> I can't say that I know how every person means the things they say, but "my existence is political" is a relatively common statement…
This is in fact not a common statement, and is only found in select coastal cities with high populations of people who have elite educations. More than half of the country has no idea what you’re talking about.
So have you encountered this phrase before or not? If not, why are you so confident that the person you are talking to is the exemplar of some hyperbolic, overreactive activist and not, say, someone talking about an experience you are unfamiliar with? Why do you assume there is a fixed, single meaning to a word or phrase when, simultaneously, you understand that other people may have no idea what it means?
This is in fact not a common statement, and is only found in select coastal cities with high populations of people who have elite educations. More than half of the country has no idea what you’re talking about.