Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D. (1934 - 2017)

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Katherine Murray Millett (September 14, 1934 – September 6, 2017) was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University and was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors after studying at St Hilda's College, Oxford. She has been described as "a seminal influence on second-wave feminism", and is best known for her book Sexual Politics (1970),[1] which was based on 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.[2]
The feminist, human rights, peace, civil rights, and anti-psychiatry movements were some of Millett's principal 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. In the 1960s and 1970s, Millett taught at Waseda University, Bryn Mawr College, Barnard College, and the University of California, Berkeley. Some of her later written works are The Politics of Cruelty (1994), about state-sanctioned torture in many countries, and Mother Millett (2001), a book about her relationship with her mother. Between 2011 and 2013, she 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.
Millett was born and raised in Minnesota, and then spent most of her adult life in Manhattan and the Woman's Art Colony, established in Poughkeepsie, New York, which became the Millett Center for the Arts in 2012. Millet came out as a lesbian[3] in the year the book Sexual Politics was published. She was married to a sculptor Fumio Yoshimura (1965 to 1985) and later, until her death in 2017, she was married to Sophie Keir.
Early life and education
Katherine Murray Millett was born on September 14, 1934 to James Albert and Helen (née Feely) Millett in Saint Paul, Minnesota. According to Millett, she was afraid of her father, an engineer, who beat her.[4] He was an alcoholic who abandoned the family when she was 14, "consigning them to a life of genteel poverty".[5][6] Her mother was a teacher[6] and insurance saleswoman.[7] She had two sisters, Sally and Mallory; the latter was one of the subjects of Three Lives.[8][9][nb 1] Of Irish Catholic heritage,[6] Kate Millett attended parochial schools in Saint Paul throughout her childhood.[4][5]
Millett graduated in 1956 magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Arts degree[4][6] in English literature;[11] she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority.[12] A wealthy aunt paid for her education at St Hilda's College, Oxford[nb 2] gaining an English literature first-class degree, with honors, in 1958.[4][12] She was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors having studied at St. Hilda's.[13] After spending about 10 years as an educator and artist, Millett entered the graduate school program for English and comparative literature at Columbia University in 1968, during which she taught English at Barnard.[4][6] While there, she championed student rights, women's liberation, and abortion reform. She completed her dissertation in September 1969 and was awarded her doctorate, with distinction, in March 1970.[6]
Millett taught English at the University of North Carolina after graduating from Oxford University,[6][14] but she left mid-semester to study art.[6]
In New York City she worked as a kindergarten teacher and learned to sculpt and paint from 1959-61. She then moved to Japan and studied sculpture. Millett met fellow sculptor Fumio Yoshimura,[4][12] had her first one-woman show at Tokyo's Minami Gallery,[6] and taught English at Waseda University. She left Japan in 1963 and moved to New York's Lower East Side.[15]
Millett taught English and exhibited her works of art at Barnard College[12] beginning in 1964. She was among a group of young, radical and untenured educators who wanted to modernize women's education; Millett wanted to provide them with "the critical tools necessary to understand their position in a patriarchal society."[15] Her viewpoints on radical politics, her "stinging attack" against Barnard in Token Learning, and a budget cut at the college led[16] to her being dismissed on December 23, 1968.[6] Her artwork was featured in an exhibit at Greenwich Village's Judson Gallery.[12] During these years Millett became interested in the peace[4] and Civil Rights Movement, joined the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), and participated in their protests.[4][12]
In 1971, Millett taught sociology at Bryn Mawr College.[6] She started buying and restoring property that year, near Poughkeepsie, New York; this became the Women's Art Colony and Tree Farm,[13][17] a community of women artists and writers and Christmas tree farm.[17] Two years later she was an educator at the University of California, Berkeley.[18]
Feminism and sexuality
Feminism
Millett was a leading figure in the women's movement,[6] or second-wave feminism, of the 1960s and 1970s.[19] In 1966, Millett became a committee member of National Organization for Women[13] and subsequently joined the New York Radical Women,[12] Radicalesbians, and Downtown Radical Women organizations.[15]
She contributed the piece "Sexual politics (in literature)" to the 1970 anthology Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings from the Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.[20]
She became a spokesperson for the feminist movement following the success of the book Sexual Politics (1970), but struggled with conflicting perceptions of her as arrogant and elitist, and the expectations of others to speak for them, which she covered in her 1974 book, Flying.[6]
Biographer Gayle Graham Yates said that "Millett articulated a theory of patriarchy and conceptualized the gender and sexual oppression of women in terms that demanded a sex role revolution with radical changes of personal and family lifestyles". Betty Friedan's focus, by comparison, was to improve leadership opportunities socially and politically and economic independence for women.[7]
Millett wrote several books on women's lives from a feminist perspective. For instance, in the book The Basement: Meditations on a Human Sacrifice (1979), completed over four years, she chronicled the torture and murder of Indianapolis teenager Sylvia Likens by Gertrude Baniszewski in 1965 that had preoccupied her for 14 years. With a feminist perspective, she explored the story of the defenseless girl and the dynamics of the individuals involved in her sexual, physical and emotional abuse.[6][21] Biographer Roberta M. Hooks wrote, "Quite apart from any feminist polemics, The Basement can stand alone as an intensely felt and movingly written study of the problems of cruelty and submission."[22] Millett said of the motivation of the perpetrator: "It is the story of the suppression of women. Gertrude seems to have wanted to administer some terrible truthful justice to this girl: that this was what it was to be a woman".[21]
Millett and Sophie Keir, a Canadian journalist, traveled to Tehran, Iran in 1979 for the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom to work for Iranian women's rights. Their trip followed actions taken by Ayatollah Khomeini's government to prevent girls from attending schools with boys, to require working women to wear veils, and not to allow women to divorce their husbands. Thousands of women attended a protest rally held at Tehran University on International Women's Day, March 8. About 20,000 women attended a march through the city's Freedom Square; many of whom were stabbed, beaten, or threatened with acid. Millett and Keir, who had attended the rallies and demonstrations, were removed from their hotel room and taken to a locked room in immigration headquarters two weeks after they arrived in Iran. They were threatened that they might be put in jail and, knowing that homosexuals were executed in Iran, Millett also feared she might be killed when she overheard officials discuss her lesbianism. After an overnight stay, the women were put on a plane that landed in Paris. Although Millett was relieved to have arrived safely in France, she was worried about the fate of Iranian women left behind, "They can't get on a plane. That's why international sisterhood is so important."[23] She wrote about the experience in her 1981 book Going to Iran.[24]

Historically notable or family photographs that show the life of Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D. and her immediate Millett family.

1934 - In the year that Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D. was born, on June 6th, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission was formed as a response to the stock market crash of 1929 and the continuing Great Depression. Previously, the states regulated the offering and sales of stocks - called "blue sky" laws. They were largely ineffective. Roosevelt created a group (one member was Joseph Kennedy, father of the future President Kennedy) who knew Wall Street well and they defined the mission and operating mode for the SEC. The new organization had broad and stringent rules and oversight and restored public confidence in the stock market in the United States.

1938 - When she was only 4 years old, on October 30th, a Sunday, The Mercury Theatre on the Air broadcast Orson Welles' special Halloween show The War of the World's. A clever take on H.G. Wells' novel, the show began with simulated "breaking news" of an invasion by Martians. Because of the realistic nature of the "news," there was a public outcry the next day, calling for regulation by the FCC. Although the current story is that many were fooled and panicked, in reality very few people were fooled. But the show made Orson Welles' career.

1949 - At the age of merely 15 years old, Kate was alive when on April 4th, NATO (the North Atlantic Treaty Organization) was established. Twelve nations originally signed the North Atlantic Treaty - the United States, Great Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy, Luxembourg, Norway, Iceland, Canada, and Portugal. Greece, Turkey, and West Germany later joined. Today, there are 26 nations in NATO.

1969 - At the age of 35 years old, Kate was alive when in August, a previously planned small concert turned into a (free) more than 400,000 strong gathering of attendees and bands at Max Yasgur's farm in upstate New York - now called Woodstock. Just some of the 32 acts: Richie Havens, Joe Cocker, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, Joan Baez, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe, Santana, The Band, and Sly and the Family Stone.

1990 - She was 56 years old when after 27 years in prison, Nelson Mandela, the leader of the movement to end South African apartheid was released on February 11th 1990.

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