Kate Millett

Her
book Flying (1974) tells of her marriage with Yoshimura and her love
affairs with women. Sita (1977) is a meditation on Millett's doomed love
affair with a female college administrator who was ten years her
senior.

This is the ninetieth post in a series highlighting the best gay and
lesbian authors from the 20th century (with a few before and after that
period) who have recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of gay
people telling what life is, and was, during an important time of
history.

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.Contents

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 critiques 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. Sita (1977) is a meditation
on Millett's doomed love affair with a female college administrator who
was ten years her senior. In 1979, Millett went to Iran to work for
women's rights, was soon deported, and wrote about the experience in
Going to Iran. In The Loony-Bin Trip (1990) she describes her experience
of being incarcerated in psychiatric facilities, her experience of
being diagnosed as "bipolar", and her decision to discontinue lithium
therapy. She won her own sanity trial in St. Paul. On a dare with her
lawyer, together they changed the State of Minnesota's commitment law.

Millet
was a contributor to On The Issues Magazine and was interviewed at
length for an article in the magazine by Merle Hoffman.

Millett
is active in the anti-psychiatry movement. 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 (2006).

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

Bibliography

Sexual Politics (1970)
The Prostitution Papers (1973)
Flying (1974)
Sita (1977)
The Basement (1979)
Going to Iran (1979)
The Loony-Bin Trip (1990)
Believe me, you don't want a picture of that! (1991)
The Politics of Cruelty (1994)
A.D.: A Memoir (1995)
Mother Millett (2002)

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)