Suffragette Movement and how they didn’t get adakuran (got into submission)

Women are often told to follow Padaiyappa ideals, the most important one being not getting angry. Machas have a twisted idea that it is unmannerly for women to ask for equal rights. 

Yet, in the annals of history, the anger of women only helped to shape an equal society and a progressive one at that.

There are many instances to prove the point in history but perhaps there is no better example than the Suffragette movement where women rose their voice to get voting rights.

“In early 20th century Britain, the cause of female suffrage was usually ignored by the press and dismissed by politicians. To gain support for their right to vote, suffragettes turned away from peaceful protest and embraced militant tactics that grew to include window breaking and arson. Their fight for equality, which escalated in violence in 1912 and 1913.”

And, the women that drove the suffragette:

Emmeline Pankhurst was jailed 13 times for leading the Suffragette movement. She went on hunger strikes in prison and would be released only to be arrested again when she regains her health.

Hannah Mitchell grew up resenting unfair treatment such as being made to darn her brothers' socks while they got to relax. She was arrested for disrupting a political meeting and her husband paid the fine to release her so that she could do the household chores. As she noted in her autobiography, The Hard Way Up: "Most of us who were married found that "Votes for Women" were of less interest to our husbands than their own dinners. They simply could not understand why we made such a fuss about it."

Other notable women in the suffragette movement include Edith Garrud, Olivia Hockin and Barbara and Gerald Gould. Gerald is a man though, Barbara’s husband.

Emily Wilding Davison in particular engaged in militancy - arson, bombing and stone throwing to push the men to take women and their rights seriously. In the movie Suffragette, Carey Mulligan says, “We break windows. We burn things because war is the only language men listen to.” Davison was jailed nine times for her militancy. During her time behind bars, she was subjected to 49 force feedings (many suffragettes were force fed when they started hunger strikes in prison). In an article, she wrote that these feedings were a "hideous torture."

Women and men were finally granted equal voting rights in the United Kingdom in 1928. And later, voting rights for women spread around the world.

Now, if these women didn’t get angry and be mutinous, then the women of today would not have gotten the right to vote. In this case, anger helped achieve a greater purpose that made the world more livable for women.

Just like KK, these women were ridiculed, harassed and battered for wanting a more equal society (which shows how far we still have to go) - they wanted the men to know that they are capable of making their own decisions and that they should be let to their own means. That is what KK is fighting for as well, for women let to be on their own devices and not judged for the same choice men make and do. The only saddening thing is that even meenachis not understanding that.