Kate Millett | |
|---|---|
 Photograph byLinda Wolf, 1970 | |
| Born | Katherine Murray Millett (1934-09-14)September 14, 1934 Saint Paul, Minnesota, U.S. |
| Died | September 6, 2017(2017-09-06) (aged 82) Paris, France |
| Occupation |
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| Education | |
| Notable works | Sexual Politics (1970) |
| Spouse | |
| Signature | |
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| Academic background | |
| Influences | Simone de Beauvoir |
Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an Americanfeminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended theUniversity of Oxford and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors after studying atSt Hilda's College, Oxford. She has been described as "a seminal influence onsecond-wave feminism", and is best known for her bookSexual Politics (1970),[1] which was based on her doctoral dissertation atColumbia University. JournalistLiza 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.[2]
Thefeminist,human rights,peace,civil rights, andanti-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 atWaseda University,Bryn Mawr College,Barnard College, and theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Some of her later written works areThe Politics of Cruelty (1994), about state-sanctioned torture in many countries, andMother Millett (2001), a book about her relationship with her mother. Between 2011 and 2013, she won theLambda Pioneer Award for Literature, receivedYoko Ono'sCourage Award for the Arts, and was inducted into theNational Women's Hall of Fame.[3]
Millett was born and raised in Minnesota, and then spent most of her adult life in Manhattan and the Woman's Art Colony, established inPoughkeepsie, New York, which became the Millett Center for the Arts in 2012. Millett came out as a lesbian[4] in 1970, the year the bookSexual Politics was published. However, late in the year 1970 she came out as bisexual.[5][6] She was married to sculptorFumio Yoshimura (1965 to 1985) and later, until her death in 2017, she was married to Sophie Keir.
Katherine Murray Millett was born on September 14, 1934, to James Albert and Helen (née Feely) Millett inSaint Paul, Minnesota. According to Millett, she was afraid of her father, an engineer, who beat her.[7] He was an alcoholic who abandoned the family when she was 14, "consigning them to a life ofgenteel poverty".[8][9] Her mother was a teacher[9] and insurance saleswoman.[10] She had two sisters, Sally and Mallory;[nb 1] the latter was one of the subjects ofThree Lives.[11][12] OfIrish Catholic heritage,[9] Kate Millett attendedparochial schools in Saint Paul throughout her childhood.[7][8]
Millett graduated in 1956magna cum laude from theUniversity of Minnesota with aBachelor of Arts degree[7][9] inEnglish literature;[13] she was a member of theKappa Alpha Theta sorority.[14] A wealthy aunt paid for her education atSt Hilda's College, Oxford,[nb 2] gaining an English literaturefirst-class honors degree in 1958.[7][14] She was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors having studied at St. Hilda's.[15] After spending about 10 years as an educator and artist, Millett entered the graduate school program for English and comparative literature atColumbia University in 1968, during which she taught English atBarnard.[7][9] 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.[9]
Millett taught English at theUniversity of North Carolina after graduating from Oxford University,[9][16] but she left mid-semester to study art.[9]
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,[7][14] had her first one-woman show at Tokyo's Minami Gallery,[9] and taught English atWaseda University. She left Japan in 1963 and moved to New York's Lower East Side.[17]
Millett taught English and exhibited her works of art atBarnard College[14] 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."[17] Her viewpoints on radical politics, her "stinging attack" against Barnard inToken Learning, and a budget cut at the college led[18] to her being dismissed on December 23, 1968.[9] Her artwork was featured in an exhibit at Greenwich Village's Judson Gallery.[14] During these years Millett became interested in thepeace[7] andCivil Rights Movement, joined theCongress of Racial Equality (CORE), and participated in their protests.[7][14]
In 1971, Millett taught sociology atBryn Mawr College.[9] She started buying and restoring property that year, nearPoughkeepsie, New York; this became theWomen's Art Colony and Tree Farm,[15][19] a community of women artists and writers and Christmas tree farm.[19] Two years later she was an educator at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[20]
In 1980, Millett was one of the ten invited artists whose work was exhibited in theGreat American Lesbian Art Show at theWoman's Building in Los Angeles, although Millett identified as bisexual.[5][6][21] Millett was also a contributor toOn the Issues magazine,[22] and continued writing into the early 2000s. She discussed state-sanctioned torture inThe Politics of Cruelty (1994), bringing attention to the use of torture in many countries.[7]
Millett was involved in the controversy resulting from herappearance on a UK television programme calledAfter Dark. ActorOliver 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.[23] Throughout the programme Reed used sexist language.[24]
Millett was also involved in prison reform and campaigns against torture. JournalistMaureen Freely wrote of Millett's viewpoint regarding activism in her later years: "The best thing about being afreewheeler 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.'"[12] In 2012, TheWomen's Art Colony became a 501(c)3 non-profit organization and changed its name to the Millett Center for the Arts.[15]
Millett was a leading figure in the women's movement,[9] orsecond-wave feminism, of the 1960s and 1970s.[25] For example, she andSidney 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.[5][6][26]
In 1966, Millett became a committee member ofNational Organization for Women[15] and subsequently joined theNew York Radical Women,[14]Radical lesbians, and Downtown Radical Women organizations.[17]
She contributed the piece "Sexual politics (in literature)" to the 1970 anthologySisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, edited byRobin Morgan.[27]
She became a spokesperson for the feminist movement following the success of the bookSexual 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.[9]
Millett was one of the first writers to describe the modern concept ofpatriarchy as the society-wide subjugation of women.[28] BiographerGayle 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.[10]
Millett wrote several books on women's lives from a feminist perspective. For instance, in the bookThe Basement: Meditations on a Human Sacrifice (1979), completed over four years, she chronicled the torture and murder of Indianapolis teenagerSylvia Likens byGertrude 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.[9][29] 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."[30] 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".[29]
Millett and Sophie Keir, a Canadian journalist, traveled toTehran, Iran in 1979 for the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom to work for Iranian women's rights. Their trip followed actions taken byAyatollah 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 attendeda protest rally held atTehran University onInternational Women's Day, March 8. About 20,000 women attended a march through the city'sFreedom Square; many of whom were stabbed, beaten, or threatened withacid. 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."[31] She wrote about the experience in her 1982 bookGoing to Iran.[32] Millett is featured in the feminist history filmShe's Beautiful When She's Angry (2014).[33]
Sexual Politics originated as Millett's PhD dissertation and was published in 1970, the same year that she was awarded her doctorate fromColumbia University. Thebestselling book,[7] a critique ofpatriarchy in Western society and literature, addressed thesexism andheterosexism of the modern novelistsD. H. Lawrence,Henry Miller, andNorman Mailer and contrasted their perspectives with the dissenting viewpoint of the homosexual authorJean Genet.[34] Millett questioned the origins of patriarchy, argued that sex-based oppression was both political and cultural,[35] and posited that undoing the traditional family was the key to true sexual revolution.[36][37] 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.[9][25]
As a symbol of the women's liberation movement, Millett was featured in aTime magazine cover story, "The Politics of Sex",[5] which calledSexual Politics a "remarkable book" that provided a coherent theory about the feminist movement.[7]Alice Neel created the depiction of Millett for the August 31, 1970, cover.[38]
According to biographer Peter Manso,The Prisoner of Sex was written byNorman Mailer in response to Millett'sSexual Politics.[39] Andrew Wilson, author ofNorman 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..."[40]
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".[5] 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."[5][6] In response, a press conference was organized two days later in Greenwich Village by lesbian feministsIvy Bottini andBarbara 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".[5]
Millett's 1971 filmThree Lives is a 16 mm documentary made by an all-woman crew,[9][41] including co-directorSusan Kleckner, cameraperson Lenore Bode, and editor Robin Mide, under the name Women's Liberation Cinema.[nb 3] 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 herSexual Politics, so systematically tore apart, shook up, ridiculed and undermined—while, apparently, tickling it pink."[11] It received "generally excellent reviews" following its premiere at a New York City theater.[9]
In her 1971 bookThe 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.
In 1974 and 1977, respectively, Millett published two autobiographical books.Flying (1974),[9] a "stream-of-consciousness memoir about her bisexuality",[43] which explores her life after the success ofSexual Politics in what was described inThe 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.[44]Sita (1977) explores her sexuality, particularly her lesbian lover who committed suicide[44] and the effect on Millett's personal and private life.[9] Millett andSidney Abbott,Phyllis Birkby,Alma Routsong, and Artemis March were among the members of CR One, the first lesbian-feminist consciousness-raising group.[26]
In an interview with Mark Blasius, Millett was sympathetic to the concept ofintergenerational sex, describingage of consent laws as "very oppressive" togay 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.[45] 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".[45] In this interview, Millett criticized those who wished toabolish age-of-consent laws, saying the issue was not focused onchildren'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".[45]
Kate wroteMother Millett (2001) about her mother, who in her later years developed several serious health problems, including a brain tumor andhypercalcaemia.[2][44] 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.[46] 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,[2][44] which was one of Helen Millett's greatest fears.[44] 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."[2]
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".[44] 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."[46] Even though Helen played a role in having her daughter committed to the University of Minnesota's Mayo wing,[44] 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.[2]
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.[2] Millett wrote several autobiographical memoirs, with what Featherstone calls "brutal honesty," about herself, her husband, lovers, and family.[2][44][nb 4] Her relationship with her mother was strained by her radical politics, domineering personality, and unconventional lifestyle.[46] Helen was particularly upset about examination of her lesbianism in her books.[44] (Millett identified as bisexual by late 1970.[5][6]) Family relationships were further strained after Millett was involuntarily committed topsychiatric wards and again when she wroteThe Loony Bin Trip.[46]
Millett focused on her mother inMother 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.[44] 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."[2] 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 inMother Millett, however, may have been "at the expense of her two siblings".[46]
In 1961 Millett moved to Japan and met fellow sculptorFumio Yoshimura.[7][14] In 1963 Yoshimura and Millett left Japan and moved to New York's Lower East Side in the Bowery district.[17] In 1965 they married to prevent Yoshimura from being deported,[25][17] and during their marriage Millett said that they were "friends and lovers".[10] She dedicated her bookSexual Politics to him.[48] Author Estelle C. Jelinek says that during their marriage he "loves her, leads his own creative life, and accepts her woman lovers".[49][self-published source] In 1985 they were divorced.[14] At the time of her death, Millett had recently married Sophie Keir, her partner for 39 years.[50][4]
Mental illness affected Millett's personal and professional life from 1973,[30][43] when she lived with her husband in California and was an activist and teacher at theUniversity of California, Berkeley. Yoshimura and Sally, Kate's eldest sister, became concerned about Kate's extreme emotions.[20] 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 atUniversity 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."[43] 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,[20] having won a sanity trial,[51] due to the efforts of her friends and apro bono attorney.[20]
Following the two involuntary confinements, Millett became depressed, particularly so about having been confined withoutdue 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 calledbipolar disorder). The diagnosis affected how she was perceived by others and her ability to attain employment.[20][30][43] In California doctors had recommended that she takelithium 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.[20][52]
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.[20] Her behavior was that of psychiatric drug withdrawal, including "mile-a-minute" speech, which turned her peaceful art colony to "a quarrelsome dystopia."[47] Mallory Millett, having talked to Keir, tried to get her committed but was unsuccessful due to New York's laws concerning involuntary commitments.[20]
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.[20] While confined, she was heavily drugged. To combat the aggressive pharmaceutical program of "the worst bin of all", she counteracted the effects ofThorazine 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.[47]
[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[53]
After several days, she was found by her friendMargaretta D'Arcy. With the assistance of an Irish parliament member and a therapist-psychiatrist from Dublin, Millett was declared competent and released[20] within several weeks.[53] 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.[20]
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.[54] 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..."[20] InThe Loony Bin Trip, Millett wrote that she dreaded her depressed periods:
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 ... 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 ... they rather welcome it: You are quiet and you suffer.[53]
Feminist author and historianMarilyn 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."[47]
Angered byinstitutional psychiatric practices and lenient involuntary commitment processes,[nb 5] Millett became an activist.[20] With her lawyer, she changed the State of Minnesota's commitment law so that a trial is required before a person is involuntarily committed.[51]
Millett was active in theanti-psychiatry movement.[12] As a representative ofMindFreedom International, she spoke out against psychiatric torture at the United Nations during the negotiations of the text of theConvention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2005).[55]
In 1978, Millett became an associate of theWomen's Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP).[56] 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.
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 295Bowery 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.[57]
Kristan Poirot, author ofMediating a Movement, Authorizing Discourse, says that the release of Millett'sSexual Politics (1970) was a pivotal event in the second wave of the feminist movement.[58] Although there were other important moments in the movement, like the founding of theNational Organization for Women and release ofThe Feminine Mystique byBetty Friedan, it was in 1970 that the media gave greater attention to the feminist movement, first with a front-page article inThe New York Times and coverage on the three network's news programs about theWomen's Strike for Equality event that summer.[58] Millett used psychology, anthropology, thesexual revolution, and literary criticism to explain her theory of sexual politics,[58] which is that western societies have been driven by a belief that men are superior to women.[7] 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."[58] 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.[58] However, Millett identified as bisexual by late 1970.[5][6] ScholarCamille Paglia described Millett's scholarship as deeply flawed, declaring that "American feminism's nose dive began" when Millett achieved prominence.[59] According to Paglia, Millett'sSexual 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.[60]
Millett wrote her autobiographical booksFlying (1974) andSita (1977) aboutcoming out as gay, partly an importantconsciousness-raising activity. She realized beginning an open dialogue is important to break down the isolation and alienation that hiding in privacy can cause.[61] She wrote inFlying what Alice Henry calls in heroff our backs review ofSita an "excruciating public and political 'coming out'" and its effect on her personal, political, and artistic lives.[61] While she discussed some of her love affairs inFlying, inSita 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."[61]
Millett recorded her visit to Iran and the demonstrations by Iranian feminists against the fundamentalist shift in Iran politics under Khomeini's government. Her bookGoing 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.[62]
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.[63]
Millett won the Best Books Award forMother Millett from Library Journal in 2001.[64] In 2012, she was awarded one of that year'sCourage Award for the Arts byYoko Ono,[65] 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".[65] Between 2011 and 2012, she was also awarded theLambda Pioneer Award for Literature[36] and aFoundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists award (2012).[36][66] She was honored in the summer of 2011 at aVeteran Feminists of America gala; attendees included feminists such asSusan Brownmiller andGloria Steinem.[36]
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".[67] The induction ceremony took place on October 24, 2013, at the National Women's Hall of Fame headquarters inSeneca Falls, New York.[68]
| 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 |
| 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. |
Some of her exhibitions and installations are:
Producer[11]
Herself, writer, artist[79]
Herself[80]
Herself[citation needed]
Herself[81]
Herself[82]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link){{cite book}}:|website= ignored (help)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.
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