some excellent points on “the personal is political”

Obviously, what people mean but won’t spell out when they say, “It’s easier,” is that it’s easier to give into patriarchal pressure than not. It’s the same reason that a lot of women find it “easier” to do all the housework, though it seems at first blush that it would be easier to share the housework. I’ve called it the “Nagging Differential” in the past, which is that women have to do more work around the house no matter what—either they have to do all the work or all the nagging, and sometimes all the work is easier than all the nagging. […] it’s often smart for an individual woman to go along with the patriarchy. At the end of the day, resistance will cost you more than compliance, which is how oppression, you know, works.