Movie Review – On the Basis of Sex

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3 responses to “Movie Review – On the Basis of Sex”

1. 

   Dan Gardner

   January 5, 2019

   I can’t wait to see this unexpectedly great movie.

   My personal soapbox here: people say “thank you for your service” to military personnel with as much sincerity as a stranger says “bless you” after a sneeze. Yet, no one stands up and gives thanks to people, like Ginsberg, who fight and sacrifice just as much for our personal freedoms. Seriously, name a soldier in all of American history who has secured our freedoms today more than Ginsberg has. I’m not saying she did it alone, just like no soldier fights alone, but we heap praise on the former, and at best offer grudging acknowledgment to the latter. It’s really sad. Personally, most of the people who parade themselves as “American patriots” are traitors to what this country was founded for.

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2. 

   Jill Florio

   January 5, 2019

   What a thoughtful comment. Excellent point about the ‘thank you for your service’ routine. I really try to mean it when I say it, to show my gratitude in some small way. But there are so many many unsung heroes, or people who fought and won in other arenas, that just we gloss over. “We stand on the shoulders of giants,” indeed.

   We all have our soapboxes, and it’s kind of neat when we step onto a new one, like I felt happened with me in this film. As a woman, I ‘know’ the history of gender inequality, but it floors me to realize that *within my lifetime* discriminating on the basis of sex was freaking LEGAL. Not like something in the distant past. Just within a recent blip in time that I saw and felt and watched, and this is a reminder that no one deserves to be marginalized, and humanity still have a ways to go.

   One of the best moments of this film when Ruth realizes — like a meteor hitting her hard — that her own teenage daughter is a brand new kind of woman, one who *expects* freedom and equality. Jane won’t accept the kind of crap women have casually tolerated for centuries/millennia. It’s the kind of small moment-huge sea change thing for Ruth that movies really get across like nothing else can.

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3. 

   Dan Gardner

   January 5, 2019

   I hope we just passed through another one of those watershed moments with the recent #MeToo movement. Women need to understand that it’s not okay to be treated as a meat sack and stand up for themselves. I was talking to my mother about this and she said that in her career, in the medical field, she couldn’t possibly count the number of times she has been sexually harassed. She’s fortunate that she can blow it off pretty easily.

   I don’t know if I have much hope for men really “getting it” that they can’t just pour their desires onto women without consequences. I expect that a lot of men are scared and will change their behavior, but they’ll resent women for it. We have a long way to go.

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