FEMINIST AUTHOR OF ‘ SEXUAL POLITICS’
PARIS — Kate Millett, the activist, artist and educator whose best- selling work “Sexual Politics” was a landmark of cultural criticism and a manifesto for the modern feminist movement, has died at 82.
Millett’s book was among the most talked- about works of its time and remains a founding text for cultural and gender studies programs. Her impact reached across generations and across borders — and condolences filled social networks Thursday.
Millett died of a heart attack Wednesday while on a visit to Paris, according to a person who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak for the family. The publishing house that carried her books in French also confirmed her death.
“Sexual Politics” was published in 1970 in the midst of feminism’s so- called “second wave,” when Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Millett and others built upon the achievements of the suffragettes from a halfcentury earlier. Together they challenged assumptions about women in virtually every aspect of society.
Steinem posted a tribute on Facebook: “As Andrea Dworkin said, ‘ The world was asleep, but Kate Millett woke it up.’ Sexual Politics -- and all Kate’s work -- will keep us Woke.”
“Sexual Politics” chronicled centuries of legal, political and cultural exclusion and diminishment of women, from the “penis envy” theory of Sigmund Freud to the portrayals of women as disrupters of paradise in the Bible and Greek mythology. She labeled traditional marriage an artifact of patriarchy and concluded with chapters condemning the misogyny of authors Henry Miller, D. H. Lawrence and Norman Mailer, but also expressing faith in the redemptive power of women’s liberation.
“It may be that a second wave of the sexual revolution might at last accomplish its aim of freeing half the race from its immemorial subordination — and in the process bring us all a great deal closer to humanity,” she wrote.
While countless women were radicalized by her book, Millett would grow to have bittersweet feelings about “Sexual Politics,” which later fell out of print and remained so for years.
Millett’s books after “Sexual Politics” were far more personal, whether “Flying” or “Sita,” a memoir about her sexuality in which she wrote of a lesbian lover who committed suicide. “The Loony Bin Trip” chronicled her struggles with manic depression and time spent in psychiatric wards.