This has relevance, for me, from several angles. Firstly, as a woman, I am indebted to the suffragettes who paved the way and fought for freedom and equality for women.
Secondly, I am from Leeds and one of the staunch freedom fighters and associate of Emmeline Pankhurst was Leonora Cohen, also from Leeds. She was known as "The Tower Suffragette" who threw a crow bar at the case surrounding the Crown Jewels in an attack on the establishment. She fought for equality for women throughout her life and in 1928 all women over 21 were given the right to vote.
Thirdly, Leonora Cohen was a vegetarian from the age of 5. Whether this was a conscious decision or whether it was because meat was hard to come by, we don't know. She even used food as a weapon during her stay at His Majesty's Pleasure in 1913 and went on hunger strike, depriving herself not only of food but water too. After that she and her husband moved to Harrogate and opened a Vegetarian Boarding House. During the meat rationing of 1917/1918 the Government used prominent figures such as Leonora to spread propaganda for meat-less meals.
Even in the 1970s, with a resurgence of feminism, she was interviewed about her years of activism as a freedom fighter. Coincidentally this was the hippy-age decade when whole food shops increased, meat and dairy consumption were low and people ate more wholegrains and vegetables. It is interesting to note that the increased use of freezers brought women a different kind of freedom at this time with frozen food shops opening and working women cooking food in batches and freezing to save time.
Many papers have been written posing the question of vegetarianism being linked to militant and feminist behaviours. It is believed that vegetarianism and the women's movement are complimentary ways of creating an ideal world.
It may also be worth noting that this valiant vegetarian lived to be 105 years old.
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