When I sat in con law class, the lack of verbal dissents from Ruth Ginsberg always got under my skin. There you are thinking that you're taking up the flag and moving things forward in the name, of dare I say it, feminism - enduring the insults from your almost exclusively male professors (I remember one who made me sit in the back of lecture because I didn't wear a skirt), going deeper and deeper in student loan debt with every semester, and having you're A grades relegated to alleged quid pro quo for sexual favors - and you're thinking why doesn't Ginsberg open her mouth and let Scalia have it already?

Maybe I wanted to live vicariously through her righteous indignation because of my own inability to air mine in any sort of public forum where anyone would care but still. I would say that for the last 20 years there's been this growing anti-feminism, anti-activist sentiment among women. The activism of the '70s had been replaced with the shoulder pad-wielding male competitors of the '80's, the social-climbing hedonists of the '90s, and the designer toting hooking up Paris adherents of the new millennium.

We all compete in the same arena. I know that other women aren't happy with the way things shake out in our culture. In the words of Salma Hayek, women have "to be beautiful, smart, skinny, tall, rich, successful at your job, married to the right guy and have genius children. And by the way, they also have to be a nun!" At this point, you have to admit that staying home and taking care of the kids doesn't seem so bad in light of the ever-increasing demands on the New Woman.

Men may feel the same pressure to be the perfect alpha but at least our culture makes provision for their stress release. They're expected and encouraged to be sexual, use their free time for hedonistic pursuits, and forgiven when they fall off the monogamy wagon. Women can't even get off. We're told that we don't need sex and have monogamous natures. It's even illegal to sell vibrators in several states - really. In Texas, it's illegal to "sell obscene devices with the intention of sexual gratification". I wonder if it's illegal to go to the strip club in Texas...right.

But I digress. The point is that I really had given up…given up on Ruth and given up on women in general. With breaking news coverage of the Anna Nicole Smith overdose on CNN and every new accounting of celebutante rehab woes, it seemed like there was no way to turn the tide. The world loved women but loved them rich and stupid. And no one had anything to say about it. Or so it seemed.

This is a monumental moment in jurisprudence. Ruth Ginsberg has found her voice. Both in the abortion case the court decided last month and the discrimination ruling it issued on Tuesday, Justice Ginsburg read forceful dissents from the bench. In each case, she spoke not only for herself but also for three other dissenting colleagues, Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter and Stephen G. Breyer

In the abortion case, in which the court upheld the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act seven years after having struck down a similar state law, she noted that the court was now "differently composed than it was when we last considered a restrictive abortion regulation." In the latest case, she summoned Congress to overturn what she called the majority's "parsimonious reading" of the federal law against discrimination in the workplace.
Now, to read a dissent aloud is an act of theater that justices use to convey their view that the majority is not only mistaken, but profoundly wrong. Scalia has read dissents aloud throughout his career. You can't shut him up. But Ruth Ginsberg has been quiet for years…until now.

Never before in her 15 years on the court has she delivered two verbal dissents in one term. In her past dissents, both oral and written, she has been reluctant to breach the court's collegial norms. Why is this so important? What she's saying is that these rulings aren't about the law – they're about politics, or rather, the Bush Administration's agenda. Hallelujah!

Maybe this is what it's going to take to get women off their asses. Maybe we need to have our civil liberties taken one by one until we're hoping on buses to get abortions in Canada and getting passed over for promotions only to realize we have no legal recourse since we didn't uncover the gender-biased HR practices within 180 days of their commission (180 days after we didn't get our raise) before we decide that we have to get involved. And I think we're just about there.

This '08 election is going to set the scene for a major shift in how women perceive themselves and their ability to avail themselves of the political process. Here's why: for the first time in voter history the target demographic for campaign strategists is the unmarried women dubbed by political pundits as the Single Anxious Female (SAF).

Who is this SAF: she's one the young side - 18 and 44, white (64 percent), unanchored (36 percent move every two years), unaffluent (earning $30,000 or less a year), relatively uneducated (only 14 percent are college grads), and thoroughly not happy with the direction of America (Iraq, health care, equal pay, and education are top issues).

According to the most recent Census data, 22 percent of the voting-age public is never-married women – 22%! Once seen by pollsters to be a politically inconsequential voting block—marriage has always been a top social factor that controls voting—single women are slowly starting to turn out. In the 2000 general election, for instance, the number of unmarried women voting was 19 percent. In 2004, that number jumped to 22.4 percent, and it's expected to vault higher in 2008.

Betsy Myers, the woman who launched the White House Office for Women's Initiatives and Outreach during Bill Clinton's presidency and is now the COO of Barack Obama's campaign, believes these women are the key to the '08 election, "The word is, this is the fastest-growing population for these campaigns to grab". Now, you know that the GOP jokesters and even Obama aren't going to really court these SAFs or commit any sort of resource to understanding they're concerns.

But you know that Hillary is on the motherfucker. She's held press events for "women on their own" in New Hampshire, Iowa, South Carolina, and Nevada. 22%+ of the electorate is comprised of angry women looking for change…looking for a candidate that will represent their interests.

I'm tingling just at the prospect of a woman in the White House. God, I can just see Bill on his sax and Fleetwood Mac reunited for the Inauguration. I know it's not in the bag by any means but we're closer than ever to a shift from testosterone to estrogen and I think women have hit their tipping point.

We're mad as hell and we're not going to take it anymore. It's time to stack the executive and legislative branches in our favor. I say the morning after pill, sex ed, insurance coverage for birth control prescriptions, equal pay for equal work, 50-50 split on household duties between partners, and orgasms all around. Bring on the vibes!