Kate Millett
Katherine Murray Millett was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended the University of Oxford 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, which was based on her doctoral dissertation at 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.
The feminist, 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, Bryn Mawr College, Barnard College, and the University of California, Berkeley. Some of her later written works are The Politics of Cruelty, about state-sanctioned torture in many countries, and Mother Millett, 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 in 1970, the year the book Sexual Politics was published. However, late in the year 1970 she came out as bisexual. She was married to sculptor Fumio Yoshimura 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 Millett in Saint Paul, Minnesota. According to Millett, she was afraid of her father, an engineer, who beat her. He was an alcoholic who abandoned the family when she was 14, "consigning them to a life of genteel poverty". Her mother was a teacher and insurance saleswoman. She had two sisters, Sally and Mallory; the latter was one of the subjects of Three Lives. Of Irish Catholic heritage, Kate Millett attended parochial schools in Saint Paul throughout her childhood.Millett graduated in 1956 magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature; she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. A wealthy aunt paid for her education at St Hilda's College, Oxford, gaining an English literature first-class honors degree in 1958. She was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors having studied at St. Hilda's. After spending about 10 years as an educator and artist, Millett entered the graduate school program for English and comparative literature at Columbia University in 1968, during which she taught English at Barnard. 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.
Career
Early career as an artist and educator
Millett taught English at the University of North Carolina after graduating from Oxford University, but she left mid-semester to study art.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, had her first one-woman show at Tokyo's Minami Gallery, and taught English at Waseda University. She left Japan in 1963 and moved to New York's Lower East Side.
Millett taught English and exhibited her works of art at Barnard College 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." Her viewpoints on radical politics, her "stinging attack" against Barnard in Token Learning, and a budget cut at the college led to her being dismissed on December 23, 1968. Her artwork was featured in an exhibit at Greenwich Village's Judson Gallery. During these years Millett became interested in the peace and Civil Rights Movement, joined the Congress of Racial Equality, and participated in their protests.
In 1971, Millett taught sociology at Bryn Mawr College. She started buying and restoring property that year, near Poughkeepsie, New York; this became the Women's Art Colony and Tree Farm, a community of women artists and writers and Christmas tree farm. Two years later she was an educator at the University of California, Berkeley.
The 1980s through 2000s
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. Millett was also a contributor to On the Issues magazine, and continued writing into the early 2000s. She discussed state-sanctioned torture in The Politics of Cruelty, bringing attention to the use of torture in many countries.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. Throughout the programme Reed used sexist language.
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. In 2012, The Women's Art Colony became a 5013 non-profit organization and changed its name to the Millett Center for the Arts.
Activism
Feminism
Millett was a leading figure in the women's movement, or second-wave feminism, of the 1960s and 1970s. 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.In 1966, Millett became a committee member of National Organization for Women and subsequently joined the New York Radical Women, Radical lesbians, and Downtown Radical Women organizations.
She contributed the piece "Sexual politics " to the 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.
She became a spokesperson for the feminist movement following the success of the book Sexual Politics, 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.
Millett was one of the first writers to describe the modern concept of patriarchy as the society-wide subjugation of women. 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.
Millett wrote several books on women's lives from a feminist perspective. For instance, in the book The Basement: Meditations on a Human Sacrifice, 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. 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." 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".
Millett and Sophie Keir, a Canadian journalist, traveled to 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 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 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 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." She wrote about the experience in her 1982 book Going to Iran. Millett is featured in the feminist history film She's Beautiful When She's Angry.