to wait until 21.

Speaker 46 There was something about the level of maturity, I guess, for women versus men at that time.

Speaker 9 The basic principle was that

Speaker 9 boys got into more car accidents, so they should be trusted with less beer.

Speaker 9 And did that make you angry?

Speaker 46 Oh, absolutely. Well, it was extremely unfair.
Yeah, I would say it made, I think, most men angry at the time.

Speaker 9 And a Supreme Court case

Speaker 9 was born.

Speaker 44 So the thirsty boys at fraternity

Speaker 44 brought this case.

Speaker 20 So the RBG gets involved in this beer case?

Speaker 2 Yes. But

Speaker 20 this is a situation where women have rights men don't have. Why would she want to argue this case? I would imagine she'd want the opposite.

Speaker 9 Well, this is where

Speaker 9 her strategy is kind of like a Trojan horse. If you look at this case, right, on the outside, it looks like a case about men being discriminated against.

Speaker 9 But if you think about it,

Speaker 9 beneath that discrimination is actually this kind of unspoken idea about women. So go with me on this, right? If men are irresponsible, they can't handle beer, then women

Speaker 21 are more responsible and well-behaved,

Speaker 9 more delicate, but they could be trusted with something like beer because they won't abuse it, you know?

Speaker 9 So, with that line of thinking, it's not long before you're trying to protect women, protect them from, you know, scary places like bars or courtrooms or

Speaker 2 political office.

Speaker 9 Using this case,

Speaker 9 RBG is able to walk into the court this discrimination about men, but also the discrimination against women that's attached to it or inside of it.

Speaker 13 Wow, that's clever.

Speaker 9 We're just getting started.

Speaker 20 More perfect continues in a minute.

Speaker 20 This is More Perfect. I'm Jad Abumraad here with Julie Galongoria, who's telling us the story of a case involving boys in beer that became a kind of Trojan horse

Speaker 20 in the battle for women's rights.

Speaker 20 Now the story of the Trojan horse, maybe you know this, it's, you know, ancient Greece, you've got Sparta fighting Troy.

Speaker 20 The Spartans want to get into the city of Troy, but it's this giant walled city, too big, they can't get in. And so Odysseus comes up with this clever plan.

Speaker 20 We'll give the Trojans this giant wooden horse. They'll bring it into their city.
They'll think it's a gift that we're retreating, which is what they thought.

Speaker 20 And then at night, our soldiers who are hidden inside the horse will come out.

Speaker 20 And they will take the city. Now, in our case, Odysseus is RBG.
The city she's trying to get into is the all-male Supreme Court.

Speaker 20 But in order for this very, admittedly imperfect analogy to work,

Speaker 20 we need someone in the horse to come out, the warrior in the horse, the woman warrior.

Speaker 9 And in our case, that woman warrior,

Speaker 9 she didn't even know she was going to go into battle.

Speaker 20 Julia, you take it from here.

Speaker 9 So I got in the car and I drove a long time. This tiny little gravel road leading up to a narrow street of houses to Sparta, North Carolina.

Speaker 2 It's called Sparta. I know.

Speaker 9 Cows and horses and Trump signs.

Speaker 2 Tractor up front. No trespassing sign.

Speaker 9 And so I walk up to this house. It's this beautiful cream-colored cottage perched on top of a mountain.

Speaker 2 Wow.

Speaker 9 And I can hear Whitney Houston saving all my love for you blasting.

Speaker 2 Carly in travel?

Speaker 9 Hi, no, I didn't.

Speaker 16 Are you Carolyn?

Speaker 2 Hi, very nice to meet you.

Speaker 9 And I meet

Speaker 9 Carolyn Whitener.

Speaker 16 I'm 76, soon be 77.

Speaker 2 She

Speaker 9 immediately offers me a course. I've got a course wine.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 2 Will you have a beer with me?

Speaker 16 No, I can't. I'm a diabetic.

Speaker 16 I can drink a little, but not much.

Speaker 9 Thank you.

Speaker 19 And I've got some brownies over here.

Speaker 9 What does she look like describe her reddish blonde hair green eyes

Speaker 9 she's wearing golden hoops

Speaker 9 she has like this going on here this air about her that she could have been a beauty queen you know but she also could have been a car mechanic

Speaker 9 so we get to talking I tell her a little bit about who I am about the story

Speaker 9 She actually told me like upfront, she's like,

Speaker 16 I'm proud of the young women. I have a granddaughter that I'm so proud of you.

Speaker 9 Your generation, they're finishing the fight I started.

Speaker 9 And I was essentially like, no, no, no, no. This stuff, like your story has like a huge impact on like women like me, you know?

Speaker 16 Generation. Imagine.

Speaker 16 But see, my name was never tied in with it. It was always Craig's name.

Speaker 16 So,

Speaker 16 you know, it wasn't that big a deal.

Speaker 9 She told me she grew up bouncing around different oil fields.

Speaker 16 Well, I was an oilfield trash.

Speaker 16 That's what we were called: oilfield trash.

Speaker 9 That meant Carolyn and her brother and sister split the school year between two or three schools a year. We moved a lot.
She says school didn't come easily to her.

Speaker 16 But my dad, he taught all three of us how to weld.

Speaker 2 He was a welder, how to work on a car.

Speaker 9 She was very independent. And when she was about 13, they moved to Chickashay, Oklahoma.

Speaker 31 It happened in old Oklahoma.

Speaker 9 And that

Speaker 9 is where she met Dwayne.

Speaker 16 That was the first boy I went with.

Speaker 9 They met in high school, and they were roughly the same age, but he was three years ahead of her in school. And what attracted you to him?

Speaker 16 His mind. He had an excellent mind, and he was just a farm boy with no education.
He never went to college, but he could have been about... anything he'd have wanted to have been.

Speaker 9 What do you think attracted

Speaker 9 him to you? Like, what do you think he saw in you?

Speaker 16 I was somebody new in town.

Speaker 9 Talking to Carolyn, I got the sense she did not have any shortage of suitors.

Speaker 16 But

Speaker 16 I married him when he turned 18.

Speaker 16 I don't know who that is. I'm going to turn that off.

Speaker 16 And when I married my husband,

Speaker 16 I was equal to him except the money, and he didn't think anybody could handle that but him.

Speaker 16 He acted like he was raising me, and he probably was.

Speaker 9 She says she was really comfortable with him. He was a quiet man with this brilliant mind.

Speaker 16 But he just

Speaker 16 was pure German, girl. Have you ever met a German man?

Speaker 16 Okay, they are in total control.

Speaker 20 And how does Carolyn connect to the case with the Frat Boys in RBG?

Speaker 9 Okay, so here's what happens: it's 1962. Carolyn and Dwayne are about 20 years old at this point, and they moved to a town called Stillwater, Oklahoma, to open a business.
And Stillwater

Speaker 9 is a college town. It's that college town, okay? You got Oklahoma State University right there, tons of fraternities, including Lambda with the wrestlers, huge homecoming, drawing over 40,000 alumni.

Speaker 16 We didn't know what homecoming was. Had no idea what homecoming was.

Speaker 9 But shortly after moving to Stillwater, they opened the doors to the hunk and holler.

Speaker 16 And where we went in was just about three blocks, four blocks from the college. And we went into business there.

Speaker 9 A drive-through convenience store.

Speaker 16 It was like the real old gas station with the oil pit in the floor.

Speaker 9 Here's how it would work. Customers pull up to the side of the convenience store and they'd drive through.

Speaker 9 hunk their horn, holler their order.

Speaker 16 And you'd have to go out and wait on them, come back in and get what they wanted and take it back out.

Speaker 9 So it's a lot of in and out and in and out

Speaker 2 all night long.

Speaker 16 You wear tennis shoes out real fast.

Speaker 16 So it was all sheer energy and guts.

Speaker 9 Homecoming night. We were supposed to close at 11.
The store is flooded with customers.

Speaker 16 Till I think two or three o'clock in the morning.

Speaker 9 They're like thrilled because they've never run a business by themselves before and all these college kids are coming in and buying Coors beer.

Speaker 9 Including, of course, a steady stream of girls buying beer, presumably for their boyfriends.

Speaker 16 And it, yeah, I never did get to see Homecoming.

Speaker 16 All I saw was cars coming in and out.

Speaker 9 Fast forward a few years, it's 1972, back at the university.

Speaker 46 He was a tall, had long blonde hair.

Speaker 9 Curtis Craig's buddy named Mark Walker.

Speaker 46 She was the president of the Lamb Nakai House at the time.

Speaker 9 He's in a political science class.

Speaker 9 And the professor starts talking about the whole fight for the ERA which is happening right at that moment

Speaker 9 and at this point Oklahoma hasn't ratified the ERA

Speaker 9 and somehow the conversation turns to this beer law mark's like talk about discrimination this beer law is discrimination against us and the professor challenged him about doing something about the bear laws if he was going to complain about them so one day I was behind the counter people coming in and out Mark Walker walks into the honk and holler the young man came in to talk to me.

Speaker 9 She doesn't really have time to talk. She's running in and out.
But he stood there waiting patiently.

Speaker 16 I bet he was in there four hours and he was looking at the beer license.

Speaker 9 He looks at the license and he notices that Carolyn's name is the one on it because actually my husband lost his license after he sold beer to a young man.

Speaker 16 So he put him in my name. Anyway, at a certain point, in between all the honks and hollers, he asked me what I thought about the beer laws and I told him I was very vocal about it.
I always had been.

Speaker 9 She says it doesn't make any sense. We send these young men off to war.

Speaker 16 They were being drafted at 18.

Speaker 9 But we don't let them drink beer when they come back. Was that just? Not to mention the liability issues.
You have these 18-year-old girls coming in, buying beer, slipping it to their boyfriends.

Speaker 9 How am I supposed to stop that?

Speaker 16 You can't prove who buys what. So eventually when Mark Walker asked for her help, he said he was going to do a term paper.
She's like, sure, why not?

Speaker 16 I was always willing to help them because they had helped us get started. And I still thought it was a term paper.

Speaker 9 So was he not being completely honest with you then?

Speaker 16 Well, I didn't hear half of what he said. I was busy every time he came in.
So, you know,

Speaker 16 it wasn't that important at the time. So I didn't think any more about it.
He left. My husband was gone.
He was out of state working.

Speaker 16 And I didn't even say anything to him about it. It wasn't important.
You know, I just thought it was a conversation.

Speaker 9 But it wasn't just a conversation. Because before that meeting, Mark had gone out looking for a lawyer.

Speaker 46 That's correct.

Speaker 9 And Curtis and Mark and the other Fratt brothers had tried to raise some money.

Speaker 46 That was flawed. In a campus town, everybody...
uses their last dollar for that last bear.

Speaker 9 But they managed to find this lawyer who would do it on the cheap.

Speaker 43 All right. Well, I'm just Fred Gilbert, attorney at law.
No big thing, no big deal.

Speaker 46 I remember him always wearing his military boots. Actually, I believe he wore them even to the Supreme Court.

Speaker 9 Fred had worked on another male discrimination case in the past, and to him, this case was pretty straightforward.

Speaker 43 Men couldn't buy beer until they were 21, but the most irresponsible and drunken woman in the state could buy it in unlimited quantities at 18. Well, that was discrimination.

Speaker 12 It was kind of more a male rights case.

Speaker 9 Well, it was. And do you remember corresponding with Ruth Bader-Ginsburg?

Speaker 13 Yes, I knew

Speaker 43 Ruth Bader-Ginsburg before she was on the court.

Speaker 9 Somehow, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg noticed this case, and she watched as Fred made his way up the courts, losing at every level.

Speaker 9 And by this point, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was head of the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU.

Speaker 9 She'd already argued a few cases before the Supreme Court, which had inched the court slowly toward the idea that sex was like race. And she thought that this case was interesting.

Speaker 9 She gave Fred a call.

Speaker 43 You know, we have a problem in a personal relationship. It was no question.

Speaker 43 I was something of an unreconstructed male chauvinist, and she was not.

Speaker 9 Fred did not see this as a women's rights case.

Speaker 43 It was just kind of an unnecessary insult to man for no reason at all.

Speaker 9 And Ruth, looking at this case, thought, no, Fred, it's more than that.

Speaker 19 It didn't matter to her if the plaintiff was a man or a woman, because in most of those cases, the discrimination against the man was derivative of a prior and worse discrimination against the woman.

Speaker 49 Here's to the ladies, the fair and the weak. How do they do it? Where do they find all that energy, that seemingly inexhaustible store of pep and ginger?

Speaker 9 Again, Ruth was after the stereotype about women that was nestled inside the beer loft, that women are more responsible and well-behaved.

Speaker 9 But in order for her to make that connection, she needed Fred to write his brief in a way that would be useful to her. So refer not just to male discrimination, but discrimination based on gender.

Speaker 2 Well,

Speaker 12 I supported her.

Speaker 43 I just never was, shall we say, a militant feminist.

Speaker 9 So like, Ruth had her work cut out for her.

Speaker 7 At this point, she was getting sort of used to dealing with these rubes from the sticks.

Speaker 9 So, with other local lawyers that she'd worked with in the past, Ruth had been more forceful, insisting that she make the argument. But that had backfired.

Speaker 7 So, she was like, okay, you argue it, right?

Speaker 9 She wrote to Fred telling him that she didn't need to be the one to present oral argument before the court. She was fine if he'd do it.

Speaker 9 But she very gently, very persistently, was able to convince him to let her help him with his legal brief.

Speaker 16 But

Speaker 16 I think it was a couple of months later because my husband was out of state every month.

Speaker 9 Meanwhile back at the Hunkin' Holler, Carolyn has no idea what's going on.

Speaker 16 No.

Speaker 9 No idea.

Speaker 16 And I got a phone call. My husband was on the phone.
Well I had salesmen in and I had people coming in and out and he was irate.

Speaker 16 He was furious.

Speaker 16 I couldn't figure out what was going on.

Speaker 9 She was like, case?

Speaker 19 What are you talking about?

Speaker 16 Well, he had picked up a newspaper in North Carolina in a bank, and it was on the front page of the newspaper with my name and about us suing.

Speaker 16 It looked like we sued everybody in the state of Oklahoma that was in office, all the way down to the garbage man.

Speaker 9 He's like, what did you do? How are you? We don't want to get mixed up in this. We don't want our name on this.
We don't want to make a fuss. Like, this could hurt business.

Speaker 7 Like, how dare you?

Speaker 16 You know, I didn't know what had happened. I really didn't know.

Speaker 9 And eventually she figured out, it must have been that kid who came in here. And now it's like at the Supreme Court?

Speaker 16 What? I was back and forth on that phone with him trying to wait on customers. And I bet that took about three hours.
And he would not let up. I mean, he kept calling back and calling back.

Speaker 16 He called a lawyer. He was mad.

Speaker 16 And then the last phone call, he said, I am flying back in. And he said, you pick me up.

Speaker 9 A couple nights later, she drove to the airport.

Speaker 16 Picked him up, and

Speaker 16 he was still mad.

Speaker 16 That was the longest car ride.

Speaker 9 As they drove back, she says he just lectured her the whole ride.

Speaker 16 I just listened to him.

Speaker 9 What did he say?

Speaker 16 I don't know what he said word to word.

Speaker 16 I just know he was strong with what he said.

Speaker 16 With my husband, it was best to just be silent.

Speaker 16 I was never afraid of him, but I knew how far to push it.

Speaker 16 Time we got from the airport to the other side, it was about an hour and 20 minutes. That's a long hour and 20 minutes in a car where you can't get out.

Speaker 9 And over the course of that hour and 20 minutes, she said something in her just kind of shifted.

Speaker 9 And at a certain point, she basically turned to him and was like, no.

Speaker 9 Like, I know you want me to drop this case, but I'm going to fight this.

Speaker 16 He threatened me every which way. I didn't budge.
And probably

Speaker 16 the reason why I didn't budge because he fought me so hard on it.

Speaker 16 You know, I believed in it, but I had never stepped out like that. That's the first time I really

Speaker 16 put my foot down and didn't budge.

Speaker 16 I gave so much to him. I mean,

Speaker 16 I didn't get a salary for 25 years.

Speaker 16 I didn't ask for it.

Speaker 16 I figured we were equal. I figured I worked the same hours he did.

Speaker 16 And I figured I stood beside him, not behind him and not in front of him.

Speaker 4 Coming up, Carolyn goes to court. Stay tuned.

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Speaker 50 How does the brain process memories? Why is AI a solution and a problem for our climate? What is leadership in 2025 and beyond?

Speaker 50 The TED Radio Hour explores the biggest questions and the most complicated ideas of our time with the world's greatest thinkers. Listen now to the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

Speaker 4 Radio Lab Lulu, when we left off, the Supreme Court was getting ready to hear a case about gender discrimination. That's gender discrimination against men.
I'll let Julia take it from here.

Speaker 9 October 5th, 1976, the day of oral arguments. The lawyer, Fred Gilbert.

Speaker 16 I haven't ran across very many people that I didn't care for. I didn't care for Fred.
He was so pushy.

Speaker 9 Insists that Carolyn needs to come to D.C.

Speaker 16 I didn't have the money to go and I didn't want to go. I never traveled anywhere by myself.

Speaker 46 What I recall that day.

Speaker 9 Curtis Craig came too.

Speaker 46 I was dressed up.

Speaker 19 Suit and tie.

Speaker 16 I had borrowed a dress. Plastic, looked like leather.

Speaker 46 Walking up those stairs.

Speaker 19 High heels.

Speaker 46 I remember that distinctly.

Speaker 16 It was so big.

Speaker 12 Beautiful building.

Speaker 16 I felt like I was walking forever up those stairs. I was burning up.
I was sweating.

Speaker 32 We'll hear arguments next in 75-628, Craig against Borin.

Speaker 32 Mr. Gilbert, you may proceed whenever you're ready.

Speaker 9 Fred Gilbert starts things off. He walks up to the podium in his combat boots.

Speaker 32 The law is broad and all-encompassing in its sweep.

Speaker 32 It says that all females, even those that are the most drunk, most alcoholic, most immature, immature, and most irresponsible, may purchase 3.2% beer at age 18 in absolutely unlimited quantities.

Speaker 32 The law doesn't say it in quite those words, does it?

Speaker 9 And by all accounts,

Speaker 9 he didn't exactly kill it.

Speaker 32 No, Your Honor, and the law doesn't say it in quite the words that all males aid.

Speaker 13 The justices just kept hammering.

Speaker 32 Your Honor, the Vendor still has a lot of. The only way he can get relief is to move his age back and drink.

Speaker 2 Hammering. In a technical sense.

Speaker 32 I don't technical sense.

Speaker 32 Yes, Your Honor. That is technical.

Speaker 32 The complaint is drafted. And what is before the court? Well, but you say, you say what's before the court.
What's before the court is your complaint.

Speaker 16 Curtis was sitting beside me, and I kept punching him. What does that mean? What are they talking about? What does that mean? And he kept saying, shh, shh.

Speaker 16 Just be quiet till it's over. I'll tell you.

Speaker 16 I didn't understand what they were doing.

Speaker 31 The beer law that we challenged today was originally enacted in 1890.

Speaker 9 But she says what caught her ear was a moment when Justice Rehnquist.

Speaker 16 When he called me...

Speaker 32 When you say we,

Speaker 32 you're referring to your client who is the tavern keeper.

Speaker 19 A saloon keeper.

Speaker 2 Yes, Your Honor.

Speaker 32 And

Speaker 16 I tell you when he called me that in the Supreme Court, I came so near standing up and correcting him. And I've always wondered to this day why I did that.

Speaker 9 As arguments went on, Fred did at least try to do the thing that Ruth wanted him to do.

Speaker 32 Your Honor, I would say anything could be you could pass a law saying no Negro will drive while intoxicated.

Speaker 9 Compare sex discrimination to race discrimination.

Speaker 32 Now, this relates to the public thing, but the thing is, you can't discriminate, even for something like public safety, on the basis of certain criteria.

Speaker 32 Well, has the court ever held that discrimination of this sort is of the same class as discrimination on the basis of race? Your Honor, this court has come very, very closely.

Speaker 32 Well, I asked you a question. Has it ever held? No, it has never held that it is totally to be treated the same as race, Your Honor.

Speaker 9 To make a long story short,

Speaker 9 by the end of oral argument,

Speaker 2 things weren't looking great for Fred.

Speaker 32 I mean, I think that depends on the thrust of the future.

Speaker 9 At one point, he even interrupts a Supreme Court justice

Speaker 32 supporting the denial of beer to young men 18 to 20 race.

Speaker 2 It just

Speaker 9 wasn't happening.

Speaker 32 Well, I don't have time for a parting thought. I thank you for your time.
Thank you, gentlemen. The case is submitted.

Speaker 20 Well, you win some, you lose some, right, ladies?

Speaker 2 What? No, no, no, no.

Speaker 9 Here comes the craziest part of the story. Okay.

Speaker 9 It's like a double Trojan horse, horse within a horse, because after the Fred Gilbert debacle, there was another case at the Supreme Court that afternoon.

Speaker 9 And it just so happened

Speaker 9 that it was a case being argued

Speaker 9 by none other than Ruth Vader Ginsburg.

Speaker 7 Somehow she organized, I've now forgotten how, to get that argued the same day.

Speaker 9 That was on purpose?

Speaker 5 Yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 9 Oh my god, that's genius.

Speaker 7 Yeah, no, she's a genius. Mr.

Speaker 41 Chief Justice, and may it please the court.

Speaker 20 Wait, you're saying she somehow managed to get herself in the court on another case on the same day?

Speaker 2 So I couldn't confirm that for sure.

Speaker 9 I don't even know how you would do that.

Speaker 9 But what I can tell you is that she arranged to go second because she knew there was probably a good chance that Fred, the completely incompetent lawyer, was going to be, you know, less than amazing.

Speaker 7 The court was asking him questions and he was completely incapable of answering. So finally the court just went, oh, never mind.

Speaker 45 And then when Ruth stood up to argue her case, they asked her about Greg V.

Speaker 1 Bohr.

Speaker 32 We had a case this morning, just to be concrete, involving a law that would not permit males to make certain purchases that females could make and was attacked as a discrimination against males. Yes.

Speaker 32 My question is whether we should examine that law under the same or a different standard than if it were a discrimination against the others.

Speaker 41 My answer to that question is no, in part because such a law has an insidious impact against females. It stands.

Speaker 9 And then she told Justice Stevens: even in this case, where it seems like men are the ones who are being discriminated against, beneath that discrimination is a more insidious one.

Speaker 41 Against females. It stands then docile, compliant, safe to be discriminated.

Speaker 32 But your answer always depends on their finding some discrimination against females. Is it your view that there is no discrimination against males?

Speaker 41 I think there is discrimination against males.

Speaker 32 If there is such discrimination, is it to be tested by the same or by a different standard from discrimination against females?

Speaker 41 My response to that, Mr. Justice Stevens, is that almost every discrimination that operates against males operates against females as well.

Speaker 32 Is that a yes or a no answer?

Speaker 32 I just don't understand you. And are you trying to avoid the question?

Speaker 41 No, I'm not trying to avoid the question. I'm trying to clarify the position that I don't know of any line that

Speaker 41 doesn't work as a two-edged sword.

Speaker 9 They'll go back and forth a bit. Justice Stevens is basically like, why do you keep insisting on this?

Speaker 9 Like, why do you keep saying that discrimination against men contains within it discrimination against women? They're different. And she's like, no, they're not different.

Speaker 32 So your case depends then on our analyzing this case as a discrimination against female? No.

Speaker 41 My case depends on your recognition that using gender as a classification,

Speaker 41 resorting to that classification is highly questionable and should be closely reviewed.

Speaker 9 She makes this point again and again. All discrimination based on gender is bad and it should be checked with something at least approaching that hardcore standard that the court uses for race.

Speaker 16 That was really something seeing this little woman get up.

Speaker 31 I don't know of any purely

Speaker 16 I'll never forget that because she was small.

Speaker 40 In the end, the women are the ones who end up hurting.

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 16 She's so small in person that she had a lot of force.

Speaker 32 Case is submitted.

Speaker 9 About two months later, the judgment

Speaker 9 and opinion. December 20th, 1976.
Craig.

Speaker 32 Against Borum.

Speaker 9 Justice William Brennan announces that the court

Speaker 9 is striking down the beer law.

Speaker 32 We hold that Oklahoma's gender-based differential does constitute an invidious violation of the Equal Protection Clause.

Speaker 9 This silly beer case was basically the first time the court clearly said that when you discriminate based on gender, you need to pass a harder test. It wasn't as rigorous as race.

Speaker 9 It wasn't strict scrutiny. They settled on a standard that we now call intermediate scrutiny.
And it was pretty damn close.

Speaker 9 RVG would go on to strengthen this standard over time.

Speaker 9 But this was the case.

Speaker 9 That first got us a kind of equal rights amendment through a side door.

Speaker 44 We wished that the court had picked a less frothy case to make that announcement.

Speaker 44 But of course, we were very, very pleased that after that

Speaker 16 the day the decision was announced I had just came in from work I was at home by myself there in Stillwater she's by herself in the kitchen and the phone rings and who calls

Speaker 2 uh who called

Speaker 16 National News called to tell me that we had won

Speaker 16 I didn't ask what we had won

Speaker 16 I didn't ask anything.

Speaker 16 I just said, okay.

Speaker 9 She hung up.

Speaker 16 Stood there for a little bit, and then Craig called and he wanted me to come down and celebrate with the guys there at his fraternity. Fraternity, yeah.

Speaker 9 She told him, no, thanks.

Speaker 9 And then she hangs up the phone and she gets one more phone call.

Speaker 16 And it was my husband. He was in North Carolina again.

Speaker 16 And he heard... He heard something about the case, but he didn't hear it all.
And he said, what's going on now? And I said,

Speaker 16 we won.

Speaker 9 And he says, Is it over?

Speaker 16 I said, It's over.

Speaker 16 It's totally over with. He said, Good.

Speaker 2 And he hung up.

Speaker 16 I fixed me a very good drink, vodka and Coke.

Speaker 16 Sat down in the middle of the floor, and that's the way I celebrated. I drank that drink all by myself, and it was over with.
It was over with.

Speaker 9 Carolyn says that for decades after this case, she didn't understand what it meant.

Speaker 9 She didn't understand what it meant as a legal principle or that it ushered in this new era for women in this country.

Speaker 9 But even so,

Speaker 9 in her own life,

Speaker 9 this case

Speaker 9 was a beginning.

Speaker 16 Probably a couple of years after we won that case, I went into China right after it opened up.

Speaker 9 She saved up money and went with her sister-in-law because Duane didn't want to come with him.

Speaker 16 I did. I was so curious.
And we never went like the tourist went. We'd get on a train, and if we saw something we wanted to stop and see, we would stop.
We never had a schedule.

Speaker 16 I never did really go to shop. I was just curious about the people and how they lived.
I I saw so much, and I talked to so many people while I was gone, that

Speaker 16 it was like a hunger,

Speaker 16 and you grow from it.

Speaker 16 And I just wanted to see things, and that was just open, that just opened the doors for me.

Speaker 16 What happened to Caroline in the end?

Speaker 9 She and Dwayne divorced in 2007.

Speaker 20 Huh. And

Speaker 20 when you said she didn't know the effect her case had for decades, like when did she figure it out?

Speaker 13 Or when did what how?

Speaker 9 So in around 1996, this professor, a guy named Bob Darcy, calls her up and invites her to speak at a class.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 she is kind of learning from the students and from the professor, like what the case actually stood for.

Speaker 9 And then eventually the professor puts her in touch with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and they meet again

Speaker 9 in person.

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 it sort of starts to dawn on her.

Speaker 16 One of the letters, I don't know if that's a one.

Speaker 9 When we were sitting in her bedroom, she was looking through some old letters and pulled out one with the Supreme Court seal on it.

Speaker 2 Can you read it?

Speaker 16 No, I don't have my glasses. You'll have to read it.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 9 Dear Carolyn, as I told you in 1996 when we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Craig v. Bourne, you are the true heroine of that case.

Speaker 9 Although no financial gain was at stake for you, you realized the potential the case had in paving the way for the court's recognition of equal citizenship stature of men and women as constitutional principle.

Speaker 9 Yeah.

Speaker 16 I was going to get that framed,

Speaker 16 but I haven't done it yet.

Speaker 9 Signed Ruth Peter Ginsberg.

Speaker 16 I need to get it laminated before I have it framed.

Speaker 20 Producer Julia Longoria.

Speaker 20 I'm Jad Abonrod. Thank you for listening.
And here is More Perfect in Radio Labs David Gable to read the credits.

Speaker 47 Supreme Court audio is from OYA, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.

Speaker 47 Leadership support for More Perfect is provided by the Joyce Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation.

Speaker 2 That's it? I want to read more.

Speaker 47 More Perfect is produced by me, Jad Abenrod, Susie Lechtenberg, Jenny Lawton, Julia Longoria, Kelly Prime, Sean Ramaswaram, who's no longer here, Alex Oberton, and Sarah Kari.

Speaker 47 I didn't even get to say it.

Speaker 47 Anytime, I love doing this.

Speaker 47 I used to do it. I did voiceovers when I lived in Japan because I was a native.
I used to sing at Tokyo Disneyland, and my side gig on my days off was recording voiceovers at a little Japanese studio.

Speaker 47 I did a lot of language lessons for kids,

Speaker 2 listen and repeat.

Speaker 2 I think I think I think it's so up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up I think it's so open up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up I think it's so open up and up and up and up and up and down

Speaker 48 is Tresa I'm calling from Colchester in Essex UK leadership support for radio lab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 51 Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P.

Speaker 48 Sloan Foundation.