Sexual Politics

Front Cover
University of Illinois Press, 2000 - Health & Fitness - 397 pages
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. Millett demonstrates in detail how patriarchy's 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.

 

Contents

Instances of Sexual Politics
3
Theory of Sexual Politics
23
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
59
The Sexual Revolution First Phase 18301930
61
POLEMICAL
88
LITERARY
127
The Counterrevolution 193060
157
Freud and the Influence of Psychoanalytic Thought
176
THE LITERARY REFLECTION
235
D H Lawrence
237
Henry
294
Norman Mailer
314
Jean Genet
336
Postscript
362
Bibliography
364
Acknowledgments
378

Some PostFreudians
203
The Influence of Functionalism
220

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About the author (2000)

Katherine Murray Millett was born in St. Paul, Minnesota on September 14, 1934. She graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1956. After teaching briefly at the University of North Carolina, she pursued her art career in Japan and then New York, where she took a job at Barnard College teaching English literature. She received a PhD from Columbia University. Her doctoral dissertation, Sexual Politics, was published in 1970. Her other books include Flying, Sita, Going to Iran, The Loony-Bin Trip, and Mother Millett. She died from cardiac arrest on September 6, 2017 at the age of 82.

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