Central to the United States’ Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) of the 1960s and 1970s, and prompted by urgency for collectivity; protests, advocacies, and feminist theory spurred the progressive unshackling of women from “male supremacy” and systemic oppression. “The personal is political” has since etched itself into a slogan, an outcry and a representation for women against the backdrop of systematically-indoctrinated patriarchal society.
As appendage to Carol Hanisch’s (1970) paper published in Notes from the Second Year: Women’s Liberation – the personal is political was initialized as an assertive rebuttal against dissenters of women’s conscious-raising groups, downplaying their political merits. The message encapsulated the importance of unlocking and voicing issues of oppression ensuing behind closed doors, involving: sex, abortion, housework, childcare and beauty misconceived as individually-personal problems not needing incorporation into the WLM. The term political fills the extensions of “power relationships” appropriated along social-institutional intersectionality.
2. Prelude: Intimidation – Personal, Political, or Both?
Receiving the instructions for this assignment, intending involvement in a public women-centered event in order to complete this analytical-review, …show more content…
Despite desperately wanting to stay true to its symbolic intentions; I find myself entangled in a Catch-22 rooted within, serving as a mechanism of both oppressive-isolation and collective-solidarity simultaneously. To flesh out my stance; I will address foundations upholding the WMM while making connections to issues representing: power relations, culture, and solidarity within the binding framework of cultural violence. All in the hope of enlightening an alternate inclusion to holistic