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| Sexual Politics (book) | |
|---|---|
| Name | Sexual Politics |
| Author | Kate Millett |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Feminist theory |
| Publisher | Harcourt, Brace & World |
| Pub date | 1970 |
| Pages | 560 |
| Isbn | 9780156796003 |
Sexual Politics (book) is a 1970 work by Kate Millett that analyzes power dynamics in literature and society through a feminist lens. Drawing upon close readings of writers such as D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer, the book links literary representation to broader structures in United States and United Kingdom culture. Millett's text became a touchstone in the second-wave feminist movement, generating debate among figures across the political and cultural spectrum.
Millett wrote the book while involved with activists from National Organization for Women, New York Radical Women, and feminist circles connected to Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee alumni and leftist intellectuals in New York City and Ithaca, New York. Influences included theorists and novelists such as Simone de Beauvoir, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Engels, Jean-Paul Sartre, Virginia Woolf, Charlotte Brontë, and critics at The New York Review of Books, Partisan Review, and The New Yorker. The late 1960s milieu of antiwar protest around the Vietnam War, civil rights activism tied to Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, and cultural shifts propelled by figures like Andy Warhol, Bob Dylan, The Beatles, and Allen Ginsberg shaped reception. Funding, publishing, and distribution networks involved institutions such as Harcourt, Brace & World, independent bookstores in San Francisco, and academic departments at Cornell University and Columbia University where debates about curriculum reform and canon formation were active.
Millett combines literary criticism with sociological analysis, reading works by D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer, Henry James, Gore Vidal, Anaïs Nin, and Jean Genet to argue that sexual ideology sustains patriarchal authority. She invokes theorists including Michel Foucault, Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, Simone de Beauvoir, Sigmund Freud, Pierre Bourdieu, and Herbert Marcuse in assessing how representation intersects with class and power. Central themes include the sexualization of authority evident in portrayals by Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Graham Greene; analyses of masculinity linked to figures like John Steinbeck, E. M. Forster, and J. D. Salinger; and critiques of gendered child-rearing practices discussed alongside writers such as Charlotte Brontë and George Eliot. Millett interrogates institutional sites—universities associated with Harvard University, Yale University, and University of Oxford—and cultural apparatuses like magazines exemplified by Playboy Enterprises, Esquire, and Time that disseminate sexual politics. She addresses intersections with movements represented by Women's Liberation Movement, New Left, and organizations like National Organization for Women.
The book provoked responses from public intellectuals and novelists including Norman Mailer, D. H. Lawrence scholars at University of Nottingham and University of Cambridge, and critics writing for The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation, and New Statesman. Supporters included activists affiliated with Ms. (magazine), Redstockings, and feminist academics at University of California, Berkeley and Rutgers University. Detractors invoked opponents from conservative outlets such as National Review and commentators allied with William F. Buckley Jr.; novelists like Norman Mailer and Henry Miller publicly attacked Millett's readings. Debate extended into legal and cultural forums—discussions at Senate Judiciary Committee hearings and lectures at Smith College and Barnard College—and influenced coverage on programs broadcast by National Public Radio and BBC Radio. Scholarly criticism engaged with alternative theories from Michel Foucault and Judith Butler later reframing gender, while supporters drew on Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan to defend Millett's approach.
The work shaped curricula in departments at University of California, Los Angeles, University of Michigan, University of Toronto, and Goldsmiths, University of London and informed texts by scholars such as bell hooks, Gerda Lerner, Joan Wallach Scott, Nancy Fraser, Susan Sontag, Gloria Steinem, Andrea Dworkin, and Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick. It influenced feminist cultural critiques in journals like Signs (journal), Feminist Review, and Women: A Cultural Review and policy debates linked to organizations including Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and United Nations bodies focused on women's rights, later intersecting with discussions at World Conference on Women and Beijing Declaration. The book contributed to theoretical formations that fed into queer theory discussions around figures like Michel Foucault and Judith Butler, and to activist strategies used by groups such as Coalition of Labor Union Women and Sisterhood Is Powerful collectives.
Originally published by Harcourt, Brace & World in 1970, the book saw paperback and revised editions from publishers including Penguin Books, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Routledge, and academic reprints used in syllabi at Columbia University and University of Chicago. Translations appeared in markets reached by publishers active in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Japan, Brazil, and Sweden, with editions cataloged in national libraries such as the Library of Congress and the British Library. Subsequent reissues coincided with retrospectives on Millett's work at institutions like Smith College, Barnard College, and archival collections housed at Radcliffe Institute and Schlesinger Library.
Category:Feminist books Category:1970 non-fiction books Category:Works by Kate Millett