longreads:

Sady Doyle is a writer and the proprietor of Tiger Beatdown.

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“The personal is political” is how the unspeakable, “private” issues of women—the men in the radical protest group who made rape jokes, the arrogant dismissals at the mostly-boy punk rock shows, the boss who made weird sexual comments, the date who raped you, the husband who beat you—became political concerns. It’s how “my problem” becomes “our problem.” It’s the catalyst for bringing marginalized experiences to light, and for finally understanding that it’s not happening because of who you are; it’s happening because of what you are, and that is something else entirely. Something which all of the people in your “what” have a vested interest in changing.

Yo, word. I’m looking forward to really re-claiming ‘the personal is the political’ for everyone, because I’ve noticed a lot of [people/white people/white men people/white men people who are well-to-do/white men people who are well-to-do and personally un-self-aware] eschew “the political” at all costs because they think their reasoning is some sort of Platonic butt-fuck of indubitable reason. When in fact, a-doy, the personal is the political, motherfucker, and when your politics, which you do have, steamroll my interests, you’re declaring war on a person, me, and fuck you.