View source for Biography:Kate Millett

{{Short description|American writer, educator, artist, and activist (1934–2017)}}
{{Infobox writer
| image         = Kate millet 1.jpg
| alt           = Millett looks up and smiles. She wears glasses.
| caption       = Photograph by Linda Wolf, 1970
| birth_name    = Katherine Murray Millett
| birth_place   = Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S.
| death_date    = {{Death date and age|2017|9|6|1934|9|14}}
| death_place   = Paris, France
| education     = {{Plainlist|
* [[Organization:University of Minnesota|University of Minnesota]] (BA)
* St Hilda's College, Oxford (MA)
* [[Organization:Columbia University|Columbia University]] (PhD)
}}
| notable_works = {{Plainlist|
* ''Sexual Politics'' (1970)
* ''Flying'' (1974)
* ''The Basement'' (1979)
}}
| occupation    = {{cslist|class=nowrap |Writer|educator|artist|activist}}
| spouse        = {{ubl|{{marriage|Fumio Yoshimura|1965|1985|reason=div.}}|Sophie Keir {{see below|{{slink||Marriage}}}}}}
| module        = {{Infobox academic|child=yes
 | influences = [[Biography:Simone de Beauvoir|Simone de Beauvoir]]
 }}
| signature     = Kate Millett signature.svg
| signature_alt = 
}}

'''Katherine Murray Millett''' (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University 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'' (1970),<ref>{{cite web|url=http://mije.org/features/womens-history-2012/kate-millett|title=Kate Millett|date=March 20, 2012|work=Woman's History Month|publisher=Maynard Institute|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160602122815/http://mije.org/features/womens-history-2012/kate-millett|archive-date=June 2, 2016|url-status=bot: unknown|access-date=October 7, 2014}}</ref> which was based on her doctoral dissertation at [[Organization:Columbia University|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.<ref name=Daughterhood />

The [[Social:Feminist movement|feminist]], [[Social:Human rights movement|human rights]], peace, civil rights, and anti-psychiatry movements were some of Millett's principal causes. Her books were motivated by her activism, such as woman's rights and mental health reform, and several were autobiographical memoirs that explored her sexuality, mental health, and relationships. In the 1960s and 1970s, Millett taught at Waseda University, [[Organization:Bryn Mawr College|Bryn Mawr College]], [[Organization:Barnard College|Barnard College]], and the [[Organization:University of California, Berkeley|University of California, Berkeley]]. Some of her later written works are ''The Politics of Cruelty'' (1994), about state-sanctioned torture in many countries, and ''Mother Millett'' (2001), a book about her relationship with her mother. Between 2011 and 2013, she won the Lambda Pioneer Award for Literature, received Yoko Ono's Courage Award for the Arts, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

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<ref name="NYT">{{Cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/obituaries/kate-millett-influential-feminist-writer-is-dead-at-82.html|title=Kate Millett, Ground-Breaking Feminist Writer, Is Dead at 82|last1=Sehgal|first1=Parul|date=September 6, 2017|work=The New York Times|access-date=September 9, 2017|last2=Genzlinger|first2=Neil|language=en-US|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> in 1970, the year the book ''Sexual Politics'' was published. However, late in the year 1970 she came out as bisexual.<ref name="Clendinen p. 99"/><ref name="Paul D. Buchanan 39">{{cite book|author=Paul D. Buchanan|title=Radical Feminists: A Guide to an American Subculture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c-5iUYZwNkQC&pg=PA39|date=July 31, 2011|publisher=ABC-CLIO|location=Santa Barbara|isbn=978-1-59884-356-9|page=39}}</ref> 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 ({{Née|Feely}}) Millett in Saint Paul, Minnesota. According to Millett, she was afraid of her father, an engineer, who beat her.<ref name="Hamilton p. 267">{{cite book|author=Neil A. Hamilton|title=American Social Leaders and Activists|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=tKxOpAh78IsC&pg=PA267|date=January 1, 2002|publisher=Infobase Publishing|location=New York|isbn=978-1-4381-0808-7|page=267}}</ref> He was an alcoholic who abandoned the family when she was 14, "consigning them to a life of genteel poverty".<ref name="Rosenberg p. 224">{{cite book|author=Rosalind Rosenberg|title=Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fhiZFpE77tkC&pg=PA224|date=August 13, 2013|publisher=Columbia University Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-231-50114-9|page=224}}</ref><ref name="Magill p. 2536">{{cite book|author=Frank N. Magill|title=The 20th Century Go-N: Dictionary of World Biography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I3sBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA2536|date=March 5, 2014|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-1-317-74060-5|pages=2536–2537}}</ref> Her mother was a teacher<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/> and insurance saleswoman.<ref name="Wintle p. 532">{{cite book|author=Justin Wintle|title=The Concise New Makers of Modern Culture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2Gl8AgAAQBAJ&pg=PA532|date=November 28, 2008|location=London|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-1-134-02139-0|page=532}}</ref> She had two sisters, Sally and Mallory; the latter was one of the subjects of ''Three Lives''.<ref name="NYT Three Lives"/><ref name="Troublemaker" /> Of Irish Catholic heritage,<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/> Kate Millett attended parochial schools in Saint Paul throughout her childhood.<ref name="Hamilton p. 267" /><ref name="Rosenberg p. 224"/>

Millett graduated in 1956 magna cum laude from the [[Organization:University of Minnesota|University of Minnesota]] with a Bachelor of Arts degree<ref name="Hamilton p. 267"/><ref name="Magill p. 2536"/> in English literature;<ref name="Cohen2009">{{cite book|author=Marcia Cohen|title=The Sisterhood: The Inside Story of the Women's Movement and the Leaders who Made it Happen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S8ms96Cy5FoC&pg=PA74|year=2009|publisher=Sunstone Press|location=Santa Fe|isbn=978-0-86534-723-6|page=74}}</ref> she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.<ref name="Buchanan p. 125">{{cite book|author=Paul D. Buchanan|title=Radical Feminists: A Guide to an American Subculture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c-5iUYZwNkQC&pg=PA125|date=July 31, 2011|publisher=ABC-CLIO|location=Santa Barbara|isbn=978-1-59884-356-9|page=125}}</ref> A wealthy aunt paid for her education at St Hilda's College, Oxford{{refn|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"<ref name="Rosenberg p. 224"/> and/or due to her aunt's annoyance with Millett's "tendency to defy convention".<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/>|group=nb}} gaining an English literature [[British undergraduate degree classification|first-class degree]], with honors, in 1958.<ref name="Hamilton p. 267"/><ref name="Buchanan p. 125"/> She was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors having studied at St. Hilda's.<ref name="St Hilda's">{{ cite web|url=http://www.st-hildas.ox.ac.uk/kate-millett|title=Dr. Kate Millett|publisher=St Hilda's College, Oxford University|access-date=September 4, 2014|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140818105429/http://www.st-hildas.ox.ac.uk/kate-millett|archive-date=August 18, 2014}}</ref> After spending about 10 years as an educator and artist, Millett entered the graduate school program for English and comparative literature at [[Organization:Columbia University|Columbia University]] in 1968, during which she taught English at [[Organization:Barnard College|Barnard]].<ref name="Hamilton p. 267"/><ref name="Magill p. 2536"/> While there, she championed student rights, women's liberation, and abortion reform. She completed her dissertation in September 1969 and was awarded her doctorate, with distinction, in March 1970.<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/>

==Career==

===Early career as an artist and educator===
{| class="infobox"
|-
| [[File:Old East.jpg|155px]] [[File:Okuma1.jpg|140px]]
|-
| [[File:Barnard College, NYC IMG 0961.JPG|130px]] [[File:Entrance Bryn Mawr.JPG|163px]]
|-
| Clockwise from upper left:
* [[Organization:University of North Carolina|University of North Carolina]] building
* Ōkuma Garden, Waseda University
* [[Organization:Bryn Mawr College|Bryn Mawr College]], campus entrance
* [[Organization:Barnard College|Barnard College]]
|-
|}
Millett taught English at the [[Organization:University of North Carolina|University of North Carolina]] after graduating from Oxford University,<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/><ref>{{cite book|author=Rosalind Rosenberg|title=Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fhiZFpE77tkC&pg=PA224|date=August 13, 2013|location=New York|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-50114-9|pages=224–225}}</ref> but she left mid-semester to study art.<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/>

In New York City she worked as a kindergarten teacher and learned to sculpt and paint from 1959 to 1961. She then moved to Japan and studied sculpture. Millett met fellow sculptor Fumio Yoshimura,<ref name="Hamilton p. 267"/><ref name="Buchanan p. 125"/> had her first one-woman show at Tokyo's Minami Gallery,<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/> and taught English at Waseda University. She left Japan in 1963 and moved to New York's Lower East Side.<ref name="Rosenberg p. 225"/>

Millett taught English and exhibited her works of art at [[Organization:Barnard College|Barnard College]]<ref name="Buchanan p. 125"/> beginning in 1964. She was among a group of young, radical, and untenured educators who wanted to modernize women's education; Millett wanted to provide them with "the critical tools necessary to understand their position in a patriarchal society."<ref name="Rosenberg p. 225"/> Her viewpoints on radical politics, her "stinging attack" against Barnard in ''Token Learning'', and a budget cut at the college led<ref>{{cite book|author=Rosalind Rosenberg|title=Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fhiZFpE77tkC&pg=PA225|date=August 13, 2013|location=New York|publisher=Columbia University Press|isbn=978-0-231-50114-9|pages=225–226}}</ref> to her being dismissed on December 23, 1968.<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/> Her artwork was featured in an exhibit at Greenwich Village's Judson Gallery.<ref name="Buchanan p. 125"/> During these years Millett became interested in the peace<ref name="Hamilton p. 267"/> and Civil Rights Movement, joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and participated in their protests.<ref name="Hamilton p. 267"/><ref name="Buchanan p. 125"/>

In 1971, Millett taught sociology at [[Organization:Bryn Mawr College|Bryn Mawr College]].<ref name="Magill p. 2536"/> She started buying and restoring property that year, near Poughkeepsie, New York; this became the Women's Art Colony and Tree Farm,<ref name="St Hilda's"/><ref name="Love2006">{{cite book|author=Barbara J. Love|title=Feminists who Changed America, 1963–1975|url=https://archive.org/details/feministswhochan00love|url-access=registration|year=2006|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Urbana|isbn=978-0-252-03189-2|page=[https://archive.org/details/feministswhochan00love/page/315 315]}}</ref> a community of women artists and writers and Christmas tree farm.<ref name="Love2006"/> Two years later she was an educator at the [[Organization:University of California, Berkeley|University of California, Berkeley]].<ref name="Free at last">{{Cite news |last=Christina Robb |date=May 31, 1990 |title=Kate Millett: Free at Last The Noted Feminist Escapes from 'The Loony-Bin Trip' |work=The Boston Globe |publisher=The New York Times Company |location=Boston, Massachusetts |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8176365.html |url-status=dead |url-access=subscription |access-date=September 11, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140921211851/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8176365.html |archive-date=September 21, 2014 |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]]}}</ref>

=== The 1980s through 2000s ===
[[File:Kate Millett and Oliver Reed appearing on "After Dark", 26 January 1991.jpg|300px|left|thumb|Appearing on UK discussion programme ''After Dark'' with Oliver Reed in 1991 - more here ]]
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.<ref name="Clendinen p. 99"/><ref name="Paul D. Buchanan 39"/><ref>{{cite book|author1=Cornelia H. Butler|title=WACK!: art and the feminist revolution|author2=Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles, Calif.)|date=April 2, 2007|publisher=Museum of Contemporary Art|page=494}}</ref> Millett was also a contributor to ''On the Issues'' magazine,<ref>{{Cite magazine |last=Mother Jones |date=September 1992 |title=Mother Jones Magazine |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HOcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PT53 |page=PT53 |issn=0362-8841 |journal=Mother Jones}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Hamilton p. 267" />

Millett was involved in the controversy resulting from her appearance on a UK television programme called ''After Dark''. Actor Oliver Reed, who had been drinking during the programme, moved in on her and tried to kiss her. Millett pushed him away but reportedly later asked for a tape of the show to entertain her friends.<ref>''The Observer'', August 14, 1994</ref> Throughout the programme Reed used sexist language.<ref>{{cite web|author=Anthony Nield|date=March 19, 2012|title=Cracked Actor: In Defence Of Oliver Reed|url=http://thequietus.com/articles/08283-oliver-reed-the-devils-ken-russell-bfi-dvd|access-date=September 7, 2017|website=The Quietus}}</ref>

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.{{'"}}<ref name="Troublemaker" /> In 2012, The Women's Art Colony became a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and changed its name to the Millett Center for the Arts.<ref name="St Hilda's" />

== Activism ==

=== Feminism ===
Millett was a leading figure in the women's movement,<ref name="Magill p. 2536" /> or second-wave feminism, of the 1960s and 1970s.<ref name="Genzlinger" /> For example, she and Sidney Abbott, Phyllis Birkby, Alma Routsong, and Artemis March were among the members of CR One, the first lesbian-feminist consciousness-raising group, although Millett identified as bisexual by late 1970.<ref name="Clendinen p. 99" /><ref name="Paul D. Buchanan 39" /><ref name="JoAnne Myers 93">{{cite book|author=JoAnne Myers|title=The A to Z of the Lesbian Liberation Movement: Still the Rage|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6fZql3KYJkYC&pg=PA93|date=August 20, 2009|publisher=Scarecrow Press|isbn=978-0-8108-6327-9|page=93}}</ref>

In 1966, Millett became a committee member of National Organization for Women<ref name="St Hilda's" /> and subsequently joined the New York Radical Women,<ref name="Buchanan p. 125" /> Radical lesbians, and Downtown Radical Women organizations.<ref name="Rosenberg p. 225" />

She contributed the piece "Sexual politics (in literature)" to the 1970 anthology ''Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement'', edited by Robin Morgan.<ref>{{cite book|title=Sisterhood is powerful : an anthology of writings from the women's liberation movement (Book, 1970) |publisher=[WorldCat.org] |oclc = 96157}}</ref>

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''.<ref name="Magill p. 2536" />

Millett was one of the first writers to describe the modern concept of [[Biology:Patriarchy|patriarchy]] as the society-wide subjugation of women.<ref>{{cite book |last=Green |first=Laura |editor=Claeys, Gregory |title=Encyclopedia of Modern Political Thought, Volume 1 |date=2013 |publisher=CQ Press |isbn=978-0-87-289910-0 |page=285 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=1qjlCAAAQBAJ&q=Millett |chapter=Feminism}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Wintle p. 532" />

Millett wrote several books on women's lives from a feminist perspective. For instance, in the book ''The Basement: Meditations on a Human Sacrifice'' (1979), completed over four years, she chronicled the torture and murder of Indianapolis teenager Sylvia Likens by Gertrude Baniszewski in 1965 that had preoccupied her for 14 years. With a feminist perspective, she explored the story of the defenseless girl and the dynamics of the individuals involved in her sexual, physical and emotional abuse.<ref name="Magill p. 2536" /><ref name="Deseret">{{Cite news |last=Pat H. Broeske |date=January 14, 2007 |title=A Midwest Nightmare, Too Depraved to Ignore |work=The New York Times |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/14/movies/14broes.html |access-date=September 4, 2014}}</ref> 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."<ref name="Magill pp. 2537-2538">{{cite book |author=Frank N. Magill |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=I3sBAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA2536 |title=The 20th Century Go-N: Dictionary of World Biography |date=March 5, 2014 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-317-74060-5 |location=London |pages=2537–2538}}</ref> 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".<ref name="Deseret" />

Millett and Sophie Keir, a Canadian journalist, traveled to [[Place:Tehran|Tehran]], Iran in 1979 for the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom to work for Iranian women's rights. Their trip followed actions taken by [[Biography:Ruhollah Khomeini|Ayatollah Khomeini's]] government to prevent girls from attending schools with boys, to require working women to wear veils, and not to allow women to divorce their husbands. Thousands of women attended a protest rally held at [[Organization:University of Tehran|Tehran University]] on International Women's Day, March 8. About 20,000 women attended a march through the city's Freedom Square; many of whom were stabbed, beaten, or threatened with [[Chemistry:Acid throwing|acid]]. Millett and Keir, who had attended the rallies and demonstrations, were removed from their hotel room and taken to a locked room in immigration headquarters two weeks after they arrived in Iran. They were threatened that they might be put in jail and, knowing that homosexuals were executed in Iran, Millett also feared she might be killed when she overheard officials say that she was a lesbian. After an overnight stay, the women were put on a plane that landed in Paris. Although Millett was relieved to have arrived safely in France, she was worried about the fate of Iranian women left behind, "They can't get on a plane. That's why international sisterhood is so important."<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20073303,00.html |title=In the Name of Sisterhood, Kate Millett Finds Herself in the Eye of the Storm in Iran |author=Pamela Andriotakis |author2=Andrea Chambers |date=April 2, 1979 |volume= 11 |number=13 |access-date=October 7, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110202173909/http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20073303,00.html |archive-date=February 2, 2011}}</ref> She wrote about the experience in her 1981 book ''Going to Iran''.<ref>{{cite book|author1=Robert Benewick|author2=Philip Green|title=The Routledge Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Political Thinkers|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=kh-IAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA176|date=September 11, 2002|location=London and New York|publisher=Routledge|isbn=978-0-415-15881-7|page=176}}</ref> Millett is featured in the feminist history film ''She's Beautiful When She's Angry'' (2014).<ref name="Huffington">{{cite news|url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/05/shes-beautiful-when-shes-angry_n_6278698.html |title='She's Beautiful When She's Angry' Tells The Feminist History Left Out Of Your School Textbook |work=The Huffington Post |date=December 15, 2014 |access-date=March 4, 2017}}</ref>

== Academic works ==

===''Sexual Politics''===
[[File:Cover of Kate Millett's Sexual Politics book - PD-simple.jpg|thumb|upright|Cover of the first edition]]

''Sexual Politics'' originated as Millett's PhD dissertation and was published in 1970, the same year that she was awarded her doctorate from [[Organization:Columbia University|Columbia University]]. The bestselling book,<ref name="Hamilton p. 267" /> a critique of [[Biology:Patriarchy|patriarchy]] in Western society and literature, addressed the sexism and [[Social:Heterosexism|heterosexism]] of the modern novelists D. H. Lawrence, [[Biography:Henry Miller|Henry Miller]], and Norman Mailer and contrasted their perspectives with the dissenting viewpoint of the homosexual author Jean Genet.<ref>{{cite book|author=Jonathan D. Culler|title=On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sQDWMmq7aJwC&pg=PA47|year=2007|publisher=Cornell University Press|location=Ithaca|isbn=978-0-8014-7405-7|pages=47–49}}</ref> Millett questioned the origins of patriarchy, argued that sex-based oppression was both political and cultural,<ref>{{Cite news|url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/07/kate-millett-obituary|title=Kate Millett obituary|last=Bindel|first=Julie|date=September 7, 2017|work=The Guardian|access-date=September 11, 2017|language=en-GB|issn=0261-3077}}</ref> and posited that undoing the traditional family was the key to true sexual revolution.<ref name="Reach">{{Cite magazine |last=Pattock |first=Mary |date=Winter 2012 |title=Sexual Politics |url=http://cla.umn.edu/news/reach/archive/winter2012.php?entry=380069 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141013062455/http://www.cla.umn.edu/news/reach/archive/winter2012.php?entry=380069 |archive-date=October 13, 2014 |access-date=October 8, 2014 |journal=Reach}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Jane Gerhard|title=Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of Twentieth-Century American Sexual Thought|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ptBRFA3vrOsC&pg=PA94|date=August 20, 2013|publisher=Columbia University Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-231-52879-5|pages=92–95}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Magill p. 2536" /><ref name="Genzlinger">{{cite news|last=Genzlinger|first=Neil|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/obituaries/kate-millett-influential-feminist-writer-is-dead-at-82.html?mcubz=1|title=Kate Millett, Influential Feminist Writer, Is Dead at 82|work=The New York Times|date=September 6, 2017|access-date=September 7, 2017}}</ref>

As a symbol of the women's liberation movement, Millett was featured in a ''{{wipe|Time (magazine)}}'' magazine cover story, "The Politics of Sex",<ref name="Clendinen p. 99" /> which called ''Sexual Politics'' a "remarkable book" that provided a coherent theory about the feminist movement.<ref name="Hamilton p. 267" /> Alice Neel created the depiction of Millett for the August 31, 1970, cover.<ref>{{cite magazine |url=http://content.time.com/time/magazine/0,9263,7601700831,00.html?internalid=AC | title=''Time'' magazine cover – Kate Millett portrayed by Alice Neel, August 31, 1970 | magazine=Time | access-date=September 4, 2014 }}</ref>

According to biographer Peter Manso, ''[[Social:The Prisoner of Sex|The Prisoner of Sex]]'' was written by Norman Mailer in response to Millett's ''Sexual Politics''.<ref>{{cite book|author=S. Paige Baty|title=American Monroe: The Making of a Body Politic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=8xGyMAIpWksC&pg=PA97|year=1995|publisher=University of California Press|location=Berkeley|isbn=978-0-520-08805-4|page=97}}</ref> 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..."<ref>{{cite book|author=Andrew Wilson|title=Norman Mailer: An American Aesthetic|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gt8ilsrRgXAC&pg=PA184|year=2008|location=Bern|publisher=Peter Lang|isbn=978-3-03911-406-1|pages=184–185}}</ref>

===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".<ref name="Clendinen p. 99">{{cite book|author1=Dudley Clendinen|author2=Adam Nagourney|title=Out for Good: The Struggle to Build a Gay Rights Movement in Ame|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jpaauFUgLuAC&pg=PA99|date=July 30, 2013|publisher=Simon and Schuster|location=New York|isbn=978-1-4767-4071-3|page=99}}</ref> A couple of weeks later, ''Time''{{'s}} 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[d] the views of those skeptics who routinely dismiss all liberationists as lesbians."<ref name="Clendinen p. 99" /><ref name="Paul D. Buchanan 39" /> In response, a press conference was organized two days later in Greenwich Village by lesbian feminists Ivy Bottini and Barbara Love. It led to a statement in which 30 lesbian and feminist leaders declared their "solidarity with the struggle of homosexuals to attain their liberation in a sexist society".<ref name="Clendinen p. 99" />

Millett's 1971 film ''Three Lives'' is a 16&nbsp;mm documentary made by an all-woman crew,<ref name="Magill p. 2536" /><ref>{{cite book|author=James L. Limbacher|title=Feature Films on 8 mm, 16 mm, and Videotape|url=https://archive.org/details/featurefilmson8m00limbrich|url-access=registration|year=1979|publisher=Bowker|page=[https://archive.org/details/featurefilmson8m00limbrich/page/306 306]|isbn=9780835211123}}</ref> including co-director Susan Kleckner, cameraperson Lenore Bode, and editor Robin Mide, under the name Women's Liberation Cinema.{{refn|After its release, three women from the film crew sued Millett for violating the profit-sharing terms of their contract. Millett represented herself in court, with emotional outbursts. The judge ruled in the plaintiffs' favor, but Millett reluctantly paid only a portion of the earnings to the women.<ref>{{cite book|author=New York Media, LLC|title=New York Magazine|website=Newyorkmetro.com|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=G-kCAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA68|date=April 8, 1974|publisher=New York Media, LLC|page=68|issn=0028-7369}}</ref>|group=nb}} 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, ''{{wipe|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."<ref name="NYT Three Lives">{{cite web | url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9401E2DF163EE63ABC4D53DFB767838A669EDE |title=Movie Review: Three Lives (1971) Kate Millett's Film of and by Women Begins Run |website=The New York Times | author=Vincent Canby | date=November 5, 1971 | access-date=September 4, 2014 }}</ref> It received "generally excellent reviews" following its premiere at a New York City theater.<ref name="Magill p. 2536" />

In her 1971 book ''The Prostitution Papers'', Millett interprets prostitution as residing at the core of the female's condition, exposing women's subjection more clearly than is done with marriage contracts. According to her, degradation and power, not sex, are being bought and sold in prostitution. She argues for the decriminalization of prostitution in a process directed by the sex workers themselves.

[[File:Kate Millet, Flying book cover.jpg|thumb|upright|''Flying'' book cover]]
In 1974 and 1977, respectively, Millett published two autobiographical books. ''Flying'' (1974),<ref name="Magill p. 2536" /> a "stream-of-consciousness memoir about her bisexuality",<ref name="In the Mind Field">{{cite news |author=Edward Iwata |date=June 13, 1990 |title=In a Mind Field: Kate Millett attacks psychiatry in 'The Loony-Bin Trip' |newspaper=LA Times |url=http://articles.latimes.com/1990-06-13/news/vw-175_1_kate-millett |access-date=September 5, 2014}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Mother Courage" /> ''Sita'' (1977) explores her sexuality, particularly her lesbian lover who committed suicide<ref name="Mother Courage" /> and the effect on Millett's personal and private life.<ref name="Magill p. 2536" /> Millett and Sidney Abbott, Phyllis Birkby, Alma Routsong, and Artemis March were among the members of CR One, the first lesbian-feminist consciousness-raising group.<ref name="JoAnne Myers 93" />

=== Views on pedophilia ===
In an interview with Mark Blasius, Millett was sympathetic to the concept of intergenerational sex, describing age of consent laws as "very oppressive" to gay male youth in particular but repeatedly reminding the interviewer that the question cannot rest on the sexual access of older men or women to children but a rethinking of children's rights broadly understood.<ref name="ipce">[https://www.ipce.info/ipceweb/Library/interv_kate_m.htm Via] '''Ipce''': "This interview, untitled, first appeared in "Loving Boys," Serniotext(e) Special, Intervention Series #2, Summer 1980. Reprinted with permission. Copyright 0 Semiotext(e) Inc., 1980. It also appeared in Daniel Tsang (Ed), The Age Taboo: Gay Male Sexuality, Power and Consent (Boston: Alyson Publications, 1981)."</ref> 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".<ref name="ipce" /> In this interview, Millett criticized those who wished to abolish age of consent laws, saying the issue was not focused on children's rights but "being approached as the right of men to have sex with kids below the age of consent" and added that "no mention is made of relationships between women and girls".<ref name="ipce" /> Millett believes sexual access to children is only one part of a larger goal of liberating children from all forms of parental oppression.<ref>York and Knight. Homosexual Behaviour and Pedophilia, p.3</ref>

===''Mother Millett''===
Kate wrote ''Mother Millett'' (2001) about her mother, who in her later years developed several serious health problems, including a brain tumor and [[Medicine:Hypercalcaemia|hypercalcaemia]].<ref name=Daughterhood /><ref name="Mother Courage" /> Made aware of her mother's declining health, Millett visited her in Minnesota; their visits included conversations about their relationship and outings to baseball games, museums, and restaurants.<ref name="Her Mother, Herself" /> When her mother was no longer able to care for herself in her apartment, she was placed in a nursing home in St. Paul, Minnesota,<ref name=Daughterhood /><ref name="Mother Courage" /> which was one of Helen Millett's greatest fears.<ref name="Mother Courage" /> Kate visited her mother and was disturbed by the care she received and her mother's demoralized attitude. Nursing home residents who were labeled as "behavioral problems", as Helen was, were subject to forcible restraint. Helen said to Kate, "Now that you're here, we can leave."<ref name=Daughterhood />

Aware of the efforts her mother made to give her life, support her and raise her, Millett became a care-giver and coordinator of many daily therapies, and pushed her mother to be active. She wanted to give her "independence and dignity".<ref name="Mother Courage" /> In the article "Her Mother, Herself", Pat Swift wrote: "Helen Millett might have been content to go "gently into that good night"—she was after all more afraid of the nursing home than dying—but daughter Kate was having none of that. Feminist warrior, human rights activists, gay liberationist, writer and artist, Kate Millett has not gone gently through life and never hesitates to rage at anyone—friend or foe, family or the system—to right a perceived wrong. When the dignity and quality of her ailing mother's life was at stake, this book's unfolding tale became inevitable."<ref name="Her Mother, Herself">{{cite web | author=Pat Swift | title=Her Mother, Herself |website=The Buffalo News |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]] | url-access=subscription  | location=Buffalo, New York | publisher=Dialog LLC | date=September 23, 2001 | access-date=September 18, 2014 | url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-22372623.html| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150328141942/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-22372623.html| url-status=dead| archive-date=March 28, 2015}}</ref> Even though Helen played a role in having her daughter committed to the University of Minnesota's Mayo wing,<ref name="Mother Courage" /> Kate had her mother removed from the nursing home and returned to her apartment, where attendants managed her care. During this period, Millett could also "bully" her mother for her lack of cultural sophistication and the amount of television she watched and could be harsh with caregivers.<ref name=Daughterhood />

==Personal life==
===Interpersonal relationships===
Millett was not the "polite, middle-class girl" that many parents of her generation and social circle desired; she could be difficult, brutally honest, and tenacious. Liza Featherstone, author of "Daughterhood Is Powerful," says that these qualities helped to make her "one of the most influential radical feminists of the 1970s." They could also make for difficult interpersonal relationships.<ref name=Daughterhood>{{cite news | author=Liza Featherstone | title=Daughterhood Is Powerful |newspaper=The Washington Post |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]] | url-access=subscription  | publisher=Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive | date=June 10, 2001 | access-date=September 14, 2014 | url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-444642.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141114042912/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-444642.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=November 14, 2014 }}</ref> Millett wrote several autobiographical memoirs, with what Featherstone calls "brutal honesty," about herself, her husband, lovers, and family.<ref name=Daughterhood /><ref name="Mother Courage" />{{refn|Of Millett's frankness about people close to her, Marilyn Yalom said in her ''Washington Post'' article, "What right did she have, I wondered (recalling what George Sand termed as '[[Biography:Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau's]] Confessions' for disclosures made at other people's expense), to 'confess' so many others as she confessed herself?"<ref name="KM Mental Politics" /> Liza Featherstone wondered in her review of ''Mother Millett'', "how Kate's sisters would tell this story."<ref name=Daughterhood />|group=nb}} Her relationship with her mother was strained by her radical politics, domineering personality, and unconventional lifestyle.<ref name="Her Mother, Herself" /> Helen was particularly upset about examination of her lesbianism in her books.<ref name="Mother Courage">{{Cite magazine |last=Hillary Frey |date=July 23, 2001 |title=Mother Courage.(Review) |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-76563736.html |url-status=dead |publisher=The Nation Institute |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141027163341/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-76563736.html |archive-date=October 27, 2014 |access-date=September 18, 2014 |journal=The Nation |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]] |url-access=subscription}}</ref> (Note that Millett identified as bisexual by late 1970.<ref name="Clendinen p. 99"/><ref name="Paul D. Buchanan 39"/>) Family relationships were further strained after Millett was involuntarily committed to psychiatric wards and again when she wrote ''The Loony Bin Trip''.<ref name="Her Mother, Herself" />

Millett focused on her mother in ''Mother Millett'', a book about how she was made aware by her sister Sally of the seriousness of Helen Millett's declining health and poor nursing home care. Kate removed her mother from the home and returned her to an apartment, where caregivers managed her health and comfort.<ref name="Mother Courage" /> In the book, "Millett writes about the situation—her mother's distance and imperiousness, her family's failure to recognize the humanity of the old and the insane—with brutal honesty. Yet she also describes moments of forgiveness, humility and admiration."<ref name=Daughterhood /> During this time, she developed a close relationship, previously inconceivable, with her mother, which she considered "a miracle and a grace, a gift." Her relationships with her sisters were troubled during this time, but they all came to support their mother's apartment-living. The suggestion of her role as the heroine in ''Mother Millett'', however, may have been "at the expense of her two siblings".<ref name="Her Mother, Herself" />

===Marriage===
In 1961 Millett moved to Japan and met fellow sculptor Fumio Yoshimura.<ref name="Hamilton p. 267" /><ref name="Buchanan p. 125" /> In 1963 Yoshimura and Millett left Japan and moved to New York's Lower East Side in the Bowery district.<ref name="Rosenberg p. 225">{{cite book|author=Rosalind Rosenberg|title=Changing the Subject: How the Women of Columbia Shaped the Way We Think About Sex and Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fhiZFpE77tkC&pg=PA225|date=August 13, 2013|publisher=Columbia University Press|location=New York|isbn=978-0-231-50114-9|page=225}}</ref> In 1965 they got married to prevent Yoshimura from being deported,<ref name="Genzlinger"/><ref name="Rosenberg p. 225" /> and during their marriage Millett said that they were "friends and lovers".<ref name="Wintle p. 532" /> She dedicated her book ''Sexual Politics'' to him.<ref name="Yoshimura NYT obit">{{cite web |title=Fumio Yoshimura, 76, Sculptor of Everyday |date=August 10, 2002 |website=The New York Times | access-date=September 18, 2014 | url=https://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/10/arts/fumio-yoshimura-76-sculptor-of-everyday.html }}</ref> Author Estelle C. Jelinek says that during their marriage he "loves her, leads his own creative life, and accepts her woman lovers".<ref>{{cite book|author=Estelle C. Jelinek|title=The Tradition of Women's Autobiography|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=OlH1v3ABDsIC&pg=PA241|date=March 19, 2004|publisher=Xlibris Corporation|isbn=978-1-4628-0647-8|page=241}}</ref>{{Self-published inline|certain=yes|date=December 2017}} In 1985 they got divorced.<ref name="Buchanan p. 125" /> At the time of her death, Millett had recently married Sophie Keir, her partner for 39 years.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Green|first=Penelope|date=November 10, 2017|title=Feminism's A-List Attends Kate Millett's Memorial in New York|work={{wipe|The New York Times}}|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/10/style/kate-millett-memorial-in-new-york-feminism.html|url-access=limited|access-date=December 12, 2021|archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/7VTRj|archive-date=February 20, 2022}}{{cbignore}}</ref><ref name="NYT" />

===Mental illness===
Mental illness affected Millett's personal and professional life from 1973,<ref name="Magill pp. 2537-2538" /><ref name="In the Mind Field"/> when she lived with her husband in California and was an activist and teacher at the [[Organization:University of California, Berkeley|University of California, Berkeley]]. Yoshimura and Sally, Kate's eldest sister, became concerned about Kate's extreme emotions.<ref name="Free at last" /> Her family claimed that she went for as many as five consecutive nights without sleep and could talk nonsensically for hours. During a screening of one of her films at [[Organization:University of California, Berkeley|University of California, Berkeley]], Millett "began talking incoherently". According to her other sister, Mallory Millett-Danaher, "There were pained looks of confusion in the audience, then people whispered and slowly got up to leave."<ref name="In the Mind Field" /> Sally, who was a law student in Nebraska, signed papers to have her younger sister committed. Millett was forcefully taken and held in psychiatric facilities for ten days. She signed herself out using a release form intended for voluntary admissions. During a visit to St. Paul, Minnesota, a couple of weeks later, her mother asked Kate to visit a psychiatrist and, based upon the psychiatrist's suggestion, signed commitment papers for Kate. She was released within three days,<ref name="Free at last" /> having won a sanity trial,<ref name="Cohen p. 253" /> due to the efforts of her friends and a ''pro bono'' attorney.<ref name="Free at last" />

Following the two involuntary confinements, Millett became depressed, particularly so about having been confined without [[Social:Due process|due process]]. While in the mental hospitals, she was given "mind-altering" drugs or restrained, depending upon whether she complied or not. She was stigmatized for having been committed and diagnosed with manic depression (now commonly called [[Medicine:Bipolar disorder|bipolar disorder]]). The diagnosis affected how she was perceived by others and her ability to attain employment.<ref name="Free at last" /><ref name="Magill pp. 2537-2538" /><ref name="In the Mind Field" /> In California doctors had recommended that she take [[Chemistry:Lithium (medication)|lithium]] to manage wide manic and depression swings. Her depression became more severe when her housing in the Bowery was condemned and Yoshimura threatened divorce. To manage the depression, Millett again began taking lithium.<ref name="Free at last" /><ref>{{cite book|author=Gail A. Hornstein|title=Agnes's Jacket: A Psychologist's Search for the Meanings of Madness|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=R1MkuuUTqFAC&pg=PA307|publisher=Rodale|isbn=978-1-60529-671-5|page=307}}</ref>

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.<ref name="Free at last" /> Her behavior was that of psychiatric drug withdrawal, including "mile-a-minute" speech, which turned her peaceful art colony to "a quarrelsome dystopia."<ref name="KM Mental Politics">{{cite news | author= Marilyn Yalom | title=Kate Millett's Mental Politics | newspaper=The Washington Post |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]] | url-access=subscription  | publisher=Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive | date=May 13, 1990 | access-date=September 12, 2014 | url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1126613.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150305200851/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1126613.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=March 5, 2015 }}</ref> Mallory Millett, having talked to Keir, tried to get her committed but was unsuccessful due to New York's laws concerning involuntary commitments.<ref name="Free at last" />

Millett visited Ireland in the fall of 1980 as an activist. Upon her intended return to the United States, there was a delay at the airport and she extended her stay in Ireland. She was involuntarily committed in Ireland after airport security "determined from someone in New York" that she had a "mental illness" and had stopped taking lithium.<ref name="Free at last" /> While confined, she was heavily drugged. To combat the aggressive pharmaceutical program of "the worst bin of all", she counteracted the effects of Thorazine and lithium by eating a lot of oranges or hid the pills in her mouth for later disposal. She said of the times when she was committed, "To remain sane in a bin is to defy its definition," she said.<ref name="KM Mental Politics" />

{{blockquote|[Millett] describes with loathing the days of television-induced boredom, nights of drug-induced terror, people deprived of a sense of time, of personal dignity, even of hope. What crime justifies being locked up like this, Millett asks. How can one not be crazy in such a place?|Journalist Mary O'Connell<ref name="Crazy here?" />}}

After several days, she was found by her friend Margaretta D'Arcy. With the assistance of an Irish parliament member and a therapist-psychiatrist from Dublin, Millett was declared competent and released<ref name="Free at last" /> within several weeks.<ref name="Crazy here?">{{Cite news |last=Mary O'Connell |date=May 27, 1990 |title=How can one not be crazy here? |work=Chicago Sun-Times |publisher=Sun-Times News Group |url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4000480.html |url-status=dead |url-access=subscription |access-date=September 12, 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150328143722/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4000480.html |archive-date=March 28, 2015 |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]]}}</ref> 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.<ref name="Free at last" />

Millett's involvement with psychiatry caused her to attempt suicide several times due to both damaging physical and emotional effects but also because of the slanderous nature of psychiatric labeling that affected her reputation and threatened her very existence in the world.<ref name="Buchanan p. 126">{{cite book|author=Paul D. Buchanan|title=Radical Feminists: A Guide to an American Subculture|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=c-5iUYZwNkQC&pg=PA126|date=July 31, 2011|publisher=ABC-CLIO|isbn=978-1-59884-356-9|page=126}}</ref> 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..."<ref name="Free at last" /> In ''The Loony Bin Trip'', Millett wrote that she dreaded her depressed periods:
{{blockquote|text=At one point, listening to others talk about her "freaking out," Millett muses, "How little weight my own perceptions seem to have," and goes on: "Depression is the victim's dread, not mania. For we could enjoy mania if we were permitted by the others around us&nbsp;... A manic person permitted to think ten thousand miles a minute is happy and harmless and could, if encouraged and given time, perhaps be productive as well. Ah, but depression – that is what we all hate. We the afflicted. Whereas the relatives and shrinks&nbsp;... they rather welcome it: You are quiet and you suffer.<ref name="Crazy here?" />}}

====Views on mental illness====
Feminist author and historian Marilyn Yalom wrote that "Millett refuses the labels that would declare her insane", continuing "she conveys the paranoid terror of being judged cruelly by others for what seems to the afflicted person to be a reasonable act."<ref name="KM Mental Politics" />

====Activism====
{{Further|Social:Mad Pride}}
Angered by institutional psychiatric practices and lenient involuntary commitment processes,{{refn|She did not oppose "supportive, inquiring and sensitive psychotherapy."<ref name="Free at last" />|group=nb}} Millett became an activist.<ref name="Free at last" /> With her lawyer, she changed the State of Minnesota's commitment law so that a trial is required before a person is involuntarily committed.<ref name="Cohen p. 253">{{cite book|author=Marcia Cohen|title=The Sisterhood: The Inside Story of the Women's Movement and the Leaders who Made it Happen|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S8ms96Cy5FoC&pg=PA253|year=2009|publisher=Sunstone Press|isbn=978-0-86534-723-6|page=253}}</ref>

Millett was active in the anti-psychiatry movement.<ref name="Troublemaker">{{Cite news |last=Maureen Freely |date=June 18, 2001 |title=Return of the troublemaker: Her Sexual Politics took the world by storm in 1970 and now Kate Millett is making the personal political again |work=The Guardian |url=https://www.theguardian.com/world/2001/jun/19/gender.uk |access-date=September 4, 2014}}</ref> 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).<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.mindfreedom.org/kb/mental-health-global/millett-freedom-from-torture/?searchterm=Millett | title=Freedom from Torture or Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment | date=July 22, 2008 | publisher=MindFreedom | access-date=September 5, 2014 | quote=A piece by Kate Millett, read at the United Nations Ad Hoc Committee on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, in New York City on January 18, 2005. }}</ref>

In 1978, Millett became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP).<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.wifp.org/who-we-are/associates/|title=Associates {{!}} The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press|website=www.wifp.org|language=en-US|access-date=June 21, 2017}}</ref> 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.<ref>{{ cite journal | url=http://thevillager.com/villager_67/authormillett.html |title=Author Millett leaves Bower | journal=The Villager | volume=74 | number=15 | date=August 11–17, 2004 }}</ref>

==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.<ref name=Poirot>{{cite journal | author=Kristan Poirot | title=Mediating a Movement, Authorizing Discourse: Kate Millett, Sexual Politics, and Feminism's Second Wave | journal=Women's Studies in Communication | publisher=Organization for Research on Women and Communication |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]] | url-access=subscription  | url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-122986614.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150328141922/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-122986614.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=March 28, 2015 |date=June 22, 2004 | access-date=October 8, 2014 }}</ref> 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 ''{{wipe|The New York Times}}'' and coverage on the three network's news programs about the Women's Strike for Equality event that summer.<ref name=Poirot /> Millett used psychology, anthropology, the [[Social:Sexual revolution|sexual revolution]], and literary criticism to explain her theory of sexual politics,<ref name=Poirot /> which is that western societies have been driven by a belief that men are superior to women.<ref name="Hamilton p. 267" /> According to Poirot, the book, which received widespread media coverage, "was considered to be the first book-length exposition of second wave radical feminist theory."<ref name=Poirot /> Published accounts of Millett's lesbianism played a part in the fracture in the feminist movement over lesbians' role within the movement and reduced her effectiveness as a women's rights activist.<ref name=Poirot /> However, Millett identified as bisexual by late 1970.<ref name="Clendinen p. 99"/><ref name="Paul D. Buchanan 39"/> Scholar [[Biography:Camille Paglia|Camille Paglia]] described Millett's scholarship as deeply flawed, declaring that "American feminism's nose dive began" when Millett achieved prominence.<ref>{{citation | author=Camille Paglia | year=1992 | title=Sex, Art and American Culture: New Essays |location=New York | publisher=Vintage | isbn=978-0-679-74101-5 | page=243 }}</ref> 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.<ref>{{cite news | author=Camille Paglia | url=http://chronicle.com/article/Feminists-Must-Begin-to/77080/ | title=Feminists Must Begin to Fulfill Their Noble, Animating Ideal | newspaper=The Chronicle of Higher Education | date=July 25, 1997 | page=B4 }}</ref>

Millett wrote her autobiographical books ''Flying'' (1974) and ''Sita'' (1977) about [[Social:Coming out|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.<ref name="Sita OOB" /> She wrote in ''Flying'' what Alice Henry calls in her ''off our backs'' review of ''Sita'' an "excruciating public and political 'coming out'" and its effect on her personal, political, and artistic lives.<ref name="Sita OOB" /> While she discussed some of her love affairs in ''Flying'', in ''Sita'' she provides insight into a lesbian love affair and her fears of being alone or inadequate. Henry writes, "Kate's transparent vulnerability and attempts to get to the root of herself and grasp her lover are typical of many women who love women."<ref name="Sita OOB">{{cite journal | title=Sita (Review) | author=Alice Henry | journal=Off Our Backs  | date=June 1977 | volume=7|number=5|page=14 |jstor=25792374 }}</ref>

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.<ref>{{cite journal | title=Going to Iran (Review) | author=Patricia J. Higgins|journal=Signs|volume=9|number=1 |date=Autumn 1983 |pages=154–156 |doi=10.1086/494034 |publisher=The University of Chicago Press |jstor=3173673 }}</ref>

==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.<ref>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/06/obituaries/kate-millett-influential-feminist-writer-is-dead-at-82.html|title=Kate Millett, Ground-Breaking Feminist Writer, Is Dead at 82|first1=Parul|last1=Sehgal|first2=Neil|last2=Genzlinger|newspaper=The New York Times|date=September 6, 2017}}</ref>

==Awards and honors==
Millett won the Best Books Award for ''Mother Millett'' from Library Journal in 2001.<ref name="Concise Writers">{{cite book | chapter=Millett, Kate 1934– |chapter-url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2590000475.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150328134713/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2590000475.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=March 28, 2015| title=Concise Major 21st Century Writers | publisher=Gale Publishing |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]] | chapter-url-access=subscription  | year=2006 | access-date=October 8, 2014 }}</ref> In 2012, she was awarded one of that year's Courage Award for the Arts by Yoko Ono,<ref name="VFA Courage Award">{{cite web | url=http://www.vfa.us/KateMillettCourageAward.htm | title=Music, art, innovation, peace: Yoko Ono presents 2012 Courage Awards for the Arts | author=Edward M Gomez | publisher=Veteran Feminists of America | access-date=March 13, 2014}}</ref> 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".<ref name="VFA Courage Award" /> Between 2011 and 2012, she was also awarded the Lambda Pioneer Award for Literature<ref name=Reach /> and a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2012).<ref name="Reach" /><ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.artforum.com/news/id=30156 | title=Foundation for Contemporary Arts Announces 2012 Artist Grants | date=January 27, 2012 | publisher=Artforum International Magazine | access-date=October 7, 2014 }}</ref> 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.<ref name=Reach />

In March 2013, the U.S. National Women's Hall of Fame announced that Millett was to be among the institution's 2013 inductees.  Beverly P. Ryder, board of directors co-president, said that Millett was a "real pillar of the women's movement".<ref name=Local>{{cite news|author=Mary Reinholz|title=Kate Millett, 'Pillar of the Movement,' Inducted into Women's Hall of Fame|url=http://eastvillage.thelocal.nytimes.com/2013/03/08/kate-millett-pillar-of-the-movement-inducted-into-womens-hall-of-fame/|access-date=March 15, 2013|newspaper=The Local: East Village|date=March 8, 2013}}</ref> The induction ceremony took place on October 24, 2013, at the National Women's Hall of Fame headquarters in Seneca Falls, New York.<ref name=Induction>{{cite web|title=Induction Weekend 2013|url=http://www.greatwomen.org/news-and-events/induction-weekend|work=National Women's Hall of Fame|access-date=March 15, 2013 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141008001238/http://www.greatwomen.org/news-and-events/induction-weekend|archive-date=October 8, 2014}}</ref>

==Works==
===Books===
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
|+ List of books, with first edition details
! scope="col" rowspan="2" style="width:10em" | Title
! scope="col" colspan="2" | First edition details
|-
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Publisher
|-
! scope="row" | ''Sexual Politics''
| 1970 || Doubleday
|-
! scope="row" | ''The Prostitution Papers: A Candid Dialogue''
| 1973 || Avon
|-
! scope="row" | ''Flying''
| 1974 || Alfred A. Knopf
|-
! scope="row" | ''Sita''
| 1977 || Farrar, Straus and Giroux
|-
! scope="row" | ''The Basement: Meditations on a Human Sacrifice''
| 1979 || Simon & Schuster
|-
! scope="row" | ''Going to Iran''
| 1982 || Coward, McCann & Geoghegan
|-
! scope="row" | ''The Loony-Bin Trip''
| 1990 || Simon & Schuster
|-
! scope="row" | ''The Politics of Cruelty: An Essay on the Literature of Political Imprisonment''
| 1994 || W. W. Norton & Company
|-
! scope="row" | ''A.D., A Memoir''
| 1995 || W. W. Norton & Company
|-
! scope="row" | ''Mother Millett''
| 2001 || Verso Books
|}

===Other publications===
{| class="wikitable plainrowheaders"
|+ 
! scope="col" style="width:10em" | Title
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" style="width:21em" | Publication
|-
! scope="col" colspan="3" | Journal chapters
|-
! scope="row" | "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.&nbsp;111–112.
|-
! scope="col" colspan="3" | Book chapters
|-
! scope="row" | "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.
|-
! scope="row" | "Introduction"
| 1979
| Holder, Maryse. ''Give Sorrow Words: Maryse Holder's Letters from Mexico''. Grove Press.
|-
! scope="row" | "From the Basement to the Madhouse"
| 1997
| O'Dell, Kathy (ed.). ''Kate Millett, Sculptor: The First 38 Years''. Catonsville, Maryland: [[Organization:University of Maryland, Baltimore County|University of Maryland, Baltimore County]]. pp.&nbsp;41–50.
|-
! scope="row" | "The Illusion of Mental Illness"
| 2007
| Stastny, Peter; Lehmann, Peter (eds.). ''Alternatives Beyond Psychiatry''. Berlin Eugene, Oregon: Peter Lehmann Publishing. pp.&nbsp;29–38.
|-
! scope="row" | "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<ref name="Concise Writers" />
* 1967 – Group exhibition, ''12 Evenings of Manipulation'', Judson Gallery, New York City<ref name="Concise Writers" /><ref>{{cite book|author=Geoffrey Hendricks|title=Critical Mass: Happenings, Fluxus, Performance, Intermedia, and Rutgers University, 1958–1972|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=40Qd97UAHPoC&pg=PA201|year=2003|publisher=Rutgers University Press|isbn=978-0-8135-3303-2|page=201}}</ref>
* 1968 – ''Situations'', Brooklyn Community College, New York<ref name="Fredrickson p. xi">{{cite book|author=Laurel Jean Fredrickson|title=Kate Millett and Jean-Jacques Lebel: Sexual Outlaws in the Intermedia Borderlands of Art and Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EIuCvxzKSR4C&pg=PR11|year=2007|isbn=978-0-549-66208-2|page=xi, 76}}</ref>
<!---* 1970 - ''Mod Donn Art: 11 Women Artists,'' Public Theater, New York -- can't find a useable source, there's at least one book, but it's a snipped -->
* 1970 – ''The American Dream Goes to Pot'', ''The People's Flag Show,'' Phoenix Art Museum;<ref>{{cite book|author=J.G. Murphy|title=Character, Liberty and Law: Kantian Essays in Theory and Practice|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=V8x_0-hjV6cC&pg=PA137|date=October 31, 1998|publisher=Springer Science & Business Media|isbn=978-0-7923-5275-4|pages=119, 123, 125, 137–}}</ref> Judson Memorial Church, New York<ref>{{cite book|author=Louis P. Masur|title=The Soiling of Old Glory: The Story of a Photograph That Shocked America|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PJqzsItX49gC&pg=PT80|date=August 1, 2010|publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing|isbn=978-1-59691-854-2}}</ref>
* 1972 – ''Terminal Piece,'' Women's Interart Center, New York<ref name="Fredrickson p. xi" />
* 1973 – ''Small Mysteries'', Womanstyle Theatre Festival, New York<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1977 – ''Naked Ladies,'' Los Angeles Women's Building, California<ref name="Concise Writers" /><ref name="Duke papers" /><ref>{{cite news | title='Naked Ladies' Exhibit Celebrates Fat | newspaper=The Pittsburgh Press | date=May 26, 1977 | url=https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1144&dat=19770526&id=vzocAAAAIBAJ&pg=6954,4077945 | access-date=October 9, 2014 }}</ref>
* 1977 – Solo exhibition, Andre Wauters Gallery, New York<ref name="Duke papers">{{cite web | url=http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/millett.pdf | title=Kate Millett papers | publisher=Duke University | access-date=October 9, 2014 | url-status=dead | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141014170056/http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/millett.pdf | archive-date=October 14, 2014 | df=mdy-all }}</ref>
* 1977 – ''The Lesbian Body'', Chuck Levitan Gallery, New York<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1978 – ''The Trial of Sylvia Likens,'' Noho Gallery, New York<ref>{{cite book|author=John Dean|title=The Indiana Torture Slaying: Sylvia Likens' Ordeal and Death|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=PAw1JRwc2zsC&pg=PA187|date=January 1, 1999|publisher=Borf Books|isbn=978-0-9604894-7-3|page=187}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|author=Laurel Jean Fredrickson|title=Kate Millett and Jean-Jacques Lebel: Sexual Outlaws in the Intermedia Borderlands of Art and Politics|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=EIuCvxzKSR4C&pg=PR67|year=2007|isbn=978-0-549-66208-2|pages=67, 358}}</ref>
* 1979 – ''Elegy for Sita,'' Noho Gallery, New York<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1979 – Women's Caucus for Art<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1980 – Group exhibition, Great American Lesbian Art Show, Los Angeles<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1980 – Solo exhibition, ''Lesbian Erotica'', Galerie de Ville, New Orleans; Second Floor Salon<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1981 – Solo exhibition, ''Lesbian Erotica'', Galerie des Femmes, Paris<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1986 – Group exhibition, ''Feminists and Misogynists'', Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle<ref name="Duke papers" />
<!--- * 1986 - Solo exhibition, Hell's Kitchen Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts
* 1987 - ''Madhouse, Madhouse,'' Noho Gallery, New York -- need a source --->
* 1988 – ''Fluxus,'' Museum of Modern Art, New York<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1991–1994 – Courtland Jessup Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts<ref name="Concise Writers" />
* 1992 – Group exhibition, ''Body Politic,'' La MaMa La Galleria<ref name="Duke papers" />
* 1991 – Solo exhibition, ''Freedom from Captivity,'' Courtland Jessup Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts<ref name="Duke papers" />
<!---- cannot find sources for the individual shows
* 1992 - Solo exhibition, ''Making Paradise,'', Courtland Jessup Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts
* 1993 - Solo exhibition, ''Making Paradise,'' Noho Gallery, New York
* 1993 - Solo exhibition, ''Small Clothes,'' Courtland Jessup Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts
* 1994 – Solo exhibition, ''Mother Millett,'' Courtland Jessup Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts--->
<!----* 1995 - Solo exhibition, ''Flux Sculpture'', Noho Gallery, New York
* 1995 - Solo exhibition, ''Leaving Paris,'' Cortland Jessup Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts -- need source ---->
* 1997 – ''Kate Millett, Sculptor: The First 38 Years,'' Fine Arts Gallery, University of Maryland, Catonsville<ref>{{cite web | url=http://www.umbc.edu/cadvc/exhibitions/millet.php | title=Kate Millett, Sculptor: The First 38 Years | publisher=Center for Art Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland | access-date=October 8, 2014 }}</ref>
<!---* 2002 - ''The Artist Contemplates the Loss of Her Studio,'' NoHo Gallery, New York -- need a source--->
* 2009 – ''Black Madonna'', multimedia show of 41 artists, HP Garcia Gallery, New York<ref>{{cite journal | author=Edward Rubin | title=Black Madonna (feminist art exhibit at the HP Garcia Gallery in New York) | journal=ArtUS | publisher=The Foundation for International Art Criticism |via=[[Software:HighBeam Research|HighBeam Research]] | url-access=subscription  | date=September 22, 2009 | url=http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-213025195.html | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150328134728/http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-213025195.html | url-status=dead | archive-date=March 28, 2015 | access-date=October 8, 2014}}</ref>
<!---* 2009 - ''Pleasure and Danger,'' Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, Massachusetts -- need a source --->

===Film===
* {{cite AV media |year=1971 |title=Three Lives |medium=documentary |publisher= Women's Liberation Cinema Company | quote=Producer}}<ref name="NYT Three Lives"/>
* {{cite AV media |year=1981 |title=Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography |medium= documentary |publisher= National Film Board of Canada (NFB) |quote= Herself, writer, artist }}<ref name="NaLS">{{cite web |title=Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography |url=https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/not-a-love-story-a-film-about-pornography |website=www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca |publisher=Canadian Encyclopedia |access-date=April 9, 2020}}</ref>
* {{cite AV media |year=1989 |title=Bookmark: Daughters of de Beauvoir (1 episode) |medium= biography |publisher=  British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), Union Pictures Productions |quote= Herself }}<ref name="IF">{{cite web |title=Daughters of de Beauvoir + Q&A |url=https://www.institut-francais.org.uk/cine-lumiere/whats-on/special-screenings/daughters-of-de-beauvoir-qa/ |website=Institut français du Royaume-Uni |access-date=April 9, 2020 |language=en}}</ref>
* {{cite AV media |year=2001 |title=The Real Yoko Ono |medium=television  |quote= Herself }}<ref name="Upenn">{{cite web |title=Call for papers |url=http://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2014/01/07/kate-millett-conference-cfp-deadline-28-february-2014 |website=Upenn |access-date=April 9, 2020}}</ref>
* {{cite AV media |year=2007 |title=Des fleurs pour Simone de Beauvoir | language=fr |medium=documentary short  |location=France |quote= Herself}}<ref name="TV5">{{cite web |title=Kate Millett, décès d'une féministe qui combattait avec caresses et plaisir |url=https://information.tv5monde.com/terriennes/kate-millett-deces-d-une-feministe-qui-combattait-avec-caresses-et-plaisir-190304 |website=TV5MONDE |access-date=April 9, 2020 |language=fr |date=September 7, 2017}}</ref>

==Notes==
{{Reflist|group=nb}}

==References==
{{Reflist}}

==Further reading==
* {{Cite magazine |last=Crawford, Leslie |date=June 5, 1999 |title=Kate Millett, The Ambivalent Feminist |url=http://www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/06/05/millet/ |journal=Salon}}
* {{cite news | author=Freely, Maureen | url=http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/politicsphilosophyandsociety/story/0,6000,509219,00.html | title=Return of the troublemaker | newspaper=The Guardian | date=June 19, 2001 }}
* {{cite book |title=A Piece of Land: Voices, Photographs, Bits, Pieces from Kate Millett Farm |first1=Mikaela |last1=Krestesen |first2=Moa |last2=Krestesen |others=With Jane Winter (photography & illustrations) |place=Stockholm |publisher=Konst-ig |year=2014 |isbn=978-9163748196 |oclc=880552166}}
* {{cite book |editor-last=Pickering |editor-first=Amy |year=2021 |title=Life after the Revolution: Kate Millett's Art Colony for Women |publisher=Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, State University of New York Press |isbn=978-0-5784-6476-3 |location=New Platz, NY}}
* {{cite book | author=Sage, Lorna | title=The Cambridge Guide to Women's Literature in English | year=1999 | publisher=Cambridge University Press | location=Cambridge; New York | isbn=0-521-49525-3 | url=https://archive.org/details/cambridgeguideto00sage_0 }}
* {{cite journal | url=http://www.harvardindependent.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Indyhighres12.01.112.pdf | title=Conversations with Kate Millett | author=Simmons, William J. | journal=Harvard Independent | date=December 1, 2011 }}
* {{cite magazine |author=Time staff |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876784,00.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090209172830/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876784,00.html |url-status=dead |archive-date=February 9, 2009 | title=The Liberation of Kate Millett |magazine=Time | date=August 30, 1970 }}

==External links==
{{Commons}}
*{{IMDb name}}
*[http://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/findingaids/millett Guide to the Kate Millett Papers at Duke University]


{{DEFAULTSORT:Millett, Kate}}
[[Category:Social critics]]

{{Sourceattribution|Kate Millett|1}}