The personal is political. It’s a phrase that is often quoted and generally misunderstood. It was first published in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation (1970), as the title of an essay by Carol Hanisch. For early feminists, the ‘personal is political’ articulated a shift from individual struggle to collective action – an assertion that personal problems should be seen in political terms – that women were not consistently the victims of violence, abuse and discrimination because they were stupid, weak, mad, hysterical, having a period, pregnant, frigid, over-sexed, or “asking for it,” but because they were subject to gender-based oppression. Hanisch’s essay was a response to criticism of “consciousness raising” sessions held during the early women’s liberation movement, where women discussed the impact of sexism in their daily lives. Critics claimed such sessions were merely “group therapy,” not political action.

Hanisch argued that by equating personal testimony with political speech feminist “consciousness raising” produced an analysis of structural inequality. It required more than one woman’s story. It meant taking the focus off individual responsibility and recognizing women as a subjugated “class.” By multiplication personal narrative is transported into the realm of politics – this is what multi-vocality effects. Speaking from primary experience, both as an individual and as part of a “class” constitutes a political act. Carried into the register of representation, such acts of speech have the power to transform the public sphere – at first, incrementally, but over time and through accumulation, significantly.

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