RIP Kate Millett

RIP Kate Millett, leading second wave feminist, brilliant scholar, writer, activist, and artist. Millett died Sept. 6, 2017, in Paris, where she and her wife had gone to celebrate Millett’s upcoming 83rd birthday. Her “Sexual Politics” (1970) was a groundbreaking book on feminism that made a huge impact. It was based on her dissertation at Oxford, and blended literary analysis, history, politics, and philosophy. Millett wrote ten books, on topics such as her bisexuality, her mental illness, and the lives of various other women. She also created much visual art. Her life was not easy, but she never gave up on trying to make a difference for women and others. Gloria Steinem (as quoted in the New York Times) remembers her as follows: “She wrote about the politics of male dominance, of owning women’s bodies as the means of reproduction, and made readers see this as basic to hierarchies of race and class.” It is hard to say strongly enough how influential Millett’s work was, especially “Sexual Politics,” and how it was a critical part of the heady days of second wave feminism. Steinem also notes that Andrew Dworkin said that Millett "woke us up." I remember those days well, and I still have on my bookshelf a somewhat worn copy of “Sexual Politics,” which indeed, along with other feminist classic books, woke this lifelong feminist up. I also read several of her other books. Here I want to offer my heartfelt tribute to Kate Millett and to thank her for her powerful and original writing and her fearless activism.