b'T3 Journal - Student Writing in Drama, University of Exeter 2019-20How can bodies/costumes/objects operate as tools for transgression and dissent in activist practice? Use specific examples to support your argument.Submitted for the second-year module Activism and PerformanceShort EssaysNell WestonWomens constant, persistent battle against the patriarchyexpresses that there is something unfamiliar about the manifests itself in protests to regain agency overchoice to starve to achieve a goal larger than oneself themselves, their own choices, and their own bodies. Itdue to the fact that it is a torturous journey to death has been argued that within feminist protest there is a(Grant 2019: 1)this emphasises the hardship that the persistent over-use of womens bodies in the continualSuffragettes put their bodies through for their cause. fight to stop the abuse of womens bodies (Gale 2015: 314).However, in my opinion this danger is something that Gales phrasing suggests that this action is a paradox andinformed the Suffragettes actions as activists and added something hypocritical and ineffective, even later statingmomentum to their campaign, due to the fact that that it is uncomfortable (Gale 2015: 314). This is due towomen clearly were viewed as too fragile to go through the debate that the female body cannot be read outsidesuch hardship; this is supported by Grants statment that of the frame of patriarchal and consumerist culture (Galethe suffragette hunger strikes capitalized upon the new 2015: 315)Gale is suggesting that using the female body,humanitarian sympathy for hungry people, especially either by causing it physical harm, or showcasing it naked,women and children (Grant 2019: 45) and that strikers merely perpetuates the ways in which women are perceivedwere shielded by the sympathies of the general public, under the patriarchy as expendable objects available towhich wouldnever stand for the death of a woman be used. However, I feel that this over-use is in fact astarving herself for the vote (Grant 2019: 59).Noticenecessity for transgression, in order to [redirect] gaze tohow he specifies a woman and not a person - it is not the symbolic potential of womens bodies (Gale 2015: 315),that the public sympathised with the Suffragettes in instead of simply being viewed as an object, and to usegeneral for starving, but specifically because they were the prejudice women experience to their own advantage.women experiencing it, demonstrating how women can 19th Century newspaper journalist W. T. Stead commenteduse the fact they, and their bodies, are perceived as the on the tactics of the Suffragettes by stating that womenweak (Grant 2019: 4) to their advantage within their were not so strong as man in fighting force but she isprotests. The second way in which the Suffragettes bodies immeasurably his superior in the capacity to suffer (Grantendured something traumatic for transgression was when 2019: 4), and went on to say that their hunger-strikingforce-fed in response to their strikes; not only was it tactics were the new weapons of the weak (Grant 2019:something the Suffragettes liken[ed]to torture (Grant 4). I agree that womens treatment throughout the ages2019: 63), but they described forcible feeding in thinly certainly has given them the ability to endure suffering,veiled terms of sexual violation (Grant 2019: 45). This is and it is this, in addition to the perception that womensunderstandable due to the fact that, like sexual violation, bodies are something fragile, that I would like to argue isit removed their agency and their bodily autonomy. As an effective use of the body in order to create transgress- Gale states, the female body oscillates between a subject ion in feminist activism. and object position (Gale 2015: 315), and the lack of autonomy caused by force-feeding reflects this. While The Suffragettes infamous hunger strikes, used inarguably the force-feeding of Suffragettes only reinforces their fight to gain the vote, put the activists bodies onthe idea that women are viewed as commodities to be the line for the good of their cause, which in turn leadcontrolled under the patriarchy, their act of enduring the them to be forcibly fed (Grant 2019: 59) in their prisonforce-feeding succeeds in redirecting [the] gaze to the cells. The protest of starving oneself is described assymbolic potential of womens bodies (Gale 2015: 315), a [performance] of death (Grant 2019: 1), and Grantas it presents the idea to the public that, if women cannot 22'