Tuesday, 8 March 2016

Suffragette: Votes for Women

Suffragette is a film that is so ridiculously overdue; in two years it will have been one hundred years since certain (over the age of 30, married – 8.4 million) women were given the vote. It wasn't even until 1928 women (who were over the age of 21) were given the same voting rights as men. As is shown at the end of the film there were a few countries before the UK that gave women voting rights and many more that didn't until afterwards. The thing that's important to remember that the vote for women wasn't simply about votes but about gaining legal standing in a lot of areas – such as the legal recognition that mothers have rights over their children, as is mentioned in the film. It's hard to imagine now being so powerless, having no right to be in government, to have a say in the world that affects them, not even having the law recognise that you should be able to look after your child or own your house and everything else that women were denied then.
The film follows Maud Watts a woman who gets involved in the suffragette movement; we see as she tries not to get involved as she has seen the consequences it has for other women. As the film goes on we see the consequences that fighting for women's rights has on women's personal lives; Maud loses her job, she gets kicked out of her home, and when her husband has no idea how to raise a child – that's Maud's job after all – he simply gets his son adopted instead. Many men around the world like to pretend that women are inconsequential, that they run the world and control everything but they forget that without women everything would fall apart. Capitalism relies on women's unpaid labour after all – feeding men, raising children, keeping the house clean and fresh; men would struggle if they had to do all of that and 'run the world' all on their own. Icelandic women proved this by almost all of them protesting and after the country all but collapsed under the weight of women striking change began to happen and they are now the most 'gender equal' country in the world.
One thing that's striking about the film is actually how little has changed despite the hundred years having passed. For instance, there is talk about women becoming MPs and as much as we have moved on and more and more women are elected 72% of the UK government is still male. The majority of board members, CEOs and all the rest of the powerful positions in the UK are male. This is called Patriarchy, men controlling the government and men also pretending that it's no big deal. But that's exactly what Suffragette shows, it is a really big deal. So much so that women were prepared to go to hell and back to get it. There were many moments in the film where I almost cried because of just how important it is. When Emmeline Pankhurst stands and gives a speech to women on a balcony it's hard not to understand. When she says never surrender it's hard not to feel the importance of being a woman and fighting for the women alive today and those who will come after us. Even now women are still fighting to keep creating a better future.
The film, rightly, emphasises the physical struggle suffragists went through. They were beaten by police despite their lack of violence against others, and they were brutally force fed in the jails by a government who didn't want blood on their hands but was happy to deny them basic human rights. I'd like to say I learnt about all of this in school, that as a teenager I was taught about the horribleness of the Cat and Mouse Act of 1913 but I wasn't because I wasn't taught about it in school; I remember having one English lesson where we read a play about the suffragette's but my Academy school didn't feel it pertinent to teach us about women – not in history but also not much in other subjects. Women grow up around the world not learning their history, as we as unlearning sexism women have to learn that they do in fact have a history and that it's an amazing one full of strong, courageous women.
Women's words are often seen as violence and as such men often react with actual violence – this isn't absent from Suffragette; from Violet's abusive husband to the police brutality it is clear that women's actions and dissent are taken to be way too far. As is pointed out in the film, the Suffragette's weren't killing people, they weren't setting out to start a war as many men have for many causes throughout history, and one thing that can be said of the fight for women's liberation is that it is not one built on the bodies of murdered people – though it does remember the women who have died at the hands of men. After all women are not taught to be violent, to be aggressive, and instead they are taught to be quiet, submissive, and timid. Even now when we praise strong women there are still many women who are punished for it with violence and ridicule. Regardless of the rift between the suffragists and suffragette's we can thank both of them for gaining the women's right to vote; after all, a large part of the government giving in was, after World War I ended, a desire not to return to a time of civil disobedience by suffragettes. For example, countries that too had suffragists like France had to wait longer for the right to vote.
A character in the film calls the suffragette's actions unjustifiable; he is referring to blowing up letterboxes and smashing window's with rocks but stands idly by while the police batter women right in front of him. Pankhurst's words are important as she points out that women want to be lawmakers but not lawbreakers, implying that the second one is the only way to get to be the first. In the film, as in real life, the suffragettes blew up MP David Lloyd George's house and it is said by many as going too far. Women who weren't even allowed to own property were taught to respect it more than their own rights; to see brick and mortar as more sacred than their place in creating the law. Anything is more important than women or their right to be seen as human beings; something that is still constantly evident in today's society. Maud points out war is the only language men seem to speak; though I think that violence is never the answer I do think that women can't politely ask their oppressors for change because they hold onto their power with such force that they would never happily and voluntarily give it up.
Suffragette's finale is the death of Emily Wilding Davidson, a tragic but pivotal moment in the fight for women's rights. It rightly focused on what that death would have meant to those who knew her, to women fighting the same fight, and as it changes to real footage from her funeral it is hard to fight back the tears. It struck me however that there are still those who would have been watching not knowing what was coming, that there are those who don't know her name, and that is a travesty. That these amazing women and their fight is still not recognised – statues that don't exist, women we are not taught about, and even those women of colour who were part of the movement that we still have to fight to recognise and remember. It must have been a great honour to play those women but we still have to so far to go. Even now feminists of all different types still have to fight for basic rights still to be recognised – in all countries, Western and otherwise. Men fight to denigrate women, to objectify them and insult them so we don't rise up; they want to keep us reliant on them, keep us uneducated and apart so we don't take what is ours.

For what Suffragette teaches us, as all of women's history does, is that things can change. Women can get more rights, they can get men to respect them more, and that we don't just have to accept things as they are. Men's oppression of women isn't the way things are supposed to be, it isn't natural and normal it's completely man made (emphasis on the men) and as such women can tear it all down. I look forward to watching it happen and I encourage women to keep the memories of the suffragettes alive. Most importantly we must keep their passion alive, their desire for change, and their power for taking what they are owed. I look forward in future to sitting my future children down – especially if I have a daughter – and showing her this film; of having them be proud that these women existed, that they can be and do just as much as they did, and that things are getting better and that them watching that film – even just it existing – is proof.

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