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Why lesbian and bisexual women should see “Suffragette”

History books often leave out the struggles of minorities who are fighting for equality, so when films like Stonewall or Suffragette are released to the masses, it’s bound to have those same underserved groups desperate for them to get it right. While Stonewall disappointed in its fictionalized retooling of the early LGBT riots, Sarah Gavron‘s Suffragette is much more successful in serving as an entry point in the push for women’s right to vote in Great Britain.

In Suffragette, Carey Mulligan stars as Maud, a young wife and mother who works tirelessly at the laundry where she’s been employed since she was a girl. Her boss thinks nothing of his sexual advances toward her and other younger girls, threatening to fire anyone who should disobey him. Maud, like her coworkers, desperately needs her job to keep her family afloat. Her husband, Sonny, works there, too, but has less hours and makes more money.

Maud feels stuck and sad is the misogynistic society and marriage she’s part of, and when she encounters a public protest put on by a group of suffragettes, her interest is piqued. The rest of the film follows Maud through the many things she must part with in exchange for joining the cause, including her young son. But what she gains is a newfound self-confidence and political interest in the personal, working alongside Edith Ellyn (Helena Bonham Carter), Violet Miller (Anne-Marie Duff) and Emily Davison (Natalie Press) to press the parliament to change the laws so that women can have the right to vote. And while Maud is a fictional character, both Edith and Emily are based on real women, as was Meryl Streep’s character, Emmeline Pankhurst. Although she’s more of a mythical figure with only a brief cameo in the film, Emmeline is known as one of the largest players of the women’s suffrage movement in the UK, and also had relationships with women.

“What we thought was if we told Emmeline Pankhurst’s story-she’s an exceptional woman, relatively privileged, and it would have been an examination of power in a way, the way you manage a movement,” Sarah said. But she and writer Abi Morgan “wanted to make something that felt contemporary and really resonated with the audiences across the globe now, women fighting inequality,” and that was through the eyes of someone less privileged, such as Maud.

“What we wanted to do was show a really ordinary woman with no platform, no entitlement, what drove her, a woman whose dealing with issues that are still 21st century-abuse in the workplace, working conditions, rights over her own children-things that, around the globe, women are still tackling-education, all those things,” Sarah said. “That felt like the way to access it and make it more contemporary and relevant.”

In her six years of research, Sarah said it was clear that there was “a whole range of incredible characters who got involved in the movement,” and that included gay and bisexual women.

“What you didn’t have in the UK was many women of color because we didn’t have immigrants at that point,” Sarah said. “We had tiny pockets. So that was the one, apart from two Asian aristocrats and one photograph of one Indian woman, you don’t have any women of color in it but only because of the ethnic make-up of the UK. But otherwise it was a very inclusive movement.”

Sarah cites Ethel Smyth as one of the important figures who was also openly lesbian.

“She was always part of the leadership. She was a very charismatic woman and she wrote the song ‘The March of the Women’ and she was a gay woman,” Sarah said. “And she actually dressed often in male clothes.”

But others were less out, as being in same-sex relationships was considered illicit.

“It’s hard to know because, obviously, at that time it was so taboo and a lot of people would have been in marriages and not come out,” Sarah said. “But I think that what the movement offered was great-women were very alone and lived very solitary lives. There wasn’t any radio, there wasn’t any TV. There were newspapers but there no channels of communication. And what politics offered was a way of women coming together and huge camaraderie and often friendship, and that’s really striking in the accounts.”

It’s hard to know the truth about relationships women had with one another because historians were often flippant about the suffragettes, and some were quick to label some lesbians simply based on diary entries where they wrote that they shared a bed with another woman.

“There are accounts of women traveling the country and it says ‘And I laid down to rest with so and so.’ And this particular male historian said, ‘Well, they’re all gay,'” Sarah said. “That’s his way of being dismissive and, of course, that’s a horrible thing to do and a horrible way of treating them. They may have been gay, or they may have been sharing a bed because they didn’t have much money and they were traveling through different countries. So it may have been used as dismissing in a horrible way and hopefully that’s shifting now. Hopefully those characters in the movement, we can recognize them now.”

But those who were out, it seems, were accepted as a part of the suffragettes and not deemed a sort of “lavender menace” that plagued 1960s and ’70s feminism in the Untied States.

“It seems to be widely known that Ethel Smyth was [gay], and she was completely embraced by the movement so yeah, you don’t see any sign of [homophobia] in research,” Sarah said.

Sarah noted that Rebecca Lenkiewicz‘s stage play Her Naked Skin “explored a lesbian relationship in the movement, but what we decided to do in this film was rather than to explore the sexual dynamics of a relationship, we wanted to just explore the politics.”

Suffragette opens in theaters this weekend.

“We have this relationship between Sonny and Maud, and that marriage was a way of exploring the power relationship between men and women. So the fact that he had control over her money, he had parental rights, we could explore all that within that relationship, which is why we kind of chose that path,” she said. And because it’s more about the power and politics, it’s hard to tell if Maud is, in fact, in love with Sonny, or if she’s ever been.

“Obviously it was a little complex because she was abused in the factory and so I’m sure Sonny offered her a way out of that, by the minute she was in marriage, she was safer,” Sarah said. “And he was a kind man, essentially. And so I think there was love there but I think that she outgrew him. I think she was stronger than him and she became involved in this movement and was a firebrand and he couldn’t cope with it so their love fell away at that point.”

As Maud, Carey Mulligan is in every single scene of Suffragette, and she’s incredible in the role. When I mentioned to Sarah that lesbians and bisexual women seem to really enjoy Carey, she laughed and said how pleased Carey would be to hear it.

“She’s a real woman’s woman. Firstly, she’s an out and out feminist. She’s a great friend to women. She really believes in women. She believes in roles like this,” Sarah said. “She’s very outspoken about sexism. She’s really on the side of helping women. And she’s also profoundly attractive.”

Carey Mulligan and Sarah Gavron

Suffragette is truly a film about women who demand to be seen and heard, no matter who they were or where they came from. The movement was unifying, and the movie is, as well. I asked Sarah what she thinks LGBT people will enjoy about the film, she said, “They’ll love it because it’s a film about people you don’t normally see on screen. It’s a film about women fighting for their rights. It’s got lot’s of contemporary resonances. It speaks to people today who are fighting for inequality. It speaks to people who are marginalized. These working women, particularly, were marginalized and I hope it’s got lot’s of positive messages how women should be empowered, women should speak out, women should stand up for themselves and have confidence. All those important things.”

Every single woman and oppressed person everywhere.

Suffragette opens in theaters this weekend.

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