Radiolab - More Perfect: Sex Appeal

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

In 2017 our sister show, More Perfect aired an episode all about RBG, In September of 2020, we lost Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the annals of history. She was 87. Given the atmosphere around reproductive rights, gender and law, we decided to re-air this More Perfect episode dedicated to one of her cases. Because it offers a unique portrait of how one person can make change in the world. This is the story of how Ginsburg, as a young lawyer at the ACLU, convinced an all-male Supreme Court to take discrimination against women seriously - using a case on discrimination against men. Special thanks to Stephen Wiesenfeld, Alison Keith, and Bob Darcy.Supreme Court archival audio comes from Oyez®, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell.EPISODE CREDITS: Reported by - Julia LongoriaProduced by - Julia LongoriaOriginal music and sound design contributed by - Alex OveringtonOur newsletter comes out every Wednesday. It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Sign up (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing [e-mail] support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation Initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Hey, y'all. Lulu here. Okay, so before we get going with today's show, I'm gonna hand it off to producer Saira Khare, who's going to tell us a brief story. 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. So I hear a horrible, loud, sort of gurgly, gaspy, snoring type sound. He turns his head and he realizes it's coming from his wife, Angie, who's lying next to him in bed. She is laying flat on her back and her head is tilted way off to the side.

But then when I turned her head, her eyes are wide open, just glassy. And I can see her lips are starting to turn blue. And I cannot wake her no matter how hard I try. 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. He freezes. But then, this was where the Radiolab episode, How to Save a Life, came into play.

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 radio lab Correspondent of your Mitra told everyone about a new way of doing CPR sort of a new form of CPR That's trying to make things a lot simpler and it's just hands-only CPR where it's literally just Push hard and fast on the chest. Of course, there is a particular method to it Definitely listen to the episode for more on how to do it. But the idea is there's no mouth to mouth, there's no counting breaths, just pushing on the chest.

That's it. Now, John had actually heard about this technique a couple months earlier when he was in a CPR training at work. But at the same time, I am a middle-aged guy, out of shape, overweight. I have just kind of always in the back of my mind assumed I would be on the receiving end of CPR.

So he told me that that night with Angie. Because I had just listened to that episode of Radiolab. The hands-only technique had sort of been refreshed in his mind. Correct. Along with one other thing Avir had said. When he was talking about the curve. So this is a survival curve. He had talked about how when a heart stops like in a cardiac arrest. It really comes down to time. Every minute that passes your chances of coming back just exponentially decreases. Unless you start CPR as soon as possible. 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. And so the part of him that's frozen thaws. He calls 911. And while I was on the phone with 911, he's starting to do things that he'd heard about in the episode.

Getting Angie off the bed and onto the floor. Getting his hands ready for the hands-only chest compressions. 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.

Just pushing. And now... Hi, Sarah. Oh my god, hello! It's clear every second made a difference. How are you feeling? I really feel very good. Yeah.

This, of course, is none other than Angie Lowe. I would say that I feel better than even before. 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. And then once I woke up, we were still, both of us were just in different ways, just processing everything that had happened.

Over the next few weeks, as she stayed in the hospital to recover... I was feeling a little bit lonely in all of that. And so one day... John said, I really want you to hear this episode. And so we listened to it together. And she says it got her thinking about this idea called the chain of survival. 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. And with each step being done, your chances of survival just go up and up and up. And she and John have both been thinking a lot about all the people that were a part of her chain of survival. 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. 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.

We contacted the folks over at the AMR Ambulance Service to thank them. 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. So I wanted to just let y'all know how thankful I was for everything that you do at Radiolab, but specifically for that episode and helping me help Angie through that horrible, you know, potentially tragic event. Yeah. And we're, you know, we're really private people. You know, we're kind of, in a sense, we're shy. But we knew we

had to get the word out to all of you at Radiolab that people are listening and they're paying attention and that your job is so important. That's incredible, you guys. 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 and just so, I think we were all just so grateful that it made a difference. We're so glad. 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, 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. 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. On with the show. This is Radiolab. I'm Lulú Miller. It is Women's History Month. Sort of a weird time to be celebrating, you know, with the overturning of Roe v. 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. It sort of feels like an avalanche of rights being stripped away. And all this kind of got me thinking about how rights are won. Sometimes it's straightforward. The founding fathers believed certain people should get rights, wrote them down, and boom, there they were. But sometimes it is sneakier. And so today, we're bringing you a story about one of the all-time greatest sneaks.

It is a story of brilliant legal strategy, of navigating loopholes and Trojan horses and beer. So much beer. And so, cheers. 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. Wait, you're listening? Okay.

Alright. Okay. Alright. You're listening to Radiolab from WNYC. Rewind. This is More Perfect. I'm Chad Iboomrod. Today a story from our producer, Julie Longoria. So I've been working on an episode about sex discrimination for like months now. Yeah.

And we're supposed to release it. Sexual harassment scandals have engulfed Harvey Weinstein, Senator Al Franken, comedian Louis C.K. This week, actor Kevin Spacey, candidate Roy Moore today. 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. This outcry for public change and a backlash. They claim there's a war on women out there.

No one takes them seriously. If you can't handle some of the basic stuff that's become a problem in the workforce, you don't belong in the workforce. Like we're in our respective corners and we need men to help us. Letting out a big scream How do people not know?

But when things quiet down ...experts on the left and right Will there be a change? And what kind of change is the kind that will stick? And what kind of change is the kind that will stick? 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. For the court is now sitting. God save the United States in this honorable court. Here we are. I'm going to ask you an utterly false question, which is where would you like to start?

As if we haven't been doing this for so damn long. Okay, 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. If you were to do a control F in the Constitution, how many times do you think the word sex comes up? Oh. That's interesting. Six? do you think the word sex comes up? Oh.

That's interesting. Six? I'm guessing. What was the answer? It's one. One time in the 19th Amendment, which grants people the right to vote based on sex. Really? Yes.

That's the only time? That's the only time, which is crazy, because we already have... Is there a sex word that's not sex, like gender or something something? No, nothing. Yes. That's the only time? That's the only time, which is crazy because we already have... Is there a sex word that's not sex, like gender or something? No, nothing. Is there like ladies in the Constitution? Women?

No. Really? Okay, constitutionally women have a problem, which is that basically we're not in the Constitution, except like in this one little spot. So when it comes to discriminating against women, some people have argued that there's nothing in the Constitution that says you can't do it. Certainly the Constitution does not require sexual discrimination on the basis of sex. Constitution doesn't require it.

It simply doesn't forbid it. That's the late Justice Antonin Scalia. It doesn't. Nobody ever voted for that. So where do you get it from? There was nothing that said that? I mean, not those words explicitly, but there was nothing that says you can't discriminate? Not on the basis of sex.

That's legal editor Christian Farias. We had a 14th Amendment that told people that we're equal under the law, that everyone has equal protection of the laws. But doesn't that seem, it's kind of, you know? They never applied the 14th Amendment to women. They didn't apply the 15th. That's Martha Griffith's congresswoman. When you think about the history of the 14th Amendment,

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. The 13th and the 15th. 13th Amendment abolishing slavery. 15th Amendment essentially giving black people, really black men, the right to vote. 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. When the 15th Amendment had been written, which said every citizen could vote, in the

name of heavens, why couldn't women vote? Why didn't you, why did you have to have the 19th amendment? Well, of course, the answer was they didn't consider women people. There was this basic assumption in the law that, you know, equality for black people is one thing, but men and women, they're different. It was the case that the Supreme Court had never once met a distinction between men and women it didn't like.

Wendy Williams, law professor emeritus at Georgetown. What are some of my greatest hits of the ridiculous distinction? Okay, here there was a case called Bradwell and it was 1873 or for in that case a woman wanted to become a lawyer. Illinois bar said no. And the justices said that that was a perfectly good rule because the justice system could be seen as not appropriate for women. Now, let's jump clear into the next century here.

1948. This case was called Gessert v. Cleary that went to the Supreme Court. And the issue was whether women could be bartenders. The court thought that that was pretty humorous, that it made sense that women could be bartenders. 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. Both those laws, you know, women are not supposed to be at the bar. At either bar.

Yeah, right. 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. And that was the assumption for a long, long time. But just about 67. There are a lot of women in this country who feel like they're being pushed around. Things had started to come to a boil. And they've become very vocal.

They call themselves the Women's Liberation Movement. Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups. So in the late 60s and early 70s, people like Gloria Steinem... We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen. 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. Hurry up. Some historians say it's a constitutional convention for women. I move the adoption of the following resolution. And what you see is this push for something called the Equal Rights Amendment.

The Equal Rights Amendment should be ratified. Yeah! We are it! What are your hopes for it? Do you think it will be ratified this year? It will be ratified early next year. I'm quite sure of that. In 1975, it will be ratified.

But it didn't get the votes in 1975 that will be ratified. But it didn't get the votes in 1975. I hope 1976 will be the year... Or in 1976. A special report on the 1977 National Women's Conference. Or in 1977. And the movement is stalled. Why? What stalled it? Well, a lot. But much of the credit goes to this woman.

Phyllis Schlafly of Aldon, Illinois. A woman named Phyllis Schlafly. I would like to thank my husband Fred for letting me come today. I love to say that because it irritates the women's livers more than anything that I say. She was a lawyer and a self-described housewife who started a movement called Stop ERA. 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.

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. I think 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. For example, she has the legal right to be supported by her husband. And she said if this amendment passes, there will be certain unintended consequences. The Equal Rights Amendment says you cannot discriminate

on account of sex. 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. And that argument caught on. 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. I think that families would, generation after generation, deteriorate. I think that there would be homosexuals who expect preferential treatment. He said brother we're all in danger you got to hear what I have to say cuz you know what's gonna happen if they pass the ERA. 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. They'll be pushing the old soap squirters, pushing the hot air dryers too. If the past, ya ray, Lord, I don't know what we're gonna do. Had the Equal Rights Amendment passed, legal editor Linda Hirschman again, it would have looked a lot like the racial civil rights movement did, but the Equal Rights Amendment did not pass. It fell three states short. To get a constitutional amendment passed, turns out you need three quarters of state legislators to say they want it.

That is 38 out of 50. They only ever got 35. Dude. 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? Well, enter stage left.

There she is. This is the notorious RBG. Ruth Bader Ginsburg. RBG can do 20 pushups and not the so-called girl kind. Now before she was a Supreme Court Justice. Feminist icon. Or a workout sensation. Now just show us all the sensation, before all that, Ruth

Ginsburg, she was at the ACLU. This was in the 70s. And one of the characteristics of Ruth Ginsburg, which exists to this day, you can hear this. It's the first time she argued in front of the Supreme Court in 1973. When you'd ask her a question there would be silence. Enough silence to make a person nervous and start trying to help her answer the question. You had to wait. 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. Chief Justice, and may it please the court, sex like race is a visible characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability sex like race has been made the basis for unjustified Wait, so back it up a second. What exactly did RBG do? So let me walk you through it now because it's beautiful. The ERA fight is underway and RBG and our colleagues are watching this happen, right? And they're getting worried.

What if the ERA doesn't pass? 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 the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment's immediate objective was to provide national protection for the newly freed slaves.

You know, which, as we said, was designed from the beginning to be only about race. But its sweeping provisions suggest broader objectives. The states were prevented from depriving any person equal protection of the laws. Well, it says the word person, so that should include women. If they could just get the courts to see it that way, then by default almost, we would have a sort of ERA. And accordingly, the task was showing that the racially-inflected 14th Amendment applied to sex. So what about the law is she trying to change?

What does she want the court to say? She wants the court to say that sex would be treated just like race. 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. 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, it has to. 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 gonna be a big red flag. They're gonna ask governments, legislatures, presidents to have a compelling reason and compelling state interest to do race discrimination. Otherwise, it's gonna be unconstitutional. You with me so far? Yes. To discriminate based on race, you need to pass a really super hard test.

By the way, the legal name for this test? Strict Scrutiny. Ugh. I know, they should have called it like we mean business or something like that. 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. Because when legislators 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. It doesn't have to be the reason.

It can just be a reason. Doesn't have to be very good. 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. Like in the case of the bartenders law, bars are dangerous. Women need more protection. And courts would be like, okay, sure.

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 who are used to discriminating on the basis of sex, who've been doing it for years? How do you convince them that discrimination is a bad thing? That's coming up after a quick break.

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. I think people who want to keep women down would like nothing better than to women go off in the corner and speak only to women. Nothing would happen. This is her giving a recent talk about her 1970s strategy.

You need to persuade men that this is right for society. Part one of her strategy, choose your words carefully. I had a secretary at Columbia who said I'm typing these things for you and jumping out all over the pages, sex sex. 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. So why don't you use a grammar book term? Use gender.

Because you know the word sex has a charge to it. Gender is cooler. 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. So she's deciding which kinds of cases the ACLU is gonna support as they make their way to an all male Supreme Court. 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. 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. And she says, not yet. I think go slow is the right approach. She said first we need to go after that small and insidious idea that the Supreme Court had been keeping alive for years. The laws of our country have given a very wonderful status to the married woman.

That philish, laughly idea that discrimination is actually good for women. Gender classifications were always rationalized as favors to women. And so, RBG decided not just to bring cases where women were the victims of discrimination. OK. My name is Curtis Craig. She brought cases where men were the victims. Who were you as an 18-year-old? That's a great question. I was like any 18-year-old young man.

Invincible. I thought I was quite the ladies' man. You name it. I mean, I he made it into Lambda Chi Alpha at Oklahoma State. And he was living at the frat house. Our fraternity was primarily made up of wrestlers.

So it was when you went down the hall, you were about to be taken down at any moment, you'd be thrown into the wall and you'd, you'd leave a body print. What do you mean? Like an indentation literally in the wall? Or like dirt from... Yeah. Oh my god.

Yeah. It was amazing. There was a lot of partying going on. More beer! More beer! More beer! More beer! A lot of beer.

The yard would be filled with beer cans. And here's the key if they wanted to get all more beer. 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, they had to enlist the help of the ladies. Yeah, I mean, uh. You know, the sorority sisters. Yes, you would have a female buy you a beer and you'd go out and party. They needed the women to buy the beer? Yep.

Why? Because in Oklahoma State at the time. Oklahoma had a very silly law. Girls could buy beer at age 18, but the boys had to wait until 21. There was something about the level of maturity, I guess, for women versus men at that time. The basic principle was that boys got into more car accidents, so they should be trusted with less beer. Did that make you angry?

Oh, absolutely. Well, it was extremely unfair. Yeah, I would say it made, I think, most men angry at the time. And a Supreme Court case was born. So the thirsty boys at fraternity brought this case. So the RBG gets involved in this beer case? Yes. But this is a situation where women have rights, men don't have. Why would she want to argue this case?

I imagine she'd want the opposite. Well, this is where 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. But if you think about it, 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, girls are more responsible and well behaved, more delicate. They could be trusted with something like beer because they won't abuse it, you know? 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 political office. Using this case, 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. Wow, that's clever. We're just getting started. More Perfect continues I'm Jad Abumrad here with Julie Galangoria, who's telling us the story of a case involving boys in beer that became a kind of Trojan horse in the battle for women's rights. Now the story of the Trojan Horse, maybe you know this, it's ancient Greece, you've got Sparta fighting Troy,

the Spartans wanna 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. 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.

And then at night, our soldiers who are hidden inside the horse will come out. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] 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. But in order for this very admittedly imperfect analogy to work, we need someone in the horse to come out, the warrior in the horse, the woman warrior. And in our case, that woman warrior.

She didn't even know she was gonna go into battle. Julia, you take it from here. So I got in the car and I drove a long time. Tiny little gravel road leading up to narrow street of houses to Sparta, North Carolina. It's called Sparta? I know! How's and horses and Trump signs.

Tractor up front. And so I walk up to this house. It's this beautiful cream colored cottage perched on top of a mountain. Wow. And I can hear Whitney Houston's Saving All My Love For You blasting. You having trouble? Hi, no I didn't.

Are you Carolyn? Uh huh. Hi, very nice to meet you. And I meet Carolyn Whitener. I'm 76, soon be 77. She immediately offers me a course. I've got a course line. Yeah?

Sure. Will you have a beer with me? No, I can't. I'm a diabetic. I can drink a little, but not much. Thank you. And I've got some brownies over here. What does she

look like? Describe her. Reddish blonde hair, green eyes, she's wearing golden hoops. She has like this, this air about her that she could have been a beauty queen, you know? But she also could have been a car mechanic. Well tell me about yourself. So we get to talking, I tell her a little bit about who I am, about the story. She actually told me a friend, she's like, I'm proud of the young women. I have a granddaughter that's 23 or 24. I'm so proud of you. Your generation, they're finishing the fight I started.

And I was essentially like, no, no, no, no. This stuff, your story has a huge on like women like me, you know? I can't imagine. But see, my name was never tied in with it. It was always Craig's name. So, you know, it wasn't that big a deal. She told me she grew up bouncing around different oil fields. I was an oil field trash. That's fields. I was on oil field trash. That's what we were called, oil field trash.

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. But my dad, he taught all three of us how to weld. He was a welder. How to work on a car. She was very independent.

And when she was about 13,. How to work on a car. She was very independent. When she was about 13, they moved to Chickasha, Oklahoma. And that is where she met Dwayne. That was the first boy I went with. 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? His mind. He had an excellent mind. And he was three years ahead of her in school. And what attracted you to him? 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. What do you think attracted him to you? Like, what do you think he saw in you? I was somebody new in town. Talking to Carolyn, I got the sense she did not have any shortage of suitors. I bet. I married him when I turned 18.

I don't know who that is. I'm going to turn that off. And when I married my husband, I was equal to him except the money, and he didn't think anybody could handle that but him. He acted like he was raising me, and he probably was. She says she was really comfortable with him. He was a quiet man with this brilliant mind. But he just was pure German girl.

Have you ever met a German man? Okay, they are in total control. And how does Carolyn connect to the case with the frat boys in RBG? Okay, so here's what happens. It's 1962, Carolyn and Dwayne are about 20 years old at this point, and they move to a town called Stillwater, Oklahoma, to open a business. And Stillwater 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 homecomingcoming drawing over 40,000 alumni. We didn't know what homecoming was. Had no idea what homecoming was. But shortly after moving to Stillwater, they opened the doors to the hunk and holler. And where we went in was just about three blocks, four blocks from the college. And we went into business there. A drive-through convenience store. It was like the real old gas station with the oil pit in the floor.

Here's how it would work. Customers pull up to the side of the convenience store and they drive through, hunk their horn, holler their order. And you'd have to go out and wait on them, come back in and get what they wanted and take it back out. So it's a lot of in and out and in and out all night long. You wear tennis shoes out real fast. So it was all sheer energy and guts. Homecoming night. We were supposed to close at 11. The store is flooded with customers.

Till I think two or three o'clock in the morning. 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. Including of course a steady stream of girls buying beer, presumably for their boyfriends. And it, yeah, I never did get to see homecoming. All I saw was cars coming in and out. Fast forward a few years, it's 1972, back at the university. He was tall, had long blonde hair.

Curtis Craig's buddy named Mark Walker, he was the president of the Lambda Chi house at the time, is in a political science class. And the professor starts talking about the whole fight for the ERA, time is in a political science class and the professor starts talking about the whole fight for the ERA, which is happening right at that moment. And at this point, Oklahoma hasn't ratified the ERA. 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 beer 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 honkin' holler. The young man came in to talk to me. She doesn't really have time to talk, she's running in and out. But he stood there. Waiting patiently.

I bet he was in there four hours and he was looking at the beer license. 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. So he put them 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. She says it doesn't make any sense. We send these young men off to war. They were being drafted at 18.

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. How am I supposed to stop that? 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? I was always willing to help them because they had helped us get started. And I still thought it was a term paper.

So was he not being completely honest with you then? Well, I didn't hear half of what he said. I was busy every time he came in. So, you know, 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. And I didn't even say anything to him about it. It wasn't important. You know, I just thought it was a conversation. But it wasn't just a conversation.

Because before that meeting, Mark had gone out looking for a lawyer. That's correct. And Curtis and Mark and the other Fratt brothers had tried to raise some money. That was flawed in a campus town. Everybody uses their last dollar for that last bear. But they managed to find this lawyer who would do it on the cheap.

All right, well, I'm just Fred Gilbert, attorney at law. No big deal. I remember him always wearing his military boots. Actually, I believe he wore them even to the Supreme Court. Fred had worked on another male discrimination case in the past, and to him this case was pretty straightforward. 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. It was kind of more a male rights case. Well, that was discrimination. It was kind of more a male rights case.

Well, it was. And do you remember corresponding with Ruth Bader Ginsburg? Yes, I knew Ruth Bader Ginsburg before she was on the court. Somehow Ruth Bader Ginsburg noticed this case, and she watched as Fred made his way up the courts losing at every level. And by this point, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was head of the Women's Rights Project at the ACLU. 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. She gave Fred a call. You know, we have a problem in a personal relationship. It was no question. I was something of an unreconstructed male chauvinist, and she was not. Fred did not see this as a women's rights case. It was just kind of an unnecessary insult to men for no reason at all.

And Ruth, looking at this case, thought, no, Fred, it's more than that. 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. -♪ 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. Again, Ruth was after the stereotype about women that was nestled inside the Beer Law,

that women are more responsible and well-behaved. 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. Well, I supported her. I just never was, shall we say, a militant feminist. So like, Ruth had her work cut out for her. At this point, she was getting sort of used to dealing with these rubes from the sticks. 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. So she was like, okay, you argue it, right? 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. But she very gently, very persistently, was able to convince him to let her help him with his legal brief. But I think it was a couple of months later, because my husband was out of state every

month. Meanwhile, back at the Honkin Hauler, Carolyn has no idea what's going on. No. No idea. 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. He was furious. I couldn't figure out what was going on. She was like, Case? What are you talking about? 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. It looked like we sued everybody in the state of Oklahoma that was in office all the way down to the garbage man. 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. Like, how dare you? You know, I didn't know what had happened.

I really didn't know. And eventually she figured out it must have been that kid who came in here. And now it's like at the Supreme Court? 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. He called a lawyer.

He was mad. And then the last phone call, he said, I am flying back in. And he said, you pick me up. Couple nights later, she drove to the airport. Picked him up and he was still mad. That was the longest car ride. As they drove back, she says, he just lectured her the whole ride. I just listened to him. What did he say? I don't know what he said word to word. I just listened to him. What did he say? I don't know what he said word to word.

I just know he was strong with what he said. With my husband, it was best to just be silent. I was never afraid of him, but I knew how far to push it. The 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 the car where you can't get out. And over the course of that hour and 20 minutes, she said something in her just kind of shifted. And at a certain point, she basically turned to him and was like, no, like, I know you want me to drop this case, but I'm going to fight this.

He threatened me every which way. I didn't budge. And probably the reason why I didn't budge, because he fought me so hard on it. You know, I believed in it. I had never stepped out like that. That's the first time I really put my foot down and didn't budge. I gave so much to him. I mean, I didn't get a salary for 25 years. I didn't ask for it. I figured we were equal. I figured I worked the same hours he did. And I figured I stood beside him, not behind him and not in front of him.

Coming up, Carolyn goes to court. Stay tuned. Radiolab 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. October 5th, 1976, the day of oral arguments. The lawyer, Fred Gilbert... I ran across very many people that I didn't care for. I didn't care for Fred. He was so pushy. Insists that Carolyn needs to come to D.C. I didn't have the money to go and I didn't want to go.

I never traveled anywhere by myself. What I recall that day... Curtis Craig came too. I was dressed up. Suit and tie. I had borrowed a dress. Plastic, looked like leather. Walking Craig came too. I was dressed up. Suit and tie. I had borrowed a dress. Plastic, looked like leather. Walking up those stairs. High hills. I remember that distinctly. It was so big. Beautiful building. I felt like I was walking

forever up those stairs. I was burning up. I was sweating. We'll hear arguments next in 75, 628, Craig against Boran. Mr. Gilbert, you may proceed whenever you're ready. Fred Gilbert starts things off. He walks up to the podium in his combat boots. The law is broad and all-encompassing in its sweep. It says that all females, even those that are the most drunk, most alcoholic, most immature, and most irresponsible, may purchase 3.2% beer at age 18 in absolutely unlimited quantities.

The law doesn't say it in quite those words, does it? And by all accounts, it didn't exactly kill it. No, Your Honor, and the law doesn't say it in quite the words that all males... The justices just kept hammering him. Hammering him. before the court. Well, but you say you say what's before the court. What's before the court is your complaint. Curtis was sitting beside me and I kept punching him. What does that mean? What are they talking about? What does that mean? He kept saying, shh, shh, just be quiet. It's over, I'll tell you. I didn't understand what they were doing. But she says what caught her ear was a moment when Justice Rehnquist, when he called me... A saloon keeper?

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 wanted to do this day when I did. As arguments went on, Fred did at least try to do the thing that Ruth wanted him to do. I would say anything could be, you could pass a law saying no Negro will drive while intoxicated. Compare sex discrimination to race discrimination. 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. 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 close. 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.

To make a long story short, by the end of oral argument, things weren't looking great for Fred. I mean, I think that depends on the thrust of our decision. Alright, let me explain this. First of all, we do... At one point, he even interrupts a Supreme Court justice, which you don't do that. It just, uh, yeah. Wasn't happening. Well, you win some, you lose some, right, ladies? What? No, no, no, no.

Here comes the craziest part of the story. Okay. 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. ...argue next in... And it just so happened...

...75, 699, Massachusetts... happened that it was a case being argued by none other than Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Somehow she organized, I've now forgotten how, to get that argued the same day. That was on purpose? Yeah, oh yeah. Oh my god, that's genius. Yeah, no, she's a genius. Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the court.

Wait, you're saying she somehow managed to get herself in the court on another case on the same day? So I couldn't confirm that for sure. I don't even know how you would do that. 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. The court was asking him questions and he was completely incapable of answering so finally

the court just went, oh never mind. And then when Ruth stood up to argue her case, they asked her about Greg V. Boran. 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. My question is whether we should examine that law under the same or a different standard than if it were a discrimination against the other sex. My answer to that question is no, in part because such a law has an insidious impact against females.

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. Against females. It stamps them docile, compliant, safe to be trusted. But your answer always depends on their finding some discrimination against females. Is it your view that there is no discrimination against males? I think there is discrimination against males.

If there is such discrimination, is it to be tested by the same or by a different standard from discrimination against females? My response to that, Mr. Justice Stevens, is that almost every discrimination that operates against males operates against females as well. Is that a yes or a no answer? I just don't understand you. Are you trying to avoid the question? 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 doesn't work as a two-edged sword. They go back and forth a bit. Justice Stevens is basically like, why do you keep insisting on this? 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. So your case depends then on our analyzing this case as a discrimination against women? No, my case depends on your recognition that using gender as a classification, resorting to that classification, is highly questionable and should be closely reviewed. 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. That was really something seeing this little woman get up. I don't know of any purely anti-male discrimination. I'll never forget that because she was small. In the end, the women are the ones who end up hurting. Yes. She's so small in person. But she had a lot of force.

The case is submitted. About two months later, December 20, 1976, Justice William Brennan announces that the court is striking down the Beer Law. We hold that Oklahoma's gender-based differential does constitute an invidious violation of the Equal Protection Clause. 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. It wasn't as rigorous as race. It wasn't strict scrutiny. They settled on a standard that we now call intermediate scrutiny. And it was pretty damn close. RBG would go on to strengthen this standard over time, but this was the case. That first got us a kind of equal rights amendment through a side door. We wished that the court had picked a less frothy case to make that announcement.

But of course we were very, very pleased that after that... 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? Who called? National News called to tell me that we had won. I didn't ask what we had won. I didn't ask anything. I just said okay. She hung up. I stood there for a little bit and then Craig called and he wanted me to come down and celebrate with the guys there. His fraternity, fraternity, yeah.

She told him no thanks. And then she hangs up the phone and she gets one more phone call. And it was my husband. He was in North Carolina again. And he heard something about the case, but he didn't hear it all. And he said, what's going on now? And I said, we won. And he says, is it over? I said, it's over. It's totally over with. He said, good.

And he hung up. I fixed me a very good drink, vodka and coke. 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. Carolyn says that for decades after this case, she didn't understand what it meant. She didn't understand what it meant as a legal principle or that it ushered in this new era for women in this country.

country. But even so, in her own life, this case was a beginning. It was a couple of years after we won that case. I went into China right after it opened up. She saved up money and went with her sister-in-law because Dwayne didn't want to come with him. I did. I was so curious. And we never went like the tourists went. We'd get on a train and if we saw something we wanted to stop and see, just curious about the people and how they lived. I saw so much and I talked to so many people while I was gone that it was like a hunger. And you grow from it. And I just wanted to see things. And that just opened the doors for me. Music What happened to Carolyn in the end?

She and Dwayne divorced in 2007. And when you said she didn't know the effect her case had for decades, like when did she figure it out? How? So, in around 1996, this professor, a guy named Bob Darcy, calls her up and invites her to speak at a class. And she is kind of learning from the students and from the professor, like, what the case actually stood for.

And then eventually the professor puts her in touch with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and they meet again in person. And it sort of starts to dot on her. One of the letters. I don't know if that's the one. 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. Can you read it? No, I don't have my glasses. You'll have to read it. 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.

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. Yeah. I was going to get that framed. I haven't done it yet. Signed Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I need to get it laminated before I have it framed. Producer Julio Longoria.

I'm Jad Abumrad. Thank you for listening. And here is More Perfect in Radio Labs' David Gable to read the credits. Supreme Court audio is from OYE, a free law project in collaboration with the Legal Information Institute at Cornell. Leadership support for More Perfect is provided by the Joyce Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Charles Evans Hughes Memorial Foundation. That's it? I want to read more! More Perfect is produced by me, Jad Abinrod, Suzy Lektenberg, Jenny Lawton, Julia Longoria, Kelly Prime, Sean Ramoswaram, who's no longer here, Alex

Overton, and Sara Khare. I didn't even get to say it. Ah, anytime. I love doing this. 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.

I did a lot of language lessons for kids. Listen and repeat. I think it's so groupin' 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 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 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 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 and up and up and up and up and Hi, my name is Treza. I'm calling from Colchester in Essex, UK. Leadership support for Radiolab's science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, the Seymonds Foundation Initiative, and the John

Templeton Foundation. Foundational support for Radiolab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.