The personal is the politcal. Know what it means, where it came from?

[Remember Me]

Have a good guess?

(Wish I could award a prize to the best answer. LOL. And yes, the other little girls played dolls; I played school -- haven't thought about that in decades!)

[boston bean]

1. getting women to understand that some personal problems had a societal root.

Raising consciousness about womens issues was the first step in getting women to realize that the personal is political. In other words, the deck was stacked, it was not just them personally having these issues, but a larger societal issue.

That is pretty much how I have always interpreted it.

edit, i totally read your post wrong. I don't think it can be attributed to any particular woman.

[Remember Me]

2. Excellent!

My understanding of it was that it arose out of the consciousness-raising groups when women started to share details of their lives and came to realize that the problems they were having weren't just their own fault, or "just the way things are (and have to continue to be)" but systemic PROBLEMS and that the system was, as you put it, stacked against them.

Domestic violence? Well, I can see that mine is not just an isolated case, and why should he have the right to hit me and nothing can be done about it? Why won't cops stop them? Why should comedians laugh about it? Hmmm. Oh, you're paid less than men doing your job? Me too! And you don't get a promotion while some male kid comes in that you have to train to do the job of being your boss? Hmmmm, me too. I work just as hard, why can't I have the same pay? Oh, the men where you work whistle at you and call you names? Hmm, me too. The men don't have to put up with that, whys should we? What's that? You had to quit work as a teacher just because you got married? And you had to quit your stewardess job when you got married? Hmmm, pilots don't have to do that. What's getting married have to do with it? Why do they only hire women to work on planes anyway? What? The boss asked you if you were on birth control when you went for a job interview? And if you had kids? And you can't leave your husband because you can't rent an apartment without some man co-signing, and can't buy a house or start the little business you want to start because you can't get credit in your name? That's ridiculous.

When we got together and began to compare notes about our lives and the myriad ways in which "the system" -- i.e., patriarchy -- quite purposefully held us down (image: boot on neck) and prevented not just our ADVANCEMENT but our basic humanity, and our basic equality, we realized we needed POLITICAL solutions, not the personal solutions that depended on our own INDIVIDUAL efforts, and talent, and luck, and money or other resources. Indivdiually we could change little, except (if we were very fortunate and very canny) for ourselves and maybe one or two others. But if we banded together as a force to be reckoned with -- and the suffragists did, we might get somewhere.

The personal is the political.

The original source -- it was the title of a little essay written in early 1969 by a woman named Carol Hanish, who still is alive and has her own website: http://www.carolhanisch.org/index.html

And her original essay is there as well: http://www.carolhanisch.org/CHwritings/PIP.html

The Personal Is Political
by Carol Hanisch
February, 1969

For this paper I want to stick pretty close to an aspect of the Left debate commonly talked about—namely “therapy” vs. “therapy and politics.” Another name for it is “personal” vs. “political” and it has other names, I suspect, as it has developed across the country. I haven’t gotten over to visit the New Orleans group yet, but I have been participating in groups in New York and Gainesville for more than a year. Both of these groups have been called “therapy” and “personal” groups by women who consider themselves “more political.” So I must speak about so-called therapy groups from my own experience.

The very word “therapy” is obviously a misnomer if carried to its logical conclusion. Therapy assumes that someone is sick and that there is a cure, e.g., a personal solution. I am greatly offended that I or any other woman is thought to need therapy in the first place. Women are messed over, not messed up! We need to change the objective conditions, not adjust to them. Therapy is adjusting to your bad personal alternative.

We have not done much trying to solve immediate personal problems of women in the group. We’ve mostly picked topics by two methods: In a small group it is possible for us to take turns bringing questions to the meeting (like, Which do/did you prefer, a girl or a boy baby or no children, and why? What happens to your relationship if your man makes more money than you? Less than you?). Then we go around the room answering the questions from our personal experiences. Everybody talks that way. At the end of the meeting we try to sum up and generalize from what’s been said and make connections.

Please do yourself a favor and read not only the original essay but her explanation of how it came to be.

[boston bean]

3. just read it again, and all I can think of each time I read it is

that Carol Hanisch must be at the very least upset at how the women's movement has turned out.

Women were turned into to super people. Doing all the same shit for men that we have over the years. Plus work a full time job, plus be responsible for the care of the children, still earn less, still not smashing the glass ceiling, etc.

And families needing two incomes instead of one, the men got screwed too. I like how she mentions our capitalistic system.

It would be nice to go back to the roots. But truly, feminism is so splintered right now, around race and religion, I am not having a lot of hope for radical change in my lifetime. I believe her paper touches on that as well. Women do need to relate to other women based on the politics of it all, but much of it is personal. And a lot of it stems from looking inward instead of outward.