"Whoever we are, our understanding of gender, politics and feminism is going to be conditioned by our experience of love and sex, especially if we are straight. When we speak of fighting sexism, whether we know it or not, we’re bringing our broken hearts to the table, we’re bringing our wounded pride to the table, all those stomach-twisting sexual rejections, our frustration, our loneliness and longing, the memory of betrayal, the pain of our childhoods. We’re also bringing the anxious heat of our desire, our passion for our friends and partners and children, every time a lover has laid a hand softly over a part of your soul you didn’t know was stinging and soothed it. All of that at once, and more, and more, because gender politics are personal as well as political, but that doesn’t mean the political has to collapse into the personal"
This extract is from Laurie Penny's book, Unspeakable Things: Sex, lies and revolution (of which you can find an extract of here. or even better buy it, because it's amazing). I started with this quote though because it poetically and emotively sums up what it means to say that the personal is political. We are conditioned by our experiences, and when we comprehend, understand, discuss issues around gender and sex, it is our lived experiences which inform our understanding.
Penny's book is perfect. It looks at contemporary feminism in the way it should be looked at. As a personal experience of power which affects us all, not just females. It questions sex and sexuality in a way which needs to be questioned, it highlights the intersectional nature of oppressions, and addresses the misogyny in leftwing politics, the media, the internet. Her writing is beautiful and personal, and she is able to use language to express things which are often difficult to comprehend with the limits of the english language. Sometimes experience can only be felt and understood in abstract terms before words make it tangible, and Laurie Penny did that for me.
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