agora 56:1 (2021) 3 David Waldron and Zeb Leonard, 'Ju-Jitsu and the Fight for Women’s Suffrage,’ Agora 56:1 (2021), 3–8 By the beginning of World War I, the burgeoning movement for women’s suffrage in Britain was facing a crisis of repression. Women protesting the British government’s refusal to grant women the vote were being routinely imprisoned and sent to mental hospitals, where they faced frequent beatings and assault from those who felt threatened by changes to the established political order. Many of the women went on hunger strikes to protest their status as criminals, arguing instead that they were political prisoners. The leader of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU), Emmeline Pankhurst, was arrested and underwent hunger strikes eight times between 1913 and 1914. Their actions were dismissed as hysteria, and the women were vigorously suppressed by the British government and police. Some of them were subjugated by brutal force feeding, a procedure that was both degrading and had appalling consequences for the women’s health. 1 Four of the wardresses then held me firmly down on my back on the bed, by my head, arms, and legs. The doctor then took a very thick rubber tube, and began to force it down my right nostril into my throat, which was sore and parched with the hunger and thirst strike … The acute agony, the inevitable retching and choking, and the feeling of suffocation, accompanied by the utter helplessness, all combined to make this the most unutterably hideous experience. 2 Ju-Jitsu’s Role in the Fight for Women’s Suffrage Ju-jitsu became a weapon in the struggle for women’s empowerment, spreading ‘like wildfire’ across the British Empire to Australia’s suffragette campaign. David Waldron and Zeb Leonard Federation University Figure 1. ‘The Suffragette That Knew Jiu-Jitsu: The Arrest’, by Arthur Wallis Mills, Punch, 6 July 1910, 9. Public Domain T