Katherine Murray Millett, commonly known as Kate Millett, was an American feminist, artist, and author. She was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1934. Millett was an influential and early figure in the women's liberation movement. In her book Sexual Politics , the author explored the dynamics of political power concerning sexuality and gender. She explicated the systems of patriarchy in an attempt to reveal its prejudices and injustices in a bid to give readers insights on how to defeat the sexual power structure (Huyink, 1979) . Though published in 1970, Sexual Politics remains relevant not only because it is one of the foundational feminist texts but also because the connection between politics and sex remains a controversial area for feminists even in contemporary society. This is because the two aspects are intricately correlated. Despite beginning as a doctoral dissertation, Millett's work seems to have gained more traction in mainstream media than in academic literature. Discourses about the author's arguments and sexual politics remain public. The piece is essential in the theorization of radical feminism. Importantly, its lays the ground for the application of radical feminist thinking to modern-day feminist debates. This paper provides a summary and analysis of Sexual Politics based on the central arguments made by Kate Millett. It argues that while Millett’s ideas are applicable in most societal spheres, they are somewhat limited in scope when analyzed in the modern context.
Summary of Chapters Two and Three
In Sexual Politics (1970), Millett posits that the political aspect of sex is frequently ignored. She delves into the role played by patriarchy in sexual relations, especially those between women and men. The author focuses on the previous works of renowned authors, including Norman Mailer, Henry Miller, and D. H. Lawrence, by explicating how they discuss and view sex through a traditional masculine perspective (Millett, 1970/2016) . She further analyzes the works by newer authors and famous psychologists such as Sigmund Freud, who elucidated various concepts of sex. The text explores the themes of sexual prejudice, alternative sexuality, and the sociopolitical trappings of gender discrimination. Millett mainly focuses on analyzing the patriarchal bias underpinning virtually all forms of literary works. She explains how male-dominated cultures produce literary works that degrade women and impede the course of reforms that could improve the deplorable conditions that women are compelled to endure in their daily lives.
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Millett postulates that sex underpins all political aspects. She aims at bringing the attention of her readers to the sexual prejudices the women face in society. Her main arguments are appreciable from the second and third chapters of the book. In chapter two, Millett outlines the history of the early waves of feminist movements by highlighting the historical and cultural foundations of the movements. Further, she provides a blueprint, which in her view should be followed by future agitators of feminism (Millett, 1970/2016) . The feminist movement is broken down into various historical periods. The initial phase of the sexual revolution is deemed to have occurred between 1830 and 1930 (Millett, 1970/2016) . Millett discusses the polemical, political, and literary movers and philosophers of the period. She then proceeds to explore what, in her view, is the counterrevolution that occurred between 1930 and 1960 (Millett, 1970/2016) . According to the author, the counterrevolution upturned most of the positive developments of the previous period. Millet's argument of the reactionary policy highlights the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany. Albeit being politically polarized, the two factions seemingly shared many goals in their social policy (Millett, 1970/2016) . The social policy of both sides ostensibly reversed equality for women and celebrated traditional roles, mainly motherhood.
In her ideological examination of the counterrevolution, Millett explores how Sigmund Freud and psychoanalytic thoughts influenced the feminist movement. She discusses the works of post-Freudians and highlights the impact of functionalism as a model in psychology. The last segment (Chapter 3) of Sexual Politics analyzes various renowned literary figures and highlights how their pieces and productions perpetuated and were influenced by patriarchy. In her analysis of the works of D. H. Lawrence, an influential English novelist known for the explicit sexual content of his writing, Millett points out the various ways in which the male perspective took precedence over that of a female one. Henry Miller is also criticized by Millett. Miller’s books that primarily combined social and philosophical analysis with sexual content and explicit language are deemed by Millett to have been the epitome of toxic masculinity. Millett also analyzes the works of popular American novelist and playwright Norman Mailer. While Mailer is known to be somewhat as progressive as Millett, his liberalism does not seem to extend to his perceptions of women (Millett, 1970/2016) .
Millett contrasts the works of these twentieth-century literary works with those of Jean Genet, a French novelist and one of the earliest champions of progressive politics and feminism. Through this comparison, the author manages to show how the description of sexuality by male writers has infused with matters of power and, therefore, the suppression of women. Masculinity, as portrayed by these writers, is thus associated with supremacy and femininity with subjugation (Millett, 1970/2016) . Millett then moves to criticize the overall ideological bias that predominates the Western society. She echoes the fundamental distinction between gender and anatomical sex, the former of which in her view is an ideological concept and a social construct. Millett discusses how modern Western constructs of gender have metamorphosed through history. She further asserts that because they are social concepts that evolve from particular historical contexts, people should move beyond them and realize that socially assigned gender roles do not determine the character and abilities of individuals. Accordingly, excellence in any sphere should not be circumscribed by gender.
Analysis
Feminist Actions and Theorizing
Sexual Politics is a foundational text in the theorization of radical feminism. An analysis of the work from the theoretical viewpoint of radical feminism gives insights on both the book and the theory it puts forward. Arguably, most if the recent actions by feminists have been encouraged, predicted, or foreshadowed by Millett’s views. According to Millett, the male dominance over women is manifest in all spheres of women’s lives. In her view, politics is a relationship that is structured based on power. Moreover, it involves systematic arrangements in which a group of people is controlled by another (Millett, 1970/2016) . Based on this definition of politics, sex may be considered a status category just like socioeconomic class and race. Sex thus determines the roles played by individuals in the power structure. The weight of Millett’s argument, which doubles up as the foundation of radical feminism, stems from her application of radical feminism to the act of sex as portrayed in popular texts.
Millett seems to have been keen on identifying the misgivings of the sexual revolution. An important discovery by the author was the connection between sexual politics as portrayed in literature and the day-to-day experiences of women (Millett, 1970/2016) . By conducting a literary analysis in Sexual Politics , Millett explored the progress of the sexual revolution and its repercussion in the history of literature. Accordingly, she highlighted the misogyny in the contemporary works of various popular writers. These writers’ use of explicit rape scenes and profanity in their works and their dependence on the derogation of females as a way to portray the superiority and sexual strength of males is espoused in Sexual Politics. By comparing the literary pieces of some of the prolific authors to that of Jean Genet on his experiences with homosexuality, Millett makes a true discovery of the dynamics of sexual politics and the power subtleties at play. Her exposition of the violence and sexual dominance underpinning the power in literature laid the foundation for radical feminism to flourish and for feminists to battle the real-life manifestations of these themes in prostitution, rape, gender-based violence, and prostitution.
Millett’s work was not only foundational in terms of content but also the methodology. It is an amalgamation of various subjects, including anthropology, history, psychology, economics, and literary criticism. Sexual Politics ignited a discourse that persists to date in contemporary discussions about sexism. One of the reasons that made the book sensational at the time is that its narrative was well-received by mainstream media. For the first time, the liberation of women headlined newspapers and television news following the Women’s Strike for Equality in 1970 (Evans, 2015) . It, therefore, so happens that Millett's work was published at a time when the general public was advocating for feminism, and media houses were eager to gain a profound understanding of the emergent wave of sexual movement. Prominent papers such as the New York Times and Time Magazine mentioned and featured Millett in their coverage of the strike hailing her as the Mao Tse-tung of feminism (Hesford, 2016). Resultantly, Millett was unwittingly propelled into stardom as the spokesperson of radical feminists.
However, Millett did not find fame and the resultant scrutiny from within the movement and the public suitable for her. Moreover, she did not believe that she had the appropriate political acumen. Shortly after gaining prominence, a media-driven onslaught was launched against her, and her fall from stardom became imminent. Millett was outed to the public as a lesbian during one of the many feminist meetings that received wide coverage by the media (Lockyer, 2014) . At the time, the issue of sexuality was highly contentious and was deemed to cause a sharp division among feminists. Despite these controversies, Sexual Politics played a significant role in inspiring feminist action and theorizing. Many feminist authors took up advocacy roles voicing matters such as female sexuality, as well as providing a feminist perspective of various societal issues. For instance, Shulamith Firestone applied an aggressive radical feminist examination to Marxist economics and psychoanalytic theories (Tong, 2019) . These works, however, have been widely criticized for their skewed and narrow perspective of the embodiment of women and their fixation on the concerns of the white-middle class. Nevertheless, it is understood that such preoccupations came at a time when the concept of feminism was fresh and fundamentally radical.
Sexual Politics in Contemporary Society
Millett and other feminists of her time hoped that the second wave of feminism could culminate in the abolition of sexism, the achievement of the revolution, and the creation of a better world in which equality prevails. Unfortunately, contemporary society is still marred with sexual subordination and discrimination. Women continue to grapple with sexual violence and economic inequalities albeit the notable improvements from the times of early feminists. In fact, the conversation today is shifting from allowing women to have public lives to allowing them equal opportunities to thrive. There have also been notable changes in the discourse around sexual violence partly due to radical feminist activism and movements. However, according to the World Health Organization (2017), one in three women still undergoes sexual or gender-based violence in her lifetime. Presently, people also have a more profound comprehension of how diverse women’s experiences are and how overlapping identities may worsen the marginalization of women. Studies have shown that women of color earn less and are highly prone to living in poverty as compared to their white counterparts. Trans and indigenous women, on the other hand, are typically at risk of violence due to their supposedly low status in the patriarchal hierarchies of their societies.
To date, the act of sex is still a contentious site of both empowerment and oppression. Early feminist thinkers came up with two facets of feminism: dominance and sex feminism. Dominance feminists were of the idea that gender inequality amounted to compulsion and oppression. This faction successfully pushed for the change in the legal delineation of rape such that victims of sexual abuse could have a policy instrument for remedy in the event of marital rape or sexual harassment at the workplace. The other facet of feminism comprising sex-positive feminists gained prominence following the futile efforts by dominance feminism advocates to pass legislation with provisions for the prosecution of makers and distributors of pornographic material for the derogatory portrayal of female sexuality. Sex-positive feminism was opposed to the ordinance's restrictions of free speech, its approval of sexist stereotypes, and its limits on the expression of different sexual orientations. Feminism had reportedly provided most of these women with the liberty to express their diverse sexual orientation and their connection with their figures as sexual beings. Accordingly, sex-positive feminism prevailed.
In contemporary society, arguments about prostitution and pornography that take the form of dominance have been shelved by positive perceptions of women's choices about sex work, the female body, and the act of sex. This discourse persisted to the 90s and triggered the development of a post-feminist movement whose spokespeople were published to the anger of the media just as during Millett’s times. Various journalists made publications citing the irrelevance of feminism and argued that the idea was unnecessarily radical. It was further claimed that women were neither saints nor victims and that sexuality was not an avenue for dominance as portrayed by feminists of the second wave. These latter arguments were directly contradictory to Millett’s postulations in Sexual Politics . However, several years later, the relevance of Millett’s work became appreciable when a misogynistic statement made by the current president of the United States about grabbing women inappropriately rented the media waves. Furthermore, the media’s tendency to pay attention to the dissent and dissenters of feminism became recurrently familiar.
The media's promotion of post-feminist arguments in the 90s did not stop the third wave of feminism from developing. A new crop of feminists was keen on elucidating lived sexuality in the disarray of forcefulness and desire in the lives of women. Sex positivity, just like many other iterations of feminism was found to have its issues. It was argued that for some women, the urge to seem liberated from the shackles of masculine dominance was in itself a form of regulation. Reportedly, there has been a shift among women from supposedly being sexual objects whose sexuality was controlled by others to sexual subjects that police their own in an attempt to fit cultural ideals. This compulsion to seem sexually liberated may explain the increasing claims to identities like asexual and queer among contemporary women. Besides being invaluable expressions of lived experiences and identification, these labels are socially tolerable ways to articulate the intricacy of sexuality as well as sexual discomfort. It has also been suggested that sexual liberation has only succeeded in making female sexuality a commercial product that drives a social mandate to keep women silent, sexy and small or marginalized.
Limits of Millett’s Arguments
The applicability of Sexual Politics to some elements of modern feminist thinking is questionable. Millett and other second-wave feminists seemed to have focused a lot on the misfortunes of the middle-class white woman. They did foundational work in raising awareness of the gravity and extent of violence against women creating a platform on which latter-day feminists would develop more nuanced interpretations of the differences in women's encounters with sexual violence. Thanks to the third wave of feminism it is now understood that the discussion of sex in a political context necessitates reference to racism, imperialism, globalization, colonialism, heterosexism, and ableism in modern society. It is now clear that the experiences of women and sexual violence and intricately interwoven with axes of power at various levels, oppression, and privilege. Currently, many feminists investigate and theorize on these salient issues, unlike Millett, who did not utilize such intersection theorizing in writing her book. Arguments about sex work and trans women have also gone beyond Millett's postulations. In her book, the author argues that the role of the prostitute is an embroidery of male economic dominance that compels women to live through some sort of exchange for survival and support (Millett, 1970/2016) . This distorted perception of prostitution was common among second-wave feminists despite dissenting opinions even at the time. Organizations like COYOTE and HIRE were among the first to drum up support for the decriminalization and legalization of commercial sex work to enable prostitutes to live freely and work safely (Norberg, 2017) . The debate about prostitution continues to be a main point of contention among feminism. Again, the themes of globalism, racism, imperialism, and capitalism are prominent in this matter. Overall, it seems that prostitution cannot be eradicated easily despite all the complexities and contentions associated with it. As such, Millett’s characterization of the trade is rather basic and fails to protect female commercial sex workers. Millett’s argument also comes up short in the discussions on transgender identities and rights. Sexual Politics was underpinned by radical feminism, which was characteristically exclusionary and hostile towards transgender people. The transgender outlooks of contemporary feminists, along with their perspectives on intersectionality, queer theory, sex-positive feminism, and postmodern feminism, are evidence of Millett's simplistic understanding of masculine dominance over femininity.
Conclusion
Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics is renowned as a classic literary production of the feminist movement and possibly the most cogent and vivid expression of the oppressiveness of sexual stereotypes to have been published in the twentieth century. The book sets the foundation for latter-day feminist scholarships and works by explicating how cultural discussions reflect systematized exploitation and subjugation of women. Millett exhaustively demonstrates how the systems and attitudes of patriarchy underlie politics, psychology, and literation. Her incendiary arguments shook the foundations of literary principles by criticizing time-honored authors for their exploitation of sex to undermine and derogate women. Sexual Politics triggered subsequent feminist thinking, which slightly deviated from the ideals of Millett. While Millett and other second-wave feminists embraced radical feminism, latter-day feminists seemed to be more inclined toward sex-positive feminism, which is considered to be a more rational and suitable approach to addressing sexual discrimination. In as much as Social Politics played a foundational role in inspiring feminist thinking, its applicability to certain contemporary spheres of sexual discrimination is questionable. However, these limits do not derogate its value as a significant landmark in the history of feminist criticism as it is through the inspiration form this work that the first ever Women’s Strike for Equality was organized.
References
Evans, S. (2015). Women’s Liberation: Seeing the Revolution Clearly. Feminist Studies , 41 (1), 138– 149. https://doi.org/10.15767/feministstudies.41.1.138
Hesford, V. (2016). Kate Millett (1934–). In Fifty-One Key Feminist Thinkers (pp. 160-164). Routledge.
Huyink, C. J. (1979). A Dramatistic Analysis of Sexual Politics by Kate Millett. Women’s Studies in Communication , 3 (1), 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1080/07491409.1979.11089627
Lockyer, B. (2014). Feeling Women’ s Liberation VICTORIA HESFORD. Women’s History Review , 23 (6), 1034–1036. https://doi.org/10.1080/09612025.2014.906228
Millett, K. (2016). Sexual Politics . Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1970)
Norberg, K. (2017). The History of Prostitution Now. Journal of Women’s History , 29 (1), 188–196. https://doi.org/10.1353/jowh.2017.0014
Tong, R. (2019). Feminist Thought, Student Economy Edition: A More Comprehensive Introduction . Routledge.
World Health Organization. (2017, November 29). Violence against women. Retrieved from World Health Organization website: https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/violence-against-women
