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Kate Millett

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Not to be confused with Catherine Millet.
Kate Millett
Millett in 1970
Born14 September 1934
St. Paul, Minnesota
NationalityUnited States of America

Kate Millett (born Katherine Murray Millett on 14 September 1934 in St. Paul, Minnesota) is an American feminist writer and activist. She is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics.

Career

Kate Millett received her B.A. at the University of Minnesota in 1956, where she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. She later obtained a first-class degree, with honors, from St Hilda's College, Oxford in 1958.

Millett moved to Japan in 1961. Two years later, Millett returned to the United States with fellow sculptor Fumio Yoshimura whom she married in 1965. The two divorced in 1985. She was active in feminist politics in late 1960s and the 1970s. In 1966, she became a committee member of National Organization for Women.

Sexual Politics originated as her Ph.D. dissertation, which was awarded by Columbia University in 1970. Here Millett offers a comprehensive critique of patriarchy in Western society and literature. In particular, Millett attacked what she sees as the sexism and heterosexism of the modern novelists D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer, contrasting their perspectives with the dissenting viewpoint of the homosexual author Jean Genet.

In 1971, Millett started buying and restoring fields and buildings near Poughkeepsie, New York. The project eventually became the Women's Art Colony/Tree Farm, a community of female artists and writers that is supported by the sale of Millett's silk-screen prints and by selling Christmas trees that have been hand-sheared by the artists in residence.

Millett's 1971 film Three Lives, is a 16mm documentary made by an all-woman crew (including co-director Susan Kleckner, cameraperson Lenore Bode, and editor Robin Mide) under the name Women's Liberation Cinema. The 70-minute film focuses on reminiscences of three women recounting the stories of their lives. The subjects are Mallory Millett-Jones (the director's sister), Lillian Shreve, a chemist, and Robin Mide, an artist.

Her book Flying (1974) tells of her marriage with Yoshimura and her love affairs with women. In 1979, Millett went to Iran to work for women's rights, was soon deported, and wrote about the experience in Going to Iran. Sita (1977) is a meditation on Millett's doomed love affair with a female college administrator who was ten years her senior. The Loony-Bin Trip (1990) discusses her diagnosis of bipolar disorder, describing experiences with hospitalization and her decision to discontinue lithium therapy. Millett continues her efforts to debunk the myths surrounding psychiatry and advocates against forced psychiatric interventions as a representative of MindFreedom International at the United Nations regarding the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

In a notorious incident, she was a guest on a late-night television program in the UK (After Dark in 1991) when an inebriated Oliver Reed kissed her on the hand and cheek, uninvited. Reed asked whether the other panellists wanted him to leave. The chairwoman said no but the other panellists including Millett said yes. Reed left the set. At the beginning of the programme episode Reed had said in reference to Millett "can we first of all establish that this woman doesn't know what the fuck she's talking about".

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 others held out, but ultimately lost their battle. Their building was demolished, and the residents were re-located. [1]

Critical assessment

Her book Sexual Politics went out of print in the 1990s, only to be reissued in 2000.

Bibliography

Films

  • Des fleurs pour Simone de Beauvoir (2007)
  • The Real Yoko Ono (2001) (TV)
  • "Bookmark" .... (1 episode, 1989)
    • Daughters of de Beauvoir (TV episode, 1989)
  • Not a Love Story: A Film About Pornography (1981)
  • Three Lives (1971, Producer)
  • Playboy: The Story of X (1998) (Archive Footage) [3]

References

  • Lorna Sage The Cambridge Guide to Women's Literature in English, 1999, Cambridge
  1. ^ [1] The Villager, Vol. 74, Number 15, August 11-17, 2004
  2. ^ reviewed by Martha Bridegam
  3. ^ imdb

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