Kate Millett

Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended the University of Oxford, and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors, after studying at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She has been described as "a seminal influence on second-wave feminism", and is best known for her book, Sexual Politics, which was based on her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. Journalist Liza Featherstone attributes the attainment of previously unimaginable "legal abortion, greater professional equality between the sexes, and a sexual freedom" in part to Millett's efforts.

Millett was born and raised in Minnesota, and then spent most of her adult life in Manhattan and the Woman's Art Colony, established in Poughkeepsie, New York, which became the Millett Center for the Arts in 2012. Millett came out as a lesbian in 1970, the year the book Sexual Politics was published. However, late in the year 1970 she came out as bisexual. She was married to sculptor Fumio Yoshimura (1965 to 1985), and later, until her death in 2017, she was married to Sophie Keir.

Early life and education Katherine Murray Millett was born on September 14, 1934, to James Albert and Helen Millett in Saint Paul, Minnesota. According to Millett, she was afraid of her father, an engineer, who beat her. He was an alcoholic who abandoned the family when she was 14, "consigning them to a life of genteel poverty". Her mother was a teacher She had two sisters, Sally and Mallory; the latter was one of the subjects of Three Lives. she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. A wealthy aunt paid for her education at St Hilda's College, Oxford,Her aunt paid for her education at Oxford, which was considered "a gesture that had less to do with her aunt's respect for Kate's intellectual gifts than with the family's discovering that she was in love with another woman" After spending about 10 years as an educator and artist, Millett entered the graduate school program for English and comparative literature at Columbia University in 1968, during which she taught English at Barnard. but she left mid-semester to study art. to her being dismissed on December 23, 1968. a community of women artists and writers and Christmas tree farm.

The 1980s through 2000s

In 1980, Millett was one of the ten invited artists whose work was exhibited in the Great American Lesbian Art Show at the Woman's Building in Los Angeles, although Millett identified as bisexual. Millett was also a contributor to On the Issues magazine, and continued writing into the early 2000s. She discussed state-sanctioned torture in The Politics of Cruelty (1994), bringing attention to the use of torture in many countries. Throughout the programme Reed used sexist language.

Millett was also involved in prison reform and campaigns against torture. Journalist Maureen Freely wrote of Millett's viewpoint regarding activism in her later years: "The best thing about being a freewheeler is that she can say what she pleases because 'nobody's giving me a chair in anything. I'm too old, mean and ornery. Everything depends on how well you argue.

In 1966, Millett became a committee member of National Organization for Women

She became a spokesperson for the feminist movement following the success of the book Sexual Politics (1970), but struggled with conflicting perceptions of her as arrogant and elitist, and the expectations of others to speak for them, which she covered in her 1974 book, Flying. Biographer Gayle Graham Yates said that "Millett articulated a theory of patriarchy and conceptualized the gender and sexual oppression of women in terms that demanded a sex role revolution with radical changes of personal and family lifestyles". Betty Friedan's focus, by comparison, was to improve leadership opportunities socially and politically and economic independence for women. Biographer Roberta M. Hooks wrote, "Quite apart from any feminist polemics, The Basement can stand alone as an intensely felt and movingly written study of the problems of cruelty and submission." Millett said of the motivation of the perpetrator: "It is the story of the suppression of women. Gertrude seems to have wanted to administer some terrible truthful justice to this girl: that this was what it was to be a woman". She wrote about the experience in her 1982 book Going to Iran. Millett is featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry (2014).

Academic works

Sexual Politics

Sexual Politics originated as Millett's PhD dissertation and was published in 1970, the same year that she was awarded her doctorate from Columbia University. The bestselling book, Millett questioned the origins of patriarchy, argued that sex-based oppression was both political and cultural, and posited that undoing the traditional family was the key to true sexual revolution. In its first year on the market, the book sold 80,000 copies and went through seven printings and is considered to be the movement's manifesto.

As a symbol of the women's liberation movement, Millett was featured in a Time magazine cover story, "The Politics of Sex",

According to biographer Peter Manso, The Prisoner of Sex was written by Norman Mailer in response to Millett's Sexual Politics. Andrew Wilson, author of Norman Mailer: An American Aesthetic, noted that "The Prisoner of Sex is structured as a contest. His rhetoric against her prose, his charm against her earnestness, his polemic rage against her vitriolic charges. The aim is to convert the larger audience, the stronger presence as the sustaining truth. The Prisoner of Sex combines self parody and satire..."

Sexism and sexuality While Millett was speaking about sexual liberation at Columbia University, a woman in the audience asked her, "Why don't you say you're a lesbian, here, openly. You've said you were a lesbian in the past." Millett hesitantly responded, "Yes, I am a lesbian". A couple of weeks later, Time December 8, 1970, article "Women's Lib: A Second Look" reported that Millett admitted she was bisexual, which it said would likely discredit her as a spokesperson for the feminist movement because it "reinforce the views of those skeptics who routinely dismiss all liberationists as lesbians." including co-director Susan Kleckner, cameraperson Lenore Bode, and editor Robin Mide, under the name Women's Liberation Cinema. The 70-minute film focuses on three women—Mallory Millett-Jones, the director's sister; Lillian Shreve, a chemist; and Robin Mide, an artist—reminiscing about their lives. Vincent Canby, The New York Times art critic, wrote: "Three Lives is a good, simple movie in that it can't be bothered to call attention to itself, only to its three subjects, and to how they grew in the same male-dominated society that Miss Millett, in her Sexual Politics, so systematically tore apart, shook up, ridiculed and undermined—while, apparently, tickling it pink." It received "generally excellent reviews" following its premiere at a New York City theater. which explores her life after the success of Sexual Politics in what was described in The New York Times Book Review as an example of "dazzling exhibitionism". Millett captured life as she thought, experienced and lived it, in a style like a documentary film. Millett added that "one of children's essential rights is to express themselves sexually, probably primarily with each other but with adults as well" and that "the sexual freedom of children is an important part of a sexual revolution ... if you don't change the social condition of children you still have an inescapable inequality". Even though Helen played a role in having her daughter committed to the University of Minnesota's Mayo wing, Millett wrote several autobiographical memoirs, with what Featherstone calls "brutal honesty," about herself, her husband, lovers, and family. (Millett identified as bisexual by late 1970. In 1965 they married to prevent Yoshimura from being deported, Author Estelle C. Jelinek says that during their marriage he "loves her, leads his own creative life, and accepts her woman lovers". In 1985 they were divorced.

In 1980, with support of two friends and photojournalist Sophie Keir, Millett stopped taking lithium to improve her mental clarity, relieve diarrhea and hand tremors, and better uphold her philosophies about mental health and treatment. She began to feel alienated and was "snappish" as Keir watched for behavioral changes. Mallory Millett, having talked to Keir, tried to get her committed but was unsuccessful due to New York's laws concerning involuntary commitments. She returned to the United States, became severely depressed, and began taking lithium again. In 1986, Millett stopped taking lithium without adverse reactions. After one lithium-free year, Millett announced the news to stunned family and friends. She believed that her depression was due to grief and feeling broken. She said, "When you have been told that your mind is unsound, there is a kind of despair that takes over..."

Millett was active in the anti-psychiatry movement. As a representative of MindFreedom International, she spoke out against psychiatric torture at the United Nations during the negotiations of the text of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2005).

In 1978, Millett became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP). WIFP is an American nonprofit publishing organization. The organization works to increase communication between women and connect the public with forms of women-based media.

Bowery redevelopment In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Millett was involved in a dispute with the New York City authorities, who wanted to evict her from her home at 295 Bowery as part of a massive redevelopment plan. Millett and other tenants held out but ultimately lost their battle. Their building was demolished, and the residents were relocated.

Scholarship Kristan Poirot, author of Mediating a Movement, Authorizing Discourse, says that the release of Millett's Sexual Politics (1970) was a pivotal event in the second wave of the feminist movement. Although there were other important moments in the movement, like the founding of the National Organization for Women and release of The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, it was in 1970 that the media gave greater attention to the feminist movement, first with a front-page article in The New York Times and coverage on the three network's news programs about the Women's Strike for Equality event that summer. According to Paglia, Millett's Sexual Politics "reduced complex artworks to their political content and attacked famous male artists and authors for their alleged sexism," thereby sending serious academic literary appreciation and criticism into eclipse.

Millett wrote her autobiographical books Flying (1974) and Sita (1977) about coming out as gay, partly an important consciousness-raising activity. She realized beginning an open dialogue is important to break down the isolation and alienation that hiding in privacy can cause.

Millett recorded her visit to Iran and the demonstrations by Iranian feminists against the fundamentalist shift in Iran politics under Khomeini's government. Her book Going to Iran, with photography by Sophie Keir (1979), is "a rare and therefore valuable eyewitness account of a series of important developments in the history of Iranian women", albeit told from the perspective of a feminist from the western world.

Death Millett died in Paris on September 6, 2017, from cardiac arrest, eight days before her 83rd birthday. Her spouse Sophie Keir was with her at the time of her death.

Awards and honors Millett won the Best Books Award for Mother Millett from Library Journal in 2001. In 2012, she was awarded one of that year's Courage Award for the Arts by Yoko Ono, which Ono created to "recognize artists, musicians, collectors, curators, writers—those who sought the truth in their work and had the courage to stick to it, no matter what" and "honor their work as an expression of my vision of courage". She was honored in the summer of 2011 at a Veteran Feminists of America gala; attendees included feminists such as Susan Brownmiller and Gloria Steinem. The induction ceremony took place on October 24, 2013, at the National Women's Hall of Fame headquarters in Seneca Falls, New York.

Works Books + List of books, with first edition details Title First edition details Year Publisher Sexual Politics 1970 Doubleday The Prostitution Papers: A Candid Dialogue 1973 Avon Flying 1974 Alfred A. Knopf Sita 1977 Farrar, Straus and Giroux The Basement: Meditations on a Human Sacrifice 1979 Simon & Schuster Going to Iran 1982 Coward, McCann & Geoghegan The Loony-Bin Trip 1990 Simon & Schuster The Politics of Cruelty: An Essay on the Literature of Political Imprisonment 1994 W. W. Norton & Company A.D., A Memoir 1995 W. W. Norton & Company Mother Millett 2001 Verso Books

Other publications + Title Year Publication Journal chapters "Sexual Politics: A Manifesto for Revolution" 1970 Firestone, Shulamith; Koedt, Anne (eds.). Notes from the Second Year: Women's Liberation. New York: New York Radical Women. pp. 111–112. Book chapters "The Prostitution Papers: A Quarter for Female Voice" 1971 Gornick, Vivian; Moran, Barbara K. (eds.). Woman in Sexist Society: Studies in Power and Powerlessness. Basic Books. "Introduction" 1979 Holder, Maryse. Give Sorrow Words: Maryse Holder's Letters from Mexico. Grove Press. "From the Basement to the Madhouse" 1997 O'Dell, Kathy (ed.). Kate Millett, Sculptor: The First 38 Years. Catonsville, Maryland: University of Maryland, Baltimore County. pp. 41–50. "The Illusion of Mental Illness" 2007 Stastny, Peter; Lehmann, Peter (eds.). Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry. Berlin Eugene, Oregon: Peter Lehmann Publishing. pp. 29–38. "Preface" 2014 Burstow, Bonnie; LeFrancois, Brenda; Diamond, Shaindl (eds.). Psychiatry Disrupted: Theorizing Resistance and Crafting the Revolution. Montreal: McGill/Queen's University Press.

1968 – "Token Learning: A Study of Women's Higher Education in America". New York: National Organization for Women. 1998 – "Out of the Loop". On the Issues.

Exhibitions Some of her exhibitions and installations are: 1963 – Minami Gallery, Tokyo 1968 – Situations, Brooklyn Community College, New York

1970 – The American Dream Goes to Pot, The People's Flag Show, Phoenix Art Museum; Judson Memorial Church, New York 1972 – Terminal Piece, Women's Interart Center, New York 1977 – Solo exhibition, Andre Wauters Gallery, New York 1977 – The Lesbian Body, Chuck Levitan Gallery, New York 1979 – Elegy for Sita, Noho Gallery, New York

2009 – Black Madonna, multimedia show of 41 artists, HP Garcia Gallery, New York

Film