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“Personal Is Political”

The common belief among feminists that “the personal is political” is usually traced to a 1969 essay of the same name by second-wave feminist Carol Hanisch, who argued that many personal experiences (particularly those of women) can be traced to one's location within a system of power relationships. In this case, Hanisch was focusing on men's power and women's oppression; for example, if a particular woman is being abused by a male partner, then societal oppression of women is an important factor in explaining this abuse. Sometimes, the statement is misinterpreted as the opposite—that women's personal behavior is of political significance. Thus, many women and men strive to make “feminist choices” in their day-to-day lives.

Origin

Hanisch was not the first to suggest that personal experiences were the result of social structures or inequality. In 1959, sociologist C. Wright Mills published a book, The Sociological Imagination, in which he argued that individual experiences are inextricably connected with the greater social and historical context. If an individual is unemployed, then that unemployment may be related to larger patterns of unemployment in that society. This focus on contextual factors is important in the social sciences. Betty Friedan's now-famous book The Feminine Mystique refers to “the problem that has no name,” in which (white, middle-class) women felt constrained, unsatisfied, and unhappy in their roles as wives, mothers, and homemakers. Although this dissatisfaction was often treated as a personal problem both by the women themselves and doctors, Friedan blames the position of women in society. Friedan's arguments became very influential for second-wave feminism, and despite its specificity to white, middle-class women, the book is considered canonical in feminist history and theory.

At the time Hanisch was writing, the male-dominated political left often posed an opposition between personal and political issues; thus, if women held a discussion group around personal issues, it was derisively referred to as “therapy,” a designation she thought was misguided. In actuality, Hanisch argued, women's personal problems were political problems, inasmuch as they were caused by women's inequality and women themselves were not to blame. By extension, these problems could not be solved by personal solutions, but only by social change. Many groups embraced this idea as a way of framing their agendas. For instance, the radical feminist organization Redstockings claimed that women failed to see their situation as a political condition: a class hierarchy, with men placed above women. Similarly, the Combahee River Collective, a black organization, stressed that its feminism included insights that were gleaned from members' personal experiences with racism and sexism. Many other documents from this period feature similar arguments. This focus on the problems of women's everyday lives, rather than just legal and economic phenomena, is one feature that distinguishes second-wave from first-wave feminism— along with the willingness to implicate society and even men themselves.

Impact

The statement that “the personal is political” was influential in second-wave feminism, shaping the development of social analyses and theories, encouraging new types of activism, and widening the scope of issues that could be defined as “feminist issues.” For example, it was one of the premises underlying feminist consciousness-raising groups. When feminist women formed consciousness-raising groups, they met regularly to discuss a particular topic, such as careers or parenting, sharing their personal experiences and generating new knowledge based on those experiences. This knowledge was the basis for further activism. Although one does not hear about consciousness-raising groups as much today, they had a profound influence upon radical feminist theorizing at the time, and many of the works produced by group participants (e.g., The Dialectic of Sex, by Shulamith Firestone) are still very well-known. Hanisch herself stressed that an interplay of action and theory, sometimes called praxis, is key to the development of good theory.

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