I've always been a very, what I call, proud crier. Especially when it comes to women. To me, there is something about a strong women accomplishing something incredible that just makes me cry. I cried when Shalane Flanagan won the 2008 Olympic bronze medal and for the 2019 US Women's National Soccer team: women making their dreams come true. I've cried watching girls I babysat graduate, and I've proud cried almost every time students I coach read their poems for audiences. I cry learning about women who fought for the rights we have today.

But no one on this earth makes me proud cry like Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I see that tiny woman take her seat in the Supreme Court or work out with her trainer or hear that she's on the mend from another sickness because she's a billion years old, and it's instant tears. Jared and I went to a documentary about her last year, and I had silent fat ones rolling down my cheeks the whole time. We watched her biopic On the Basis of Sex last night and at the end, they have audio of RBG and show her walking, and I just lost it. She's incredible for many ways: she took both her first year classes and her husband's second year classes at Harvard Law while raising a toddler and caring for a husband with cancer, she pioneered the fight against sex discrimination, and was nominated to the Supreme Court at near unanimous a vote of 98-2. While she has fought for years for changing laws to reflect a more progressive America in regards to equality, when she was elected to the Supreme Court she was first considered a very moderate justice. However, over the last decade, she has been pushed further and further left as more conservative justices have joined the bench. It's incredible to hear her speak. To see the voice of progress to vehemently upheld in that teeny tiny body. She's my hero.

I recently listened to a podcast about moral licensing. Moral licensing, in short, is when someone does a good deed and then subsequently does bad deeds or more good deeds because of that first one. Some examples the podcast guy used where: Bringing Jackie Robinson into the Major Leagues, one good thing beget other good things as the Major Leagues became integrated. However, he also said social psychologists have studied that people, say who voted for Barak Obama, will then feel justified that they are not a racist (because they voted for a black president) but will then harbor very prejudice notions and subconsciously act on them: i.e. I cannot be racist because I voted a black man president.

The podcaster then took a look into countries that have had female leaders and found that many countries who'd had a female head of state or country had been one and dones: one female leader, then back to male leadership in the next elections. According to Pew Research there have been at least 13 women elected to head office around the world that have lasted less than a year in the top job. Critics and opponents tie what they perceive to be downfalls in their female leaders' abilities to her sex. But some countries haven't one and done. And it's not always the western countries one would assume. As of 2016 according to Time Magazine, both Pakistan and India have had a woman head their countries more than once. As we all are probably too much aware, in the US, the land we like to think of as free and brave, where we have equality and justice for all, has never had a woman president.

All in all, I think moral licensing is partially how we get a president like Trump after a president like Obama. We take one step forward and celebrate the election of the first black president. We praise our progress. Then we take a leap back and elect someone who calls refugees of color "animals." But we aren't a racist country because we've had a black president. I don't think we can actually say we've made progress until the election of a person of color, the election of a woman, the election of a member of the LGBTQ community is no longer cause for celebration. Progress is when those things are normal. People like Ruth Bader Ginsburg have fought and fought not only for our country, but for us as individuals. It's cause for pride and celebration, sure, but it's been almost 100 years since women gained the right to vote. RBG has been fighting this fight her whole career and we still can't look at ourselves today and feel that equality is a normal way of life. I, obviously, feel that the best leader should lead, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity, religion, all of the things, but come on, America. To apply the sentiment Martin Luther King Jr.'s words, I hope for a day when all of us are judged by the content of our character rather than the physical pieces that make us. I hope for a day when, for me, every time a woman has to fight I'm not brought to tears for her bravery, but instead I feel angry because that is not the world we live in anymore.