
Kitty Marion: an actress who became a suffragette who planted bombs - DanBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-44210012
======
DoreenMichele
_Riddell says that it was only the outbreak of World War One in 1914 that
curbed the escalating militancy of the suffragettes._

This piece is interesting to me. I spent my childhood very uninterested in
history because in school we basically memorized the names of politicians and
the dates of starts of wars. There was nothing interesting presented to me.

Then I began to learn that wars impacted things like fashion and women's
rights and freedoms and had substantial economic impact. I was hooked.

Many people don't realize it, but the long dresses and many underskirts that
preceded the war stopped being the fashion precisely because we had this war.
Women were asked to donate their many underskirts and excess material from
long dresses to the war effort. They were also asked to donate their corsets,
which were often made of metal, so munitions and the like could be made from
them.

This is how we went dramatically from Victorian fashion -- with long dresses,
long sleeves, many underskirts and crippling corsets -- to the Flapper Era of
loose fitting mini dresses. This was hugely liberating in and of itself and
improved the health of women. Women suffered terrible gastrointestinal issues
from corsets and some of them had lower ribs removed in order to fit a smaller
corset. It was horrible.

This is akin to if an Islamic country suddenly stopped requiring the veil in
public. Women in conservative Islamic countries typically suffer vitamin D
deficiencies because they can't go out in public without being covered head to
toe. It has significant negative health consequences.

I was a military wife for a lot of years. The military is weirdly empowering
of women in old fashioned roles. I was a homemaker, yet I routinely had a
power of attorney and was expected to make decisions and handle family
business in my husband's absence. War is often something that does good things
for the status of women.

It saddens me to learn that women were engaging in terrorist activities to try
to gain some freedom and this only ended because the entire world went to war.
I would like to think we can find our way forward on such topics more
peaceably, though I am currently so frustrated with certain things that I am
having one of those moments where I kind of understand why some women would
just lose their shit and start making bombs. Staying the course on a peaceable
path sometimes seems mind-bogglingly hard.

~~~
Izkata
> This is akin to if an Islamic country suddenly stopped requiring the veil in
> public. Women in conservative Islamic countries typically suffer vitamin D
> deficiencies because they can't go out in public without being covered head
> to toe. It has significant negative health consequences.

Used to be Iran didn't require it [0].

One of the captions on that page ("to protect the achievements of women’s
right in the [preceding] 70 years of Iranian history") made me curious, so I
did a quick search and found something interesting [1]. Apparently, the
liberation they were defending in 1979 was actually forced upon them
generations earlier.

[0] [https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/women-protesting-
hijab-1979...](https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/women-protesting-hijab-1979/)

[1] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashf-
e_hijab](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashf-e_hijab)

~~~
DoreenMichele
Thank you for those links.

I have read some pieces about Iran, including the memoirs _Reading Lolita in
Tehran_ and _Persepolis._ From what I gather, when women leave an Islamic
country and are free to wear western clothes in public, this is a big deal and
the whole _feel of the sun on my skin_ is a thing they comment on to each
other as some significant detail.

I can actually feel some sympathy for women objecting to the removal of the
veil being forced upon them, but I'm not sure I can say anything constructive
about that which has any hope of being appreciated by a mostly western
audience.

~~~
mda
Doesn't this show the hypocrisy of western civilization? The "history", that
is mostly written by western historians is so much rife with lies and
inconsistencies, I lost my respect to study of history and historians long
time ago.

------
ravenstine
Why is the word terrorist in quotes? That's exactly what she was. That word
isn't just reserved for men who wear turbans.

~~~
Barrin92
Because the word terrorism has a universal condemning connotation. Given the
tumultuous history of the US and its founding based on militant popular
revolt, the history towards political violence has always been ambivalent.

So in cases like this were the militant struggle involved fighting for what we
now consider a fundamental right rather than purely barbaric violence, people
want to make a distinction from terrorism.

~~~
lopmotr
Aren't all terrorists fighting for something they hope will become a
fundamental right rather than purely barbaric violence? If it was aimless
violence, it would just be crime, not terrorism. Terrorism has a political
goal.

~~~
walshemj
Depends the original "terrorists" Rusian Nihilists for example had terror as
the aim - more recently its targeted as random killing of kids turns off your
supporters.

For example the IRA bombs in London where often targeted at economic targets
ie look we can cost you so deal with us - ok they also had a go at the PM and
almost succeeded a couple of times.

With ISIS its almost a return to the original roots though there is also an
element of sectarian almost genocidal which is why targeting medics and
children is ok for them.

------
rayiner
Sanitizing history like this has a very negative consequence. We are taught to
believe that there is such a thing as bloodless revolution. And that makes it
easy to dismiss movements like blacklivesmatter any time someone commits
violence in the name of the movement. After all, if the suffragettes got
justice without firing a shot, why can’t everyone else?

~~~
cooper12
Unfortunately, those in charge of writing history are very prone to sanitizing
unappealing details. Take Helen Keller for example. We learn a lot of minor
details of her history. But students never learn how she was a loud socialist.
Information like that would be uncomfortable, inconvenient, or too challenging
for those learning history.

> During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing classes
> constantly hounded them, received their theories with the most savage
> malice, the most furious hatred and the most unscrupulous campaigns of lies
> and slander. After their death, attempts are made to convert them into
> harmless icons, to canonize them, so to say, and to hallow their names to a
> certain extent for the “consolation” of the oppressed classes and with the
> object of duping the latter, while at the same time robbing the
> revolutionary theory of its substance, blunting its revolutionary edge and
> vulgarizing it.

~~~
oh_sigh
People are interested in HK because of the adversity she overcame, not because
of her political viewpoints. I'm sure if she was a staunch libertarian, we
would not hear much about those viewpoints either - because it isn't relevant
to the interesting part of her life story.

~~~
cooper12
To Keller the politics had a lot to do with blindness:

> I was appointed on a commission to investigate the conditions of the blind.
> For the first time I, who had thought blindness a misfortune beyond human
> control, found that too much of it was traceable to wrong industrial
> conditions, often caused by the selfishness and greed of employers. And the
> social evil contributed its share. I found that poverty drove women to a
> life of shame that ended in blindness.

If we're only telling her story as an allegory and divorce her from her
personal viewpoints, we might as well tell fables.

~~~
oh_sigh
She was already nationally famous before she became a political activist. And
the reason she was famous was because of the adversity she overcame as a
child, not because she had pretty run of the mill viewpoints on socialism.

------
Nasrudith
In a totally divorced from morality sense violence has a purpose in making the
current status quo less worth it to the powers that be. If they won't respond
to decency they may to the costs imposed - even if it isn't the desired
response. Violence isn't needed per say for this so long as damage can be
inflicted by some means.

Boycotts and strikes can do so as well and are generally less backfire prone.
Granted they require valuable resources in their control to do so. Meanwhile
everyone has some capacity for violence and it becomes more tempting in
response to violence received. In some cases it is the only option. Look at
Haiti's bloody history. Their revolt was brutal but they had lived in a
situation that was essentially a death camp - population of slaves was
sustained by importation. Peace was never an option and there was no halfway.
Once the revolt started it was either kill every oppressor or be purged and
replaced by the next shipfull.

------
wz1000
See also:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Goldman)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Perovskaya](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophia_Perovskaya)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Markievicz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constance_Markievicz)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_It%C5%8D](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noe_It%C5%8D)

------
chriselles
For those interested in non violent movements/resistance, one of the greatest
bodies of work can be found at the Einstein Institute:

[https://www.aeinstein.org/](https://www.aeinstein.org/)

Gene Sharp the longstanding founder passed away earlier this year.

Much of the content is free.

Another great resource is Canvas(with a lot of free ebook content):

[http://canvasopedia.org/publications/](http://canvasopedia.org/publications/)

The co-founder Srdja Popovic was an instructor of mine for the Harvard JFK
School course he teaches.

He was a student leader in Serbia that helped to remove Milosevic from power
with non-violent concepts such as "laughtivism".

The data on non violent movements for social change suggests that non-violent
movements are twice as likely to be successful and more sustainable/resilient.

~~~
ekianjo
> The data on non violent movements for social change suggests that non-
> violent movements are twice as likely to be successful

it makes intuitive sense as well. Someone who resorts to violence can be
considered a public enemy and therefore engages in a zero sum game. Non
violent protests usually consider that both sides need to talk and not fight.

~~~
DoreenMichele
As I see it, one of the problems with violent protest is hypocrisy. It takes
the position that "I want you to treat me better because treating me so poorly
is morally wrong, and I am willing to treat you terribly to get it."

SJWs have such a bad reputation because many of them clearly don't really want
to end the current _Lord of the Flies_ pecking order that dictates some people
get crapped on and some people do the crapping. They often clearly just want
to change who plays those respective roles, often with an obvious eye towards
taking revenge against the current "privileged" demographic.

If you aren't advocating that _no one_ should be crapped on, it's really hard
to gain trust and it's really hard to convincingly claim the moral high
ground.

------
jordigh
> At that time I had a certain impression of suffragettes that many people
> did.

I don't know about the impression anyone else had, but the impression _I_ had
came from Disney and Mary Poppins: suffragettes were frivolous society women
of well-to-do means who just wanted to find a cause for the drama and
attention while neglecting their children and family.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvk1NZDFvZU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kvk1NZDFvZU)

Riddell goes on to list the chaining, the force-feeding, and the window-
smashing; I wasn't even aware of that. The whole suffragette movement for a
long time looked to me like a bunch of women complaining for a long time until
men, simply exasperated with the whining, decided to give in.

I had never even heard of "deeds, not words", nor about Emmeline Pankhurst, or
Emily Davison. Nor was I aware that women had to put up with the exact same
kind of mockery that they have to endure today:

[http://historyoffeminism.com/anti-suffragette-postcards-
post...](http://historyoffeminism.com/anti-suffragette-postcards-posters-
cartoons/)

[https://mashable.com/2016/09/03/anti-suffrage-
propaganda/#d9...](https://mashable.com/2016/09/03/anti-suffrage-
propaganda/#d9rNcd7jf5qC)

[http://mentalfloss.com/article/52207/12-cruel-anti-
suffraget...](http://mentalfloss.com/article/52207/12-cruel-anti-suffragette-
cartoons)

