Politics & Power Quote by Charlotte Bunch

Bunch’s line refuses the comforting fantasy that politics is something that happens “out there” in legislatures while real life unfolds safely “in here,” behind a front door. It’s a pressure test for the public-private split that has long protected power: if the home is framed as apolitical, then domestic labor, sexual violence, reproductive control, and caregiving can be treated as mere “family matters” rather than sites of rights and coercion. Her phrasing is deliberately totalizing - “no private domain,” “no political issue” - because incremental language is how institutions keep injustice politely off the agenda.

The intent is activist, not philosophical. It’s a tool for consciousness-raising: to make people recognize how policy migrates into the body and the household, and how supposedly individual troubles are often patterned, predictable, and therefore political. The subtext is also a warning: calls to “keep politics out of it” are usually bids to keep scrutiny out of it. Neutrality becomes a luxury good, purchased by those whose identities and relationships already align with the default rules.

Context matters. Bunch emerged from second-wave feminist organizing and the women’s rights-as-human-rights movement, where “the personal is political” wasn’t a slogan so much as a diagnostic method. Her twist adds reciprocity: politics isn’t just personal experience scaled up; it’s personal consequence scaled down. The move forces accountability on both sides - activists must translate lived reality into public demands, and policymakers can’t pretend their decisions stop at the Capitol steps.