Kate Millett, author of ‘Sexual Politics,’ dies

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 in multiple languages 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 half-century earlier. Together they challenged assumptions about women in virtually every aspect of society.

Among Millett’s 21st-century fans was TV star and writer Lena Dunham, who tweeted:

“So sad to hear about Kate Millett’s passing. She pioneered feminist thought, de-stigmatized mental illness, wore massive fashion glasses.”

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. She was unhappy with its “mandarin mid-Atlantic” prose and overwhelmed by her sudden transformation from graduate student and artist to a feminist celebrity whose image appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

Amused at first by her fame, Millett said she was worn down by a “ruin of interviews, articles, attacks.”

“Soon it grew tedious, an indignity,” she wrote in the memoir “Flying,” published in 1974.

Millett was honored several times late in life. In 2012, she was given the Pioneer Award from the Lambda Literary Foundation and the same year was presented a Courage Award for the Arts prize by her longtime friend Yoko Ono. Millett was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 2013 and, in her acceptance speech, reflected on her years as an activist.

“The happiness of those times, the joy of participation, the excitement of being part of my own time, of living on the edge, of being so close to events you can almost intuit them. To raise one’s voice in protest, just as the protest is expressed in life, in the streets, in relationships and friendships,” she said. “Then, in a moment of public recognition, the face of the individual becomes a woman’s face.”

Steinem said Millett’s ashes would be brought home but information about memorial arrangements was not immediately available.