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Sexual Politics
"Praised and denounced when it was first published in 1970, "Sexual Politics" not only explored history but also became part of it. Kate Millett's groundbreaking book fueled feminism's second wave, giving voice to the anger of a generation while documenting the inequities - neatly packaged in revered works of literature and art - of a complacent and unrepentant society. "Sexual Politics" laid the foundation for subsequent feminist scholarship by showing how cultural discourse reflects a systematized subjugation and exploitation of women. Identifying patriarchy as a socially conditioned belief system masquerading as nature, Millett demonstrates in detail how its attitudes and systems penetrate literature, philosophy, psychology, and politics. Her incendiary work rocked the foundations of the literary canon by castigating time-honored classics - from D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's "Lover" to Norman Mailer's "The Naked and the Dead" - for their use of sex to degrade and undermine women. A new introduction to this edition draws attention to some of the forms patriarchy has taken recently in consolidating its oppressive and dangerous control."
424 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1969
About the author
Kate Millett
30 books283 followersKatherine Murray "Kate" Millett was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University and was the first American woman to be awarded a postgraduate degree with first-class honors by St. Hilda's. She has been described as "a seminal influence on second-wave feminism", and is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics," which was her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. Journalist Liza Featherstone attributes previously unimaginable "legal abortion, greater professional equality between the sexes and a sexual freedom" being made possible partially due to Millett's efforts.
The feminist, human rights, peace, civil rights, and anti-psychiatry movements have been some of Millett's key 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. Mother Millett and The Loony Bin Trip, for instance, dealt with family issues and the times when she was involuntarily committed. Besides appearing in a number of documentaries, she produced Three Lives and wrote Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography. In the 1960s and 1970s, Millett taught at Waseda University, Bryn Mawr College, Barnard College, and University of California, Berkeley.
Millett was raised in Minnesota and has spent most of her adult life in Manhattan and the Woman's Art Colony, which became the Millett Center for the Arts in 2012, that she established in Poughkeepsie, New York. Self-identified as bisexual, Millett was married to sculptor Fumio Yoshimura from 1965 to 1985 and had relationships with women, one of whom was the inspiration for her book Sita. She has continued to work as an activist, writer, and artist. Some of her later written works are The Politics of Cruelty (1994), about state-sanctioned torture in many countries, and a book about the relationship with her mother in Mother Millett (2001). Between 2011 and 2013 she has 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.
The feminist, human rights, peace, civil rights, and anti-psychiatry movements have been some of Millett's key 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. Mother Millett and The Loony Bin Trip, for instance, dealt with family issues and the times when she was involuntarily committed. Besides appearing in a number of documentaries, she produced Three Lives and wrote Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography. In the 1960s and 1970s, Millett taught at Waseda University, Bryn Mawr College, Barnard College, and University of California, Berkeley.
Millett was raised in Minnesota and has spent most of her adult life in Manhattan and the Woman's Art Colony, which became the Millett Center for the Arts in 2012, that she established in Poughkeepsie, New York. Self-identified as bisexual, Millett was married to sculptor Fumio Yoshimura from 1965 to 1985 and had relationships with women, one of whom was the inspiration for her book Sita. She has continued to work as an activist, writer, and artist. Some of her later written works are The Politics of Cruelty (1994), about state-sanctioned torture in many countries, and a book about the relationship with her mother in Mother Millett (2001). Between 2011 and 2013 she has 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.
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September 8, 2017
Revived Review to commemorate the passing of Kate Millett, Feminist critic, 1934-2017.
(Thanks to David Schaafsma for the gentle reminder.)
****************************
Yes, it's Week Four of STRICTLY COME NOVELISTS
(note - this is the British version of DANCING WITH THE NOVELISTS)
Tess Daley (blondly) : And here, dancing the American smooth with his partner Ola Jordan,
is Count Leo Tolstoy.
(Music : From Russia with Love. The couple cavort.)
Sir Bruce (as the couple shimmies from the dance floor) : Well done, well done Leo. I'm glad you were able to finish your dance in less than 700 pages. (Mild titters from audience.) Come on, I thought it was better than that. Anyway. Let's hear what the judges have to say. We'll start with Bruno.
Bruno Toneoli : Oooooh Count! (Waves arms wildly) It was powerful, strong, progressive, and yet (a sudden coquettish half-smile) just a trifle chauvinistic in your flicks and kicks.
Len Goodman : What's he talkin' about? (Addresses Tolstoy directly). Count, it was smashin'. Cor, the battles, the drama, the journeys from one end of Europe to the other - that's the stuff to give the troops. Lovely.
Sir Bruce : And Craig? I hope you're not going to rain on this parade.
Craig Revel Horwood : Well darling, the armature was positively dashing, the costumes flamboyant enough to beat the band and in two words, de licious.
Sir Bruce : Oh, you actually had something nice to say, then. You must need a lie down now. (Raises eyebrows towards the audience.) Alesha, my dear, did you like the armature?
Alesha Dixon : Well I thought it had a few problems. (Len and Bruno look askance, like, what does she know anyway, she's only on this show because she's a gorgeous young woman, come on admit it everyone). I thought the choreography was sharp on the position of the serfs and the capework could certainly be read as a marvelous satire on upper class indifference to the suffering of the lower orders and, yes, the entire routine as an adumbration of the social revolution of Bakunin, still, I'm sorry to say that the position of women (groans from the audience)
was frankly terrible, and if we take your overly aggressive determination to lead throughout your American smooth as in any way indicative, I have to say you showed an undeviating and I would even say cruel adherence to an outmoded patriarchy.
Sir Bruce : Oh, ooh well, I didn't even understand half of that. Off you go.
Tolstoy and Ola trip up the stairs and are interviewed briefly by Tess.
Tess : So, a bit of controversy there. What did you make of Alesha's comments?
Tolstoy : Vimmin is not problem. Vimmen are life eetself. Violence inherent in class system ees problem.
Tess (chirpily, blondly) : But Count, unless the egregious imbalance of power between the sexes is at least acknowledged, social progress remains a boy's game played by boy's rules and on whatever wide canvas you choose to paint your great men of history they will in time be seen as parochial cul-de-sacs. (The Count looks miffed. Maybe vimmen are the problem.) The scores are in.
Announcer : Will the judges please reveal their scores? Craig Revel Horwood!
Craig : Four. (audience hisses)
Announcer : Len Goodman
Len : Sev-ennn!
Announcer : Alesha Dixon
Alesha : Two! (Defiantly)
Announcer : Bruno Tonioli
Bruno : Eight!
Tess : So, 21 out of 40 Count - do you think that will be enough to see you through to the next round?
Tolstoy : I am uniquely unhappy.
Tess : You seem to have lost your Russian accent.
Tolstoy : It comes and goes.
**
Just a short note to add to the frolics - Kate Millett's book ramified my mind when I read it and convinced me I was right to loathe Henry Miller and to think D H Lawrence had a screw loose. It was bold and bracing, and necessary.
However, the problem is that after feminism there is the tendency to read back, or reread past works and kind of score them for their progressive or regressive tendencies, and make literature into a liberal beauty parade. Which it isn't. For me this book was the beginning of the political correctness debate, which still rages - see all the arguing about American Psycho where you get people talking past each other all the time - "this is misogynist shit!" "No, it's a satire of capitalism!" "Then it's a misogynistic satire of capitalism!" "Get back in your box you politically correct muppet, or we'll chainsaw you too!" Etc, etc. I wonder what Kate Millett would make of the Dark Romance sub-genre like Pretty When she Cries and Comfort Food - I saw one goodreader saying "I'm a fan of NC fiction" - NC means Non-Consensual, meaning rape. There's a genre of this? That's such a depressing thought.
(Thanks to David Schaafsma for the gentle reminder.)
****************************
Yes, it's Week Four of STRICTLY COME NOVELISTS
(note - this is the British version of DANCING WITH THE NOVELISTS)
Tess Daley (blondly) : And here, dancing the American smooth with his partner Ola Jordan,
is Count Leo Tolstoy.
(Music : From Russia with Love. The couple cavort.)
Sir Bruce (as the couple shimmies from the dance floor) : Well done, well done Leo. I'm glad you were able to finish your dance in less than 700 pages. (Mild titters from audience.) Come on, I thought it was better than that. Anyway. Let's hear what the judges have to say. We'll start with Bruno.
Bruno Toneoli : Oooooh Count! (Waves arms wildly) It was powerful, strong, progressive, and yet (a sudden coquettish half-smile) just a trifle chauvinistic in your flicks and kicks.
Len Goodman : What's he talkin' about? (Addresses Tolstoy directly). Count, it was smashin'. Cor, the battles, the drama, the journeys from one end of Europe to the other - that's the stuff to give the troops. Lovely.
Sir Bruce : And Craig? I hope you're not going to rain on this parade.
Craig Revel Horwood : Well darling, the armature was positively dashing, the costumes flamboyant enough to beat the band and in two words, de licious.
Sir Bruce : Oh, you actually had something nice to say, then. You must need a lie down now. (Raises eyebrows towards the audience.) Alesha, my dear, did you like the armature?
Alesha Dixon : Well I thought it had a few problems. (Len and Bruno look askance, like, what does she know anyway, she's only on this show because she's a gorgeous young woman, come on admit it everyone). I thought the choreography was sharp on the position of the serfs and the capework could certainly be read as a marvelous satire on upper class indifference to the suffering of the lower orders and, yes, the entire routine as an adumbration of the social revolution of Bakunin, still, I'm sorry to say that the position of women (groans from the audience)
was frankly terrible, and if we take your overly aggressive determination to lead throughout your American smooth as in any way indicative, I have to say you showed an undeviating and I would even say cruel adherence to an outmoded patriarchy.
Sir Bruce : Oh, ooh well, I didn't even understand half of that. Off you go.
Tolstoy and Ola trip up the stairs and are interviewed briefly by Tess.
Tess : So, a bit of controversy there. What did you make of Alesha's comments?
Tolstoy : Vimmin is not problem. Vimmen are life eetself. Violence inherent in class system ees problem.
Tess (chirpily, blondly) : But Count, unless the egregious imbalance of power between the sexes is at least acknowledged, social progress remains a boy's game played by boy's rules and on whatever wide canvas you choose to paint your great men of history they will in time be seen as parochial cul-de-sacs. (The Count looks miffed. Maybe vimmen are the problem.) The scores are in.
Announcer : Will the judges please reveal their scores? Craig Revel Horwood!
Craig : Four. (audience hisses)
Announcer : Len Goodman
Len : Sev-ennn!
Announcer : Alesha Dixon
Alesha : Two! (Defiantly)
Announcer : Bruno Tonioli
Bruno : Eight!
Tess : So, 21 out of 40 Count - do you think that will be enough to see you through to the next round?
Tolstoy : I am uniquely unhappy.
Tess : You seem to have lost your Russian accent.
Tolstoy : It comes and goes.
**
Just a short note to add to the frolics - Kate Millett's book ramified my mind when I read it and convinced me I was right to loathe Henry Miller and to think D H Lawrence had a screw loose. It was bold and bracing, and necessary.
However, the problem is that after feminism there is the tendency to read back, or reread past works and kind of score them for their progressive or regressive tendencies, and make literature into a liberal beauty parade. Which it isn't. For me this book was the beginning of the political correctness debate, which still rages - see all the arguing about American Psycho where you get people talking past each other all the time - "this is misogynist shit!" "No, it's a satire of capitalism!" "Then it's a misogynistic satire of capitalism!" "Get back in your box you politically correct muppet, or we'll chainsaw you too!" Etc, etc. I wonder what Kate Millett would make of the Dark Romance sub-genre like Pretty When she Cries and Comfort Food - I saw one goodreader saying "I'm a fan of NC fiction" - NC means Non-Consensual, meaning rape. There's a genre of this? That's such a depressing thought.
April 9, 2017
It ruined D H Lawrence for me, but we all get somewhere we realize our favorite author is sexist, especially those who had good women in their lives and I don't know why.
If you like feminist literary criticism and if you don't mind your favorite authors being criticized,you will definitely like this. It's super fluid and fun and feminist.
If you like feminist literary criticism and if you don't mind your favorite authors being criticized,you will definitely like this. It's super fluid and fun and feminist.
September 8, 2017
R.I.P. Kate Millett, who died yesterday in Paris. This book, which I read parts of in the seventies, and read more of in the eighties, and have occasionally used in my teaching. is responsible for founding feminist literary studies, focusing on what now seem to be (thanks to her) obvious examples--Henry Miller, Norman Mailer-- though she is also takes her scalpel to romantic favorites (of mine) Lawrence and Hardy (ouch; and I still quibble with her on her views of certain works in Hardy and Lawrence). Millet takes on Freud, too, and that now seems obvious, but when she wrote of Freud in this way--Freud, the Father of Psychoanalysis, who wrote in maybe his last letter, "What is it women really want?!"--it was a kind of revelation. Millett sees lurking sexism and even misogyny in what was initially perceived as the literature of sexual liberation. Liberation for whom, Millett asked?
Probably Simone de Beauvoir, who of course preceded Millett, was the Mother of Feminist Studies/Women/Gender studies, but this book was just as important. It's depressingly worth looking at. Imagine, we are still struggling with the same issues, daily, in literature and life. Imagine how Millet's death and the reminder of her analysis will take the fun out of my listening to Charles Bukowski's Women, damn it.
Probably Simone de Beauvoir, who of course preceded Millett, was the Mother of Feminist Studies/Women/Gender studies, but this book was just as important. It's depressingly worth looking at. Imagine, we are still struggling with the same issues, daily, in literature and life. Imagine how Millet's death and the reminder of her analysis will take the fun out of my listening to Charles Bukowski's Women, damn it.
June 21, 2007
Everyone always says that this book founded feminist literary studies even though OBVIOUSLY Simone De Beauvoir was the real founder with her essays on several of the same authors in Second Sex. I know it's not as fun to think so though since she founded EVERYTHING else already. However, Sexual Politics is mind-blowingly brilliant. One of the few literary theory books which leaves you analyzing the patterns of your own life and recognizing underlying structures you instictively knew, but could not name. Highly recommended.
October 9, 2017
This was the book that made me fall back in love with feminism.
Feminism as in "the centuries-long project to improve women's lot", not "what the pink-haired kids are doing these days."
Kate Millett is a rational person who looks at sexual norms and asks "Why?" Do we *really* think Freud's theories were plausible? Do we *really* think Ruskin's romantic ideas of domesticity were accurate? Are we *really* convinced by the sexual mysticism of D.H. Lawrence or Norman Mailer? Her aim is targeted at writers who think that operating in a mystical mode is an excuse for being flatly wrong about real life, and exposing them as poetic justifications for a thuggish way of life.
Her feminist opinions were radical at the time, but are almost never stated explicitly today. She believes that women have historically lived under conditions of extreme subjugation, up until very recently (the discussion of coverture laws in the 19th century is painful to read). She also believes that women are often blamed for the *whole* animalistic part of mankind, as though they were the only ones who are sexual or sometimes irrational. She believes that our notions of "masculine" and "feminine" are tied into assumptions about "master" and "slave". I think this is plainly *true.*
This book was written before evolutionary psychology was really fleshed out, so I think there's actually more evidence for innate sex differences than she does, but she couldn't have known that at the time.
I like looking for biological or economic explanations rather than cultural ones; there's something that creeps me out about seeing humans as the puppets of vast social forces; but, for a cultural critic, Millett is *unusually* clean and straightforward in her thinking, and doesn't ask us to believe in much unprovable hoodoo. If you, like me, have an aversion to social science, then this is the feminist book for you.
Feminism as in "the centuries-long project to improve women's lot", not "what the pink-haired kids are doing these days."
Kate Millett is a rational person who looks at sexual norms and asks "Why?" Do we *really* think Freud's theories were plausible? Do we *really* think Ruskin's romantic ideas of domesticity were accurate? Are we *really* convinced by the sexual mysticism of D.H. Lawrence or Norman Mailer? Her aim is targeted at writers who think that operating in a mystical mode is an excuse for being flatly wrong about real life, and exposing them as poetic justifications for a thuggish way of life.
Her feminist opinions were radical at the time, but are almost never stated explicitly today. She believes that women have historically lived under conditions of extreme subjugation, up until very recently (the discussion of coverture laws in the 19th century is painful to read). She also believes that women are often blamed for the *whole* animalistic part of mankind, as though they were the only ones who are sexual or sometimes irrational. She believes that our notions of "masculine" and "feminine" are tied into assumptions about "master" and "slave". I think this is plainly *true.*
This book was written before evolutionary psychology was really fleshed out, so I think there's actually more evidence for innate sex differences than she does, but she couldn't have known that at the time.
I like looking for biological or economic explanations rather than cultural ones; there's something that creeps me out about seeing humans as the puppets of vast social forces; but, for a cultural critic, Millett is *unusually* clean and straightforward in her thinking, and doesn't ask us to believe in much unprovable hoodoo. If you, like me, have an aversion to social science, then this is the feminist book for you.
August 17, 2011
An eyeopener. Moving, so scanning in some books. My favorite ones. After reading this, I swore off Mailer and H. Miller forever. Met Kate later, when she was making art in a studio in the East Village. My idea of an artistic rebel.
December 26, 2017
Em honra de Kate Millett (1934 - 2017)
Uma dos baluartes da segunda onda feminista, Millett reverberou tudo que havia de errado com o backlash pós-sufrágio que as feministas sofreram no século XX e essa é uma tentativa de desmistificar tudo que o saber-poder masculino tentou nos impingir durante séculos.
A primeira parte do livro abrange todo o período histórico e cultural considerado como a primeira revolução sexual, de 1830 a 1930, Wollstonecraft, Mill, Engels, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Oscar Wilde, Ibsen são contrapostos a Rossetti, Ruskin, Tennyson no delinear de como eram vistas as mulheres no século XIX e o que historicamente estava acontecendo nos EUA e Inglaterra para que as coisas mudassem com as sufragetes. Vemos duas visões díspares na sociedade vitoriana, primeiro a eficiente visão de John Stuart Mill descrita em A Sujeição das Mulheres e a insípida e tenebrosa visão de John Ruskin.
Na segunda parte do livro temos os exemplos da contra-revolução, o backlash, primeiro exemplificado com as diferenças ocorridas na sociedade alemã com o nazismo, de como as mulheres voltaram a serem vistas como "parideiras" do Estado. Logo a seguir vemos como a Revolução Russa foi libertária para as mulheres dando-lhes direito ao aborto e à igualdade social para logo em seguida com o advento do stalinismo serem novamente relegadas à condição de párias sociais.
O créme de la créme dessa segunda parte do livro é a extensiva análise sobre o reacionarismo freudiano e o quanto a visão equivocada de Freud sobre as mulheres as prejudicou no século XX e foi pedra de toque para os movimentos reacionários com relação à política sexual. De fato, tudo que Freud escreveu e falou sobre as mulheres é um show de horrores, é humanamente impossível lê-los e extrair algo de bom daquilo, é de uma misoginia sem parâmetros, o que acabou obscurecendo a mente dos pós-freudianos e dos funcionalistas também.
Enfim, livro fundamental sobre a história da política sexual, assim como baluarte do movimento feminista.
Uma dos baluartes da segunda onda feminista, Millett reverberou tudo que havia de errado com o backlash pós-sufrágio que as feministas sofreram no século XX e essa é uma tentativa de desmistificar tudo que o saber-poder masculino tentou nos impingir durante séculos.
A primeira parte do livro abrange todo o período histórico e cultural considerado como a primeira revolução sexual, de 1830 a 1930, Wollstonecraft, Mill, Engels, Charlotte Bronte, Thomas Hardy, George Meredith, Oscar Wilde, Ibsen são contrapostos a Rossetti, Ruskin, Tennyson no delinear de como eram vistas as mulheres no século XIX e o que historicamente estava acontecendo nos EUA e Inglaterra para que as coisas mudassem com as sufragetes. Vemos duas visões díspares na sociedade vitoriana, primeiro a eficiente visão de John Stuart Mill descrita em A Sujeição das Mulheres e a insípida e tenebrosa visão de John Ruskin.
Na segunda parte do livro temos os exemplos da contra-revolução, o backlash, primeiro exemplificado com as diferenças ocorridas na sociedade alemã com o nazismo, de como as mulheres voltaram a serem vistas como "parideiras" do Estado. Logo a seguir vemos como a Revolução Russa foi libertária para as mulheres dando-lhes direito ao aborto e à igualdade social para logo em seguida com o advento do stalinismo serem novamente relegadas à condição de párias sociais.
O créme de la créme dessa segunda parte do livro é a extensiva análise sobre o reacionarismo freudiano e o quanto a visão equivocada de Freud sobre as mulheres as prejudicou no século XX e foi pedra de toque para os movimentos reacionários com relação à política sexual. De fato, tudo que Freud escreveu e falou sobre as mulheres é um show de horrores, é humanamente impossível lê-los e extrair algo de bom daquilo, é de uma misoginia sem parâmetros, o que acabou obscurecendo a mente dos pós-freudianos e dos funcionalistas também.
Enfim, livro fundamental sobre a história da política sexual, assim como baluarte do movimento feminista.
July 17, 2020
I was surprised by how well this book has aged. There is nothing in it that reads as excessively utopian (as with Shulamith Firestone, who wished to abolish natural reproduction), or violent (as with Valerie Solanas), nothing focused on largely moribund causes (as is often the case with Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin). Nor does Millett restrict her audience to the respectable, middle-class and heterosexual, as was claimed of Betty Friedan. (Later in life Millett came out as bisexual and eventually married the journalist Sophie Keir.) Unlike her close contemporary Germaine Greer, she never spoke out (as far as I am aware) on transgender inclusion, the great shibboleth and generational divide in contemporary feminism.
The goal of this book is to define and condemn sexual politics, the power relationship existing between men and women. In practice, much of it is literary criticism of a high calibre. Millett notes that to say a writer is politically "bad" is not to say they lack skill, and she seems to genuinely admire many of the misogynists (there is no other word) whose work she critiques. (As an aside, when to ditch a morally repugnant artist whose work one admires is a fraught question: I'd happily torch all of Henry Miller, and surely nobody under fifty respects Mailer or Roth anymore, but - be still my heart! - what about Nabokov?)
In addition to Miller & Mailer, the other major writer in Millett's School of Misogyny is D.H. Lawrence - at least that of Lady Chatterley's Lover, while Sons and Lovers comes off somewhat better. Other writers play bit roles: Tennyson for his poem against women's education The Princess , and Ruskin for his archaic views on femininity. (The famous story about his wedding night is surely apocryphal, and Millett's claim that he "fell in love" with Rose La Touche when she was nine seems to be slightly exaggerated. But, yeah, he was a weirdo.)
Millett's demolition of these writers is so thorough you can't imagine resuscitation possible. Miller seems already at the time to have been somewhat forgotten; the obscenity trial around Tropic of Cancer gained him some notoriety but the book Millett discusses (Sexus, not that it matters) was called a "shower of lavatory filth" even by his friend Durrell. (As Millett notes, far from "escaping his Puritan origin", Miller has internalised it; in rebelling, he continues to see sex as filthy, violent and shameful.) Mailer came up with a response in Harper's, later turned into a book, The Prisoner of Sex. It is not worth your time.
Millett does like JS Mill and Engels on feminism, and in fiction she praises Jean Genet, whose portrayal of violent, exaggerated gender performance among gay prostitutes she sees a subversion (or in modern jargon, a queering) of the sexual hierarchy.
As a social critic/amateur anthropologist, Millett is much less convincing. After noting that speculation about prehistoric matriarchy can only be that, she goes on to assume it, and cite it as evidence that gender roles cannot be biologically hardwired. As far as I know, while we may speculate, there is no more evidence for this today than there was back when Engels suggested it. A big and fairly tedious chunk of the book is dedicated to rejecting the "functionalist" method in sociology textbooks, a long-forgotten dead end. (There is also some fairly superfluous argument about how Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia repressed women - on top of their other well-known failings.)
Andrea Dworkin called this book the alpha and omega of the women's movement, but it is strange how unpolitical it is. It is more a book of literary scholarship (with some sociology wedged in the middle section) than a call to action, and it contains no demands or goals. The book concludes with a cautious hope for its own obsolescence - that sex might be decoupled from politics - and that we might "create a world we can bear out of the desert we inhabit". Millett's is ultimately an inclusive and empathic vision of equality between humans: women and men, white and black, gay and straight, weak and powerful; one in which sex is an additive and not the defining feature of interpersonal relationships. It is one which today we might give another label: intersectionality.
*********************************************************
P.S. My edition appends an stunningly fatuous afterword by Rebecca Mead, mostly concerning some inane viral Internet drama from 2014 and lacking any evidence of actually having read the book.
The goal of this book is to define and condemn sexual politics, the power relationship existing between men and women. In practice, much of it is literary criticism of a high calibre. Millett notes that to say a writer is politically "bad" is not to say they lack skill, and she seems to genuinely admire many of the misogynists (there is no other word) whose work she critiques. (As an aside, when to ditch a morally repugnant artist whose work one admires is a fraught question: I'd happily torch all of Henry Miller, and surely nobody under fifty respects Mailer or Roth anymore, but - be still my heart! - what about Nabokov?)
In addition to Miller & Mailer, the other major writer in Millett's School of Misogyny is D.H. Lawrence - at least that of Lady Chatterley's Lover, while Sons and Lovers comes off somewhat better. Other writers play bit roles: Tennyson for his poem against women's education The Princess , and Ruskin for his archaic views on femininity. (The famous story about his wedding night is surely apocryphal, and Millett's claim that he "fell in love" with Rose La Touche when she was nine seems to be slightly exaggerated. But, yeah, he was a weirdo.)
Millett's demolition of these writers is so thorough you can't imagine resuscitation possible. Miller seems already at the time to have been somewhat forgotten; the obscenity trial around Tropic of Cancer gained him some notoriety but the book Millett discusses (Sexus, not that it matters) was called a "shower of lavatory filth" even by his friend Durrell. (As Millett notes, far from "escaping his Puritan origin", Miller has internalised it; in rebelling, he continues to see sex as filthy, violent and shameful.) Mailer came up with a response in Harper's, later turned into a book, The Prisoner of Sex. It is not worth your time.
Millett does like JS Mill and Engels on feminism, and in fiction she praises Jean Genet, whose portrayal of violent, exaggerated gender performance among gay prostitutes she sees a subversion (or in modern jargon, a queering) of the sexual hierarchy.
As a social critic/amateur anthropologist, Millett is much less convincing. After noting that speculation about prehistoric matriarchy can only be that, she goes on to assume it, and cite it as evidence that gender roles cannot be biologically hardwired. As far as I know, while we may speculate, there is no more evidence for this today than there was back when Engels suggested it. A big and fairly tedious chunk of the book is dedicated to rejecting the "functionalist" method in sociology textbooks, a long-forgotten dead end. (There is also some fairly superfluous argument about how Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia repressed women - on top of their other well-known failings.)
Andrea Dworkin called this book the alpha and omega of the women's movement, but it is strange how unpolitical it is. It is more a book of literary scholarship (with some sociology wedged in the middle section) than a call to action, and it contains no demands or goals. The book concludes with a cautious hope for its own obsolescence - that sex might be decoupled from politics - and that we might "create a world we can bear out of the desert we inhabit". Millett's is ultimately an inclusive and empathic vision of equality between humans: women and men, white and black, gay and straight, weak and powerful; one in which sex is an additive and not the defining feature of interpersonal relationships. It is one which today we might give another label: intersectionality.
*********************************************************
P.S. My edition appends an stunningly fatuous afterword by Rebecca Mead, mostly concerning some inane viral Internet drama from 2014 and lacking any evidence of actually having read the book.
August 30, 2013
4.5
We all know how easy it is to look back and criticize. It is very easy, but to do it eloquently, lucidly, and with the goal of creating a measuring stick for sexual politics is a feat to celebrate, not to mention that it is admirable, interesting and worth discussing.
I mean really, using literature as a barometer for the sexual-political climate of the times? What's not to enjoy? Yes, she indulges in close reading, but she does not go overboard and indulge tangents, whims or stray metaphors. Her focus and drive are scholastic and betray a huge respect for philosophical argument and for the history of the sexual revolution. As individual criticisms and overarching historical documentation, maybe they have been done before, and maybe even have been done better by some, but as an introduction to feminist history and a scathing review of some of the literary giants, it stands alone. Most importantly it still holds its ground almost 50 years later. Not only does she acknowledge class and racial warfare as significant props of the patriarchal political structure, but her arguments effectively anticipate the third wave.
I recommend this, as a key part of the ongoing dialogue, to anyone who is serious about understanding feminist history and theory.
We all know how easy it is to look back and criticize. It is very easy, but to do it eloquently, lucidly, and with the goal of creating a measuring stick for sexual politics is a feat to celebrate, not to mention that it is admirable, interesting and worth discussing.
I mean really, using literature as a barometer for the sexual-political climate of the times? What's not to enjoy? Yes, she indulges in close reading, but she does not go overboard and indulge tangents, whims or stray metaphors. Her focus and drive are scholastic and betray a huge respect for philosophical argument and for the history of the sexual revolution. As individual criticisms and overarching historical documentation, maybe they have been done before, and maybe even have been done better by some, but as an introduction to feminist history and a scathing review of some of the literary giants, it stands alone. Most importantly it still holds its ground almost 50 years later. Not only does she acknowledge class and racial warfare as significant props of the patriarchal political structure, but her arguments effectively anticipate the third wave.
I recommend this, as a key part of the ongoing dialogue, to anyone who is serious about understanding feminist history and theory.
December 31, 2015
Holy shit, this book was better than I could ever imagine. Kate Millett is a badass super genius.
March 26, 2020
3.5/5
It is opportune, perhaps today even mandatory, that we develop a more relevant psychology and philosophy of power relationships beyond the simple conceptual framework provided by our traditional formal politics.This work is, to be perfectly honest, quite the mess. Not nearly as much as is Brownmiller's Against Our Will, to which it is compared, but enough for me to be wary of both its status as classic and any who wholeheartedly abide by it. What worth it has is pure gold, but that, unfortunately, does not include its literary criticism, which is understandably its most advertised facet on a site such as this. A more accurate title would be 'White Sexual Politics', or 'White Anglo Sexual Politics', or 'White Anglo Heterosexual Sexual Politics with Random Inclusion of Homosexuals Focusing on This One French Gay Dude and Every So Often Comparisons to Black Civil Rights Politics, Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, and Some Other Sensational Tidbits'. In short, it reads like a rant: wildly informative in parts, and I imagine extremely cathartic for many who needed such, but it hardly stands up to the sort of scrutiny I inflict these days on readings such as this. Brief mentions of Nin and Beauvoir in the footnotes are all very well, but when a whole host of other topics from leather culture to Fanon are disparagingly sampled, judged, and passed by, each within the scope of a single sentence, you can't expect me to believe that they don't necessitate the same amount of discussion to the point of apologism that Genet's 'The Blacks' received in this text. In short, too little coverage of too many things, and the only reason why I wasn't bowled over and/or disappointed by it was that I have enough former knowledge of most of the subjects to not only follow Millett's argument, but disapprove of various chunks of it. The biggest culprit would have to be the constant conflation of artist with art, whether created or engaged with: it's the same sort of theorizing that says that I, consumer of videos on the latest Doom game, am destined to become a mass murderer at some point in the future. Emotionally gratifying when it comes to calling out bigotry in pieces of literature, I'm sure, but the descent into thoughtcrime is a swift one, and the consequences of such can still be felt today. Decrying of hate speech, sure, but coaching of proper fictional representation is why diversity is uplifted today without active inclusion or building of equity, and such pretty pictures are not going to birth a necessary revolution.
When the only known "freedom" is a gilded voluptuousness attainable through the largesse of someone who owns and controls everything, there is little incentive to struggle for personal fulfillment or liberation.
Paternal authority was to be upheld again, which is not surprising when one understands that the sate saw itself as delegating its authority to parents and in turn demanding them to rear the young in the correct manner.The most useful sections is when Millett directly discusses governmental policies that, directly or otherwise, controlled the sexual, erotic, or romantic behavior of people under its control. Indeed, her strongest analysis came from that of the socioeconomic position of the family, and, combined with my concurrent reads of Emma Goldman's autobiography and experiences under COVID-19, I came out of it severely convinced that no improvement of the social system would occur without a serious overhaul of the current state of the nuclear family. Even her work on Freud had its uses, as psychology does its part in defining what is normal and what must be clinically diagnosed (medicinal rape, anyone?), to the point that I will not feel safe resorting to it until I have a stronger support system in place. The least useful were when she began, as previously mentioned, to conflate an artist with their art, as I don't care how awful a theorist or artist is, saying something like "whose own predilections one has little trouble in deducing from her work" lands us right back in the patriarchal thoughtcrime Christianity Millett was so keen on deconstructing. This doesn't even get into how I had to do all but stop up my ears any time she mentioned the word prostitute, or geisha, or harem, or randomly cited black people or the Civil Rights Movement of her time as a point of contrast, or followed up such with general praise for white supremacist Elizabeth Cady Stanton, etc, etc, etc. So: aged badly? For sure in some sections, but in others, we're nowhere where we need to be for all to have true equity, and in these days when my government is being more obvious than usual in its call for the human sacrifice of many on the altar of financial wealth for a few, I wonder if anyone will go back to Millett and apply certain lessons in humanity accordingly. Course, they have some real rocks to navigate past if they don't want to wreck their ship on more insidiously phrased systematic marginalization (I didn't even get into queer issues, including intersex, beyond the 'homosexuals' Millett kept throwing around, but that's a whole 'nother essay). A conundrum, that, but, in a way, no different from making a long stored sack potatoes into a healthful meal through the removal of many a nauseating eye.
To observe a group rendered passive, stolid in their suffering, forced into trivial vanity to please their superordinates, and, after summarizing these effects of long subordination, choose to conclude they were inevitable, and then commence to prescribe them as health, realism, and maturity, is actually a fairly blatant kind of Social Darwinism.
Psychologically, the very pattern of the tale cleverly provides satisfactions for the white male's guilt feelings over the dark peoples and "primitives" whom he exploits. He will atone by throwing them his woman to butcher, advancing his dominion over her in the process, and substituting his own rival as the scapegoat for imperialist excesses.Loaded with goodies as this work was, the sharp hypocrisy in its tone on many a topic, plus the sheer amount of wordy jargon stuffed into tiny font printed on inordinately large pages, made it a tiring read at times, and today so far has been particularly exhausting. I don't recommend this book as an introduction at all, but considering how I threw myself at The Second Sex back when I barely knew what I was doing, freedom to read is freedom to read, so do what you want. However, as has hopefully been evidenced by the previous sections in this review, you have to be careful with this stuff, however ponderously phrased or wish fulfilling in structure. It's not as much of a wash as other similarly concerned texts of its contemporaneous milieu are, but it's extremely easy for its targeted audience to come out of reading it imagining themselves the rightful center of a vanguard paradigm and see Thatcher's illegal paramilitary death squads in Ireland as 'girl power' (maybe not quite that bad, but after all the bald-faced promotion eugenics in one of my places of work involving the teaching of children the week before I went into shelter-in-place, better to assume the Overton Window is farther to the right than one wants to believe). So, much as Millett glories in her critical readings, be sure to critically read her as well. I just wouldn't encourage her breed of art conflated with author theorizings. Lord knows my own reviews are riddled with such, but considering that I'm still in my 20s, that's what growth is all about.
One cannot but note in passing that the force of this recommendation is to urge that women participate in political power not because such is their human right, but because an extension of their proper feminine sphere into the public domain would be a social good. This is to argue from expediency rather than justice.
Even acknowledging that, under the present circumstances of two sharply divided sexual cultures, we could achieve a human balance only through co-operation of the two groups with their fragmented collective personalities, one must really go further and urge a dissemination to members of each sex of those socially desirable traits previously confined to one or the other while eliminating the bellicosity or excessive passivity useless in either.
When a system of power is thoroughly in command, it has scarcely need to speak itself aloud; when its workings are exposed and questioned, it becomes not only subject to discussion, but even to change.
February 18, 2012
The misogyny she examines was too much for me to finish the last few chapters. A feminist must-read.
February 19, 2014
It is a book that has started the second wave (or third depending which academic you follow) of feminism and as such it has already historical value. It is a fascinating read, even today.
September 7, 2016
Published in 1970, Sexual Politics was the first academic take on feminist literary criticism. The book was based on Millett's PhD dissertation, in which she dissected the work of D. H. Lawrence, Norman Mailer, and Henry Miller, among others. Millett pointed out how the three authors wrote about women in a sexist way. The book added fuel to the second wave of feminism, which had started in the early 60s. The book was controversial, receiving national attention and a strong backlash from men. It was life changing in how it showed how many men regard women and how women are depicted in fiction. You should read this.
March 1, 2010
The founding text, or opening salvo, of feminist literary criticism. It's kind of odd to think that forty years ago, this critique of modern authors' blithe (and often quite funny) gender assumptions was new; today it's the universal property of well-read college humanities majors, even if they've never heard of Kate Millett. But it's still a great read.
October 5, 2008
Wonderful 1970 classic breakdown of male domination through an examination of literature: Mailer, Miller, Freud, Hardy, and more. Essential as an early feminist literary criticism piece correlating the stories that get told and the effects in the real world.
Read
January 28, 2018This is a fantastic read both in its remaining relevance to how we are now and as a historical document. With so much negativity in the world, it is enjoyable to reflect on how much has been achieved - I had to keep in mind the position of women in 1960 as I was reading this - but also useful to have some flags as to how progress on women's rights is resisted and dialled back.
It is an academic book but easily accessible. I would say it is far more accessible than de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, to which it can be obviously compared in terms of content and approach. It starts with a relatively brief dissection of some thoroughly offensive scenes from Henry Miller's Sexus and Norman Mailer's An American Dream. The fact that 50 years ago someone had to explain that these descriptions of borderline rape (is there any such thing as borderline rape - does that result in a women becoming a bit pregnant?) were misogynistic absolutely blows my mind. In a bad way.
(It's one of those moments like when I saw this billboard from the 1970s - the crazy thing here isn't the graphitti response, which has its issues, but that fact that this was an acceptable sentiment to put on a billboard when my mother was working in an office.)
It is worth persevering through these initial monstrosities to the excellent core of the book. This documents the sexual revolution in the US and Europe, which Millett puts at 1830-1930, and the counter-revolution (The Patriarchy Strikes Back!) which she puts at 1930-1960. She details political movements but the main focus is writings of the time, such as a memorable section deconstructing The Subjection of Women and, by contrast, Of Queens' Gardens. Her wit is sharp and her reasoning is sound - Ruskin doesn't stand a chance. I found myself bracing myself for the section on Freud, but found it thoroughly entertaining and enlightening. I think I highlighted about half of the damn thing.
I skipped the litcrit of Lawrence, Miller, Mailer, and Genet that made up the final 35% - I haven't read enough Lawrence and never plan to read Miller and Mailer thanks to the introduction at the beginning of this book. I would like to read Genet so don't want the details spoiled.
It's a big book and a lot to take on, but can be easily read in sections and is definitely worth it. The ultimate take home is that for real change to occur we need not just to amend our laws but to fundamentally overhaul the way we think about the roles of individuals of a "class" in society. Vive le revolution!
It is an academic book but easily accessible. I would say it is far more accessible than de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, to which it can be obviously compared in terms of content and approach. It starts with a relatively brief dissection of some thoroughly offensive scenes from Henry Miller's Sexus and Norman Mailer's An American Dream. The fact that 50 years ago someone had to explain that these descriptions of borderline rape (is there any such thing as borderline rape - does that result in a women becoming a bit pregnant?) were misogynistic absolutely blows my mind. In a bad way.
(It's one of those moments like when I saw this billboard from the 1970s - the crazy thing here isn't the graphitti response, which has its issues, but that fact that this was an acceptable sentiment to put on a billboard when my mother was working in an office.)
It is worth persevering through these initial monstrosities to the excellent core of the book. This documents the sexual revolution in the US and Europe, which Millett puts at 1830-1930, and the counter-revolution (The Patriarchy Strikes Back!) which she puts at 1930-1960. She details political movements but the main focus is writings of the time, such as a memorable section deconstructing The Subjection of Women and, by contrast, Of Queens' Gardens. Her wit is sharp and her reasoning is sound - Ruskin doesn't stand a chance. I found myself bracing myself for the section on Freud, but found it thoroughly entertaining and enlightening. I think I highlighted about half of the damn thing.
I skipped the litcrit of Lawrence, Miller, Mailer, and Genet that made up the final 35% - I haven't read enough Lawrence and never plan to read Miller and Mailer thanks to the introduction at the beginning of this book. I would like to read Genet so don't want the details spoiled.
It's a big book and a lot to take on, but can be easily read in sections and is definitely worth it. The ultimate take home is that for real change to occur we need not just to amend our laws but to fundamentally overhaul the way we think about the roles of individuals of a "class" in society. Vive le revolution!
December 14, 2017
Oh, wow.
I picked up this radical second-wave text in the week after Kate Millett’s death. It’s a wonderful read, ruthlessly smart analysis seasoned generously with snark and anger.
After starting with a small taste of the frank, incisive literary criticism to come, Millett sets forth a little historical context and then aims her pen squarely at the social and psychological establishment’s backlash against the first wave of feminism, which she calls the sexual revolution - the one that culminated in women’s suffrage and then, as Millett sees the history, fizzled out.
She takes on Freud, Marie Bonaparte, and a host of midcentury theorists, dismantling their tightly-coiled circular arguments in favor of women as intellectually inferior beings suited by nature only for emotional labor and childbearing. Then, the last third of the book she turns to analysis of three male writers, DH Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer, and examines how their writing is both reflective of and influential upon mainstream society’s view of sex, power, and male supremacy. These segments are brutal and angry-making. She argues that their portrayal of sex is founded in fear of and hatred of women, written with the aim of reducing and objectifying women and protecting the power and control that is the birthright of masculinity. She finishes up with Jean Genet, whom she reads as subverting and exposing the sexual politics of male supremacy.
Some of Millett’s theories have gone out of favor in the nearly 50 years since this book was published. Her theoretical style has too; she makes not attempt to separate the art from the artist, liberally reading psychological motives into the men from the books they wrote. On the other hand, she has chosen notoriously autobiographical artists to analyze here, so why not take them at their word?
At any rate one of the most fascinating and infuriating things about the book is how little has changed when it comes to male supremacy in the years since its publication. Henry Miller may have been shocking and disgustingly reductive in the way he wrote about sex and women, but today we have a president who talks about women openly in the very same terms. Male supremacy has become subtler in some spheres but it’s become bolder in others, and in either case is still going strong. Millett’s Pollyanna afterword, praising the second wave and anticipating great changes to come, is a little depressing to read from my vantage. The rest of the book is as truthful and incisive as it ever was.
I picked up this radical second-wave text in the week after Kate Millett’s death. It’s a wonderful read, ruthlessly smart analysis seasoned generously with snark and anger.
After starting with a small taste of the frank, incisive literary criticism to come, Millett sets forth a little historical context and then aims her pen squarely at the social and psychological establishment’s backlash against the first wave of feminism, which she calls the sexual revolution - the one that culminated in women’s suffrage and then, as Millett sees the history, fizzled out.
She takes on Freud, Marie Bonaparte, and a host of midcentury theorists, dismantling their tightly-coiled circular arguments in favor of women as intellectually inferior beings suited by nature only for emotional labor and childbearing. Then, the last third of the book she turns to analysis of three male writers, DH Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer, and examines how their writing is both reflective of and influential upon mainstream society’s view of sex, power, and male supremacy. These segments are brutal and angry-making. She argues that their portrayal of sex is founded in fear of and hatred of women, written with the aim of reducing and objectifying women and protecting the power and control that is the birthright of masculinity. She finishes up with Jean Genet, whom she reads as subverting and exposing the sexual politics of male supremacy.
Some of Millett’s theories have gone out of favor in the nearly 50 years since this book was published. Her theoretical style has too; she makes not attempt to separate the art from the artist, liberally reading psychological motives into the men from the books they wrote. On the other hand, she has chosen notoriously autobiographical artists to analyze here, so why not take them at their word?
At any rate one of the most fascinating and infuriating things about the book is how little has changed when it comes to male supremacy in the years since its publication. Henry Miller may have been shocking and disgustingly reductive in the way he wrote about sex and women, but today we have a president who talks about women openly in the very same terms. Male supremacy has become subtler in some spheres but it’s become bolder in others, and in either case is still going strong. Millett’s Pollyanna afterword, praising the second wave and anticipating great changes to come, is a little depressing to read from my vantage. The rest of the book is as truthful and incisive as it ever was.
December 13, 2016
Millett is a passionate, angry feminist. I'm sure the nature of academia has made her tone her anger down. Nevertheless, her passion and wit still show in her books.
"Sexual Politics" is her masterpiece. In this book, she meticulously dissects misogyny in literary works and debunks myths around patriarchy. Although I haven't read anyone that she criticised, it was a thorough assessment. Her examples provide a clear portrayal about what the works are about, and thanks to this, I felt like I was well-acquainted with their works.
However, one thing that bugs me is the implied statement that women have to have sex and acquire orgasm as much as she can because women have clitoris which is the only organ known to human to experience sexual pleasure. There are two reasons why this rubs me the wrong way. The first one is because previously she has stated that the way a human body operates does not in any way prescribe how humans should behave. She gave an instance of the movements of sperm and ovum that for centuries have been used as a proof that women should stay docile while men are allowed to be aggressive. Saying that women having clitoris means that we should be liberal in our sexual activity backlashes her previous statement. Second, as a second-wave feminist myself, I'm now more inclined to believe that celibacy for heterosexual women is in line with feminist values than that of becoming sexually active. Sex, in our current society, is valued for men only, where men "win" and women "lose" in the process. Being sexually active in this type of society, I believe, would not liberate women fully from oppression.
Despite everything, "Sexual Politics" is a great introductory book towards feminism, especially for literary scholars. This is one of the landmarks of feminist body of thought, and I'm thankful that Millett ever wrote it, after all.
"Sexual Politics" is her masterpiece. In this book, she meticulously dissects misogyny in literary works and debunks myths around patriarchy. Although I haven't read anyone that she criticised, it was a thorough assessment. Her examples provide a clear portrayal about what the works are about, and thanks to this, I felt like I was well-acquainted with their works.
However, one thing that bugs me is the implied statement that women have to have sex and acquire orgasm as much as she can because women have clitoris which is the only organ known to human to experience sexual pleasure. There are two reasons why this rubs me the wrong way. The first one is because previously she has stated that the way a human body operates does not in any way prescribe how humans should behave. She gave an instance of the movements of sperm and ovum that for centuries have been used as a proof that women should stay docile while men are allowed to be aggressive. Saying that women having clitoris means that we should be liberal in our sexual activity backlashes her previous statement. Second, as a second-wave feminist myself, I'm now more inclined to believe that celibacy for heterosexual women is in line with feminist values than that of becoming sexually active. Sex, in our current society, is valued for men only, where men "win" and women "lose" in the process. Being sexually active in this type of society, I believe, would not liberate women fully from oppression.
Despite everything, "Sexual Politics" is a great introductory book towards feminism, especially for literary scholars. This is one of the landmarks of feminist body of thought, and I'm thankful that Millett ever wrote it, after all.
January 13, 2019
«Pese a las leyendas construidas en torno a la Pasionaria, una sola mujer es incapaz de arrastrar a un pueblo entero. De hecho, uno de los índices más fiables de la existencia de una auténtica revolución (que no hay que confundir con las rebeliones, los motines, las guerras civiles, las guerras nacionalistas, etc.) lo constituye el grado de participación de la población femenina».
April 24, 2008
If steam isn't coming out of your ears after reading this one, there's no hope for you.
February 10, 2016
I read this many years ago. It is one of the worst written books I have ever encountered. It did teach me one important lesson: don't waste time and energy on a poorly-written book.
September 5, 2017
kadın özgürlüğü hareketinin tarihini anlamak için okunmazsa eksik kalacak Harika bir kaynak
June 16, 2018
This book is absolutely engaging.
July 12, 2023
to be real this was a hard read both literally and figuratively. it’s so interesting to analyze a woman’s role over the last centuries and noting that the language about feminist ideals from men/people in power have not changed much. though very dated, it provided a lot of insight to the feminist movement of the 60s and 70s, and with the knowledge of the past and the context of today one can only hope for a better future.
May 4, 2021
Me ha parecido una lectura interesante. Solamente se me ha hecho pesada la última parte.
May 22, 2016
Most of the Ye Olde Feminist Texts that I read are still entirely relevant in today’s more enlightened times, which is probably the most depressing thing about reading them. We have not gained as much ground as we like to think that we have! We are still fighting a lot of the exact same battles! In fact, in many areas, we are fighting them OVER AGAIN having seemingly won them in the past. Equal rights for women proceed like waves crashing on society’s shore — they just touch and then the undertow of backlash drags them back out to sea again. We have made some progress that has stuck, however, and Sexual Politics, I think, is no longer really very relevant reading. Many feminists wonder why it’s out of print, but I don’t think there’s anything nefarious about that — it’s simply too dry and academic for a general audience. Don’t get me wrong — it’s an impressive work and poor Kate Millett has been screwed and betrayed in pretty much every way possible over the years since she wrote it for us; but I don’t really know who would need to read this particular book today.
Wait, no, I do — 17-year-old me when I was being made to read Lawrence and was pissed about it. The literary takedowns in this book are really fun, but they also feel dated — Miller failed to gain a serious literary reputation; Mailer is mostly remembered as the adorable grouchy old misogynist uncle who had a cameo in Gilmore Girls; and Lawrence is still pressed on high schoolers despite, rather than because of, his issues with women. Everyone now realizes Freud was full of shit. I’m not an academic, so I don’t know if functionalism is still a big thing, but I doubt it.
It is pretty entertaining to read how much of sociology and psychology over the years really just boiled down to men being like, “If only women would just accept that they’re supposed to be lovey-dovey baby ovens they wouldn’t all be so goddamned angry and depressed about it all the time!” Overall, while it was necessary and important for Millett to write Sexual Politics when she wrote it, I doubt many people will get a lot out of revisiting it now.
Should you read it? No. Instead, I recommend Faludi’s Backlash, which everyone should read immediately and reread every six months until we get so far up the beach that the waves don’t even touch us at high tide.
https://elizabeth.place/2016/02/14/re...
Wait, no, I do — 17-year-old me when I was being made to read Lawrence and was pissed about it. The literary takedowns in this book are really fun, but they also feel dated — Miller failed to gain a serious literary reputation; Mailer is mostly remembered as the adorable grouchy old misogynist uncle who had a cameo in Gilmore Girls; and Lawrence is still pressed on high schoolers despite, rather than because of, his issues with women. Everyone now realizes Freud was full of shit. I’m not an academic, so I don’t know if functionalism is still a big thing, but I doubt it.
It is pretty entertaining to read how much of sociology and psychology over the years really just boiled down to men being like, “If only women would just accept that they’re supposed to be lovey-dovey baby ovens they wouldn’t all be so goddamned angry and depressed about it all the time!” Overall, while it was necessary and important for Millett to write Sexual Politics when she wrote it, I doubt many people will get a lot out of revisiting it now.
Should you read it? No. Instead, I recommend Faludi’s Backlash, which everyone should read immediately and reread every six months until we get so far up the beach that the waves don’t even touch us at high tide.
https://elizabeth.place/2016/02/14/re...
February 15, 2020
Kate Millett was the first writer, I think, to talk about the idea that the personal is political, meaning that the way that women are treated in their everyday lives, and the structures that train men and women to behave in certain ways, are political. In this book, a groundbreaking study of sexual politics in history and literature, she breaks down the way men and women have been taught to behave in certain ways and enact certain roles in order to perpetuate the structures of patriarchy.
This book was groundbreaking for its time, and I think it's still important now. The structures of patriarchy still exist. Feminists still write and talk about how both women and men are socialised in certain ways so that the status quo is perpetuated. What Millett writes here is as relevant now in the #MeToo era as it was when she published it 50 years ago.
It is well written. If you're interested in the history and workings of patriarchal structures, this is a good book to read. It also details the advances of what is often called the first wave of feminism, which culminated in the winning of the vote for women, but lost momentum for various reasons after that. It isn't an introduction to feminism or sexual politics by any means, though. It's quite academic, which is understandable, given that this was Millett's doctoral thesis. But if you're not intimidated by the formal language, this is an interesting book to spend some time with.
This book was groundbreaking for its time, and I think it's still important now. The structures of patriarchy still exist. Feminists still write and talk about how both women and men are socialised in certain ways so that the status quo is perpetuated. What Millett writes here is as relevant now in the #MeToo era as it was when she published it 50 years ago.
It is well written. If you're interested in the history and workings of patriarchal structures, this is a good book to read. It also details the advances of what is often called the first wave of feminism, which culminated in the winning of the vote for women, but lost momentum for various reasons after that. It isn't an introduction to feminism or sexual politics by any means, though. It's quite academic, which is understandable, given that this was Millett's doctoral thesis. But if you're not intimidated by the formal language, this is an interesting book to spend some time with.
August 20, 2019
This is an incredibly thorough, brilliant analysis of how women are viewed by men in life and in literature. It's dense reading, and dark (considering how women are disdained by men), but detailed and fundamental. Millett spends a lot of time excoriating male authors for their gross misogyny, and the only downside is that you have to actually read what these men wrote and try not to vomit. No one hates women like men do.
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