Like it or not, everything is political.

I had a conversation with a friend recently, a friend who has been running art workshops that aim to understand who gets left out of art galleries and why. Ironically the piece of art that my friend has been told will be left out of the gallery made from the workshops, is a piece by a non-binary student who challenges gender conformity in their art. And why? Because it’s too political.

There’s little understanding from the decision maker it seems, that the choice not to include the piece is just as political as it would be to hang it alongside the other creations. Both choices, to display or not to display, are choices rooted in politics. And we hear it so much don’t we? “Don’t make this political”, “I don’t want to get political”, “It’s not right to politicise their death”, this last one most often said after a person from a marginalised group is killed in an often violent way. But these statements are impossible ones, because everything is political.

Here’s a statement - when people say “that’s too political”, or that they “don’t want to get political”, what they actually mean is that they don’t want to talk about politics that threatens a system they exist comfortably in. Because it’s not all political choices that bother them, we all make political choices every single day.

How did you consume news this morning? Did you watch on TV, did you select GB News, did you select Sky News, did you select BBC News? Did you read a physical paper, was it The Guardian, was it The Daily Mail, was it The Independent? Did you open social media to get your news? Did you go to a verified news outlet, or did you go to the Twitter trending topics? All of these are political choices, because all those outlets have their own political agenda, and if you rejected mainstream media as a source for your news, that’s an even bigger political choice. Did it feel political when you made it? Probably not.

Politics is all around us. It’s a tool we use to understand and address problems, it’s how we measure right and wrong, what we deem to be moral and immoral, how we think about issues and challenges facing us individually and collectively. You cannot argue that politics is separate to humanity and human experience, when it is a system made by humanity, for humanity.

And here’s the greatest irony - the people who don’t realise how political everything is, those are the most political amongst us. Because to be blessed with the privilege to move through the world without having to think about politics means that it’s working perfectly for you.

Never had to question why your school textbooks were published over 40 years ago and are falling apart? Never had to worry about your home being lost because your parents owned it outright? Always had the funds to get what you wanted when you want it? Never had to question if people were staring at you when you walked into a room because they like your outfit or because they don’t like the colour of your skin? Never had to plan an escape route in a situation where you’re “the only one” and felt sick with anxiety - only woman, only person of colour, only gay person? Never voted because it doesn’t make a difference to you who wins? That’s politics working perfectly for you.

And you’d never think to suggest that any of those things are “too political” - even though they very much are political in existence. But if a painter who grew up poor in a school with limited resources and a serious lack of opportunities creates something artistic driven by anger at feeling left behind by society? Something that highlights housing inequality for example, suddenly they are “too political".

The silence on the subject from someone who grew up in the wealthy neighbourhood in the nice house their parents owned is just as political an act as the artist who grew up poor, and housing insecure, creating artwork. And they are both political acts stemming from the same root cause - housing inequality. What makes one more political than the other? What makes one too political?

Every day there’s examples of this. Racial justice activists speak up about racial inequality and the systemic ways those inequalities manifest and they are “too political”, but white members of the elite say and do nothing about racial inequality and the systemic ways those inequalities manifest, and no one mentions the political choice they have made. Women talk about women being assaulted, murdered, they talk about the lack of trust in the police because of wide spread misogyny, and they are “too political.” But the men who keep quiet, or who speak only to say “not all men”, they aren’t spoken about as political at all. But everyone involved is reacting politically to the same stimuli.

The suggestion that speaking up, whether thats for yourself and your community, or for others you see being targetted, is somehow “too political”, is in itself a political one. Because it’s a tool for suppression. We have been taught from a young age that you never want to be “too” anything. Too loud, too brash, too forward, too aggressive, too soft, too stern, too angry, too timid, too bold, too much. That’s the worst thing you can be, so tone it down, change, stop doing what you’re doing, stick to the accepted way of doing things.

And that’s what it comes down to. This suggestion that some of us are too political, that we are the ones politicising situations rather than the situations being inherently political. It’s about the fact the accepted way of doing things, it doesn’t work for us. Whether that’s because the accepted way doesn’t offer us significant opportunities for social mobility, or it puts our lives directly at risk, or it makes it almost impossible to have and retain the basic requirements for human survival, it’s not working.

But it works for them, the ones who tell us not to. It works perfectly for them, and it works in a way that keeps them comfortable - financially, emotionally, physically. And as long as we are quiet and accept things just are what they are, it also works in a way that keeps them ignorant to realities outside their own which keeps them comfortable mentally.

Everything is political, whether you like it or not. The only question about it is whether it challenges or maintains the systems currently in place.