“The Personal is Political” is a stupid statement. The personal “is” political, yet it “need not always be” political.
This much-echoed catchphrase is a prime example of how linguistic ambiguities dull our brains and allow for logically uninspired statements. To say that “The Personal is Political” can be one of two meanings:
1: That personal matters always have a significance or influence to other matters people colloquially treat as “political”.
2: That personal matters ought to always be treated in a way similar to how people treat colloquially “political” matters (i.e. be subject to scrutiny, be advocated for/against).
These are very different statements. No matter how many times certain intellectuels insist, the vast majority of people differentiate between “political” and “non-political” (i.e. personal) topics when they think about the world and their lives. Political matters are held up to debates and criticisms from the public, while personal matters are to be left alone and not subjected to the scrutiny of ideologies.
In the majority of cases, the use of “The Personal is Political” is an attempt to justify statement 2 using statement 1. The profound “discovery” of Frankfurt-arians is in fact trivial - everything is connected to everything else, so of course everything has a “political” impact. However, to imply statement 2 with 1 is a non-sequitur. Just because something can influence another thing that’s “political” doesn’t mean it deserves the whole treatment package for political matters, especially in our hyper-polarized discourse environment bordering commercialized team sports discussions in barbarism. Magnitude and causal certainty matters when you try to proclaim something as “political”. There is value to be had for the vast majority of people (chances are, you too) in being able to go about day-to-day life without being annoyed by the potential tertiary social impacts of their actions dreamed up by some sensationalist journalist (or worse, an influencer).
Heavens forbid people enjoy things in peace without combing through the vast multitudes of intermingled secondary effects of power structures and subconscious influences. Your unbearable annoyance is actively a political debt paid for by everyone else who has the misfortune of being in the same camp as you.