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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D. 1934 - 2017

Katherine Murray Millett Ph.D. of New York, New York United States was born on September 14, 1934 in Saint Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota, and died at age 82 years old on September 6, 2017 at Paris in Paris France. Katherine Millett was buried Kate Millett was cremated after her death in 2017, and her ashes were buried alongside her mother, Helen Feely Millett, at Saint Paul's Episcopal Churchyard in Oxford, Maryland..

Katherine Murray Millett Ph.D.
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New York, New York United States
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September 14, 1934
Saint Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota, United States
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September 6, 2017
Paris in Paris, France
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Female
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D. Katherine Millett (1934 - 2017)
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Katherine Murray Millett Ph.D.'s History: 1934 - 2017

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  • Introduction

    Katherine Murray Millett was born on September 14, 1934 in St. Paul, Minnesota to parents James Albert and Helen (Feely) Millett an had two sisters, Sally and Mallory. Millett graduated magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota in 1956 and earned a first-class honors degree in English literature from St Hilda's College, Oxford, in 1958, becoming the first American woman to receive this distinction. She later pursued a doctorate in English and comparative literature at Columbia University, completing her dissertation in 1969 and earning her doctorate in 1970. She was a prominent feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. Her seminal work "Sexual Politics" (1970) challenged patriarchal norms and contributed to the feminist movement. Millett's activism extended to various causes, including women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and peace movements, making her a significant figure in second-wave feminism. She also co-founded feminist organizations such as the National Organization for Women.
  • 09/14
    1934

    Birthday

    September 14, 1934
    Birthdate
    Saint Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota United States
    Birthplace
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  • Ethnicity & Family History

    Kate Millett's parents were James Albert Millett (1902-1971) and Helen Feely Millett (1902-1993). Her father was an engineer, and her mother was a teacher. Kate Millett had two sisters: Sally Millett and Mallory Millett. Sally, the eldest, was an editor and filmmaker, while Mallory, the youngest, was an actress and model. They raised Kate and her siblings in a conservative Irish Catholic household in St. Paul, Minnesota.

  • Nationality & Locations

    Millett was born and raised in St. Paul, where she spent her early years before pursuing her education. She then moved to New York City in the 1960s, where she became deeply involved in the feminist movement and established herself as a prominent figure in the art and activist communities. Millett later taught at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie for several years, where she continued her academic and activist work. Kate later lived in East Hampton, where she continued to write and engage in activism while also focusing on her art.

  • Early Life & Education

    She grew up in a middle-class family of Irish Catholic heritage with her two sisters, Sally and Mallory. Kate attended parochial schools in St. Paul throughout her childhood. Millett graduated in 1956 magna cum laude from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Arts degree in English literature. There she was a member of the Kappa Alpha Theta sorority. he then pursued further studies at Columbia University in New York City, where she earned a master's degree in English literature in 1959. Her early life and education laid the foundation for her later work as a writer, artist, and feminist activist. A wealthy aunt paid for her education at St Hilda's College, Oxford gaining an English literature first-class degree, with honors, in 1958. She was the first American woman to be awarded a degree with first-class honors having studied at St. Hilda's.

  • Religious Beliefs

    Kate Millett was raised in a Roman Catholic family, but she later distanced herself from organized religion and identified as an atheist. Throughout her life, she was critical of traditional religious institutions and their role in perpetuating patriarchal norms and gender inequalities. Millett's views on religion were influenced by her feminist beliefs and her advocacy for women's rights and autonomy.

  • Professional Career

    Kate Millett's career was multifaceted, encompassing writing, art, and activism. She gained prominence with the publication of her doctoral thesis, "Sexual Politics," in 1970, which explored the patriarchal underpinnings of society. This groundbreaking work established her as a leading figure in second-wave feminism. Millett went on to write several other books, including "The Basement" and "Flying." She also pursued a career as an artist, creating sculptures and installations that often reflected her feminist beliefs. Additionally, she was actively involved in political activism, advocating for women's rights, LGBTQ+ rights, and other social justice causes throughout her life. Millett co-founded several feminist organizations, including the Women's Liberation Movement and the Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (W.I.T.C.H.). She participated in protests, marches, and advocacy campaigns to promote gender equality, reproductive rights, and ending violence against women. Additionally, Millett was a staunch advocate for LGBTQ+ rights and was openly bisexual, contributing to the visibility and acceptance of LGBTQ+ individuals within feminist circles. Her activism continued throughout her life, with Millett using her platform to address various social justice issues and advocate for marginalized communities.

  • Personal Life & Family

    Kate Millett's personal life was marked by her advocacy and relationships. She was openly bisexual and maintained relationships with both men and women throughout her life. Millett was married briefly to Japanese sculptor Fumio Yoshimura in 1965, and their relationship ended in divorce. She later had a long-term relationship with the photographer Sophie Keir, with whom she lived in New York City. Millett's personal experiences and relationships often intersected with her activism, influencing her writings and advocacy for LGBTQ+ rights. She wanted to write a MANIFESTO defending Women's Rights. I helped her. (See Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D. and Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.) I also suggested a Press Conference. The Women's Organizations were against it but I told the women the WE ARE WOMEN'S LIB! We don't need any organization. I told them that I would make the posters. The Manifesto was written. The Press Conference was a huge success. So were my posters making fun of men's comments about feminists and women's liberation. THEN THE WOMEN'S ORGANIZATIONS CAME ON BOARD! And we organized a huge march. I suggested the lavender armbands to show solidarity with gay women and men. Then Gay Lib was really born. I bought a poster and it was autographed! -Amanda Stevenson
  • 09/6
    2017

    Death

    September 6, 2017
    Death date
    Millett passed away on September 6, 2017, at the age of 82, in Paris, France, following a heart attack.
    Cause of death
    Paris in Paris France
    Death location
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  • Gravesite & Burial

    mm/dd/yyyy
    Funeral date
    Kate Millett was cremated after her death in 2017, and her ashes were buried alongside her mother, Helen Feely Millett, at Saint Paul's Episcopal Churchyard in Oxford, Maryland.
    Burial location

  • Obituary

    Kate Millett, Ground-Breaking Feminist Writer, Is Dead at 82 The New York Times By Parul Sehgal and Neil Genzlinger Sept. 6, 2017 Kate Millett’s first and most famous book, “Sexual Politics” (1970), is credited with inciting a Copernican revolution in the understanding of gender roles, but it began life somewhat unobtrusively, as a doctoral thesis. And its author was a somewhat reluctant standard-bearer for the new feminism. Ms. Millett, who died on Wednesday in Paris at 82, was freshly out of a job, fired from her teaching position at Barnard College for her role in organizing student protests in 1968, and she worked furiously to develop her arguments into a book. She passed with distinction (although one adviser complained that reading her work was like “sitting with your testicles in a nutcracker”), and the book, published by Doubleday, became a sensation. “Sexual Politics” sold 10,000 copies in a fortnight. Time magazine called Ms. Millett “the Mao Tse-tung of Women’s Liberation” and featured her on the cover, with a portrait by Alice Neel. Along with Ti-Grace Atkinson and Shulamith Firestone, she became a defining architect of second-wave feminism. “Sexual Politics” combined literary criticism, historical analysis and passionate polemic. In close readings of writers like D. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller — the so-called champions of sexual liberation — Ms. Millett traced contempt and outright hatred of women. Freud’s theory of “penis envy” came in for withering critique; so too did Norman Mailer and his anxious regard for masculinity. (“Precarious spiritual capital in need of endless replenishment and threatened on every side,” Ms. Millett called it.) Some of her targets fired back. Mailer lampooned her in “The Prisoner of Sex” as “the Battling Annie of some new prudery.” The “Sexual Politics” project, Ms. Millett told Time, “got bigger and bigger until I was almost making a political philosophy.” From depictions of the sexes in literature, she examined how women were socialized to accept, even defend, their lower status in society, a process she called “interior colonization.” “It is interesting,” she wrote in “Sexual Politics,” “that many women do not recognize themselves as discriminated against; no better proof could be found of the totality of their conditioning.” She examined how patriarchy had been developed and then defended, by law, medicine, science, schools. “Patriarchy’s chief institution is the family,” she wrote. “It is both a mirror of and a connection with the larger society; a patriarchal unit within a patriarchal whole.” She added: “As the fundamental instrument and the foundation unit of patriarchal society, the family and its roles are prototypical. Serving as an agent of the larger society, the family not only encourages its own members to adjust and conform, but acts as a unit in the government of the patriarchal state, which rules its citizens through its family heads.” The New York Times called the book “the Bible of Women’s Liberation” and “a remarkable document because it analyzes the need and nature of sexual liberation while itself displaying the virtues of intellectual and emotional openness and lovingness.” But it was also met with fierce criticism, notably by Irving Howe, who, in Harper’s Magazine, described it as “a figment of the Zeitgeist, bearing the rough and careless marks of what is called higher education and exhibiting a talent for the delivery of gross simplicities in tones of leaden complexity.” The book displayed such scant interest in children, he wrote, that “there are times when one feels the book was written by a female impersonator.” Ms. Millett died while on vacation with her spouse, Sophie Keir, with whom she had had a relationship of many years; they recently married. Ms. Keir said by email that the cause was cardiac arrest. The two had been going to Paris annually to celebrate their birthdays, she said, adding that Ms. Millett had had long ties to the women’s movement in France. Ms. Millett was an artist as well as a writer and had established an art colony at a farm in LaGrange, N.Y., splitting time between that home and an apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Besides Ms. Keir, she is survived by two sisters, Sally Millett Rau and Mallory Millett Danaher. Ms. Millett was born on Sept. 14, 1934, in St. Paul. Her mother, the former Helen Feely, sold insurance to support the family after her father, James, had left. Ms. Millett graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1956 and then went to Oxford. She pursued her art career in Japan and New York, and married the Japanese sculptor Fumio Yoshimura in 1965. (They divorced in 1985.) The attention that came with “Sexual Politics” was not something she adjusted to easily. “Kate achieved great fame and celebrity, but she was never comfortable as a public figure,” Eleanor Pam, another leading feminist, said by email. “She was preternaturally shy. Still, she inspired generations of girls and women who read her words, heard her words and understood her words.” The success of the book provoked a backlash among feminists that Ms. Millett found devastating. She came out as a lesbian the year the book was published, but lesbians in the feminist movement denounced her for not coming out sooner. The personal stayed political for Ms. Millett, who in later years would write memoirs about her career and sudden fame (“Flying”, 1974), her sexuality (“Sita,” 1977), her mental health (“The Loony Bin Trip,” 1990) and her relationship with her mother (“Mother Millett,” 2001). But her reputation and footing in the world were never secure. “Sexual Politics” stayed out of print for years. In 1998, she wrote an essay in The Guardian titled “The Feminist Time Forgot.” She described her difficulty finding work and the suicides of other prominent feminists of the time. We “haven’t been able to build solidly enough to have created community or safety,” she wrote. Since the publication of a new edition of “Sexual Politics” last year, there has been renewed appreciation for Ms. Millett and how her work has shaped cultural studies and criticism. “Her book exploded the tidy conceit in which I had been schooled: that literary criticism and social politics were things apart from one another,” Rebecca Mead wrote in an afterword to the new edition. Writers like Rebecca Solnit and Maggie Doherty have shown how debates about the sexist depictions of characters owe much to Ms. Millett’s thinking. “‘Sexual Politics’ may have its intellectual and political flaws, like any text that documents a way of thinking proper to the past,” Ms. Doherty wrote in The New Republic last year. “But what Millett’s work showed were the ways that political action and cultural expression interpenetrate. Both sites of struggle were necessary to bringing about the ‘altered consciousness’ that, for Millett, would mark a sexual revolution and bring ‘a world we can bear out of the desert we inhabit.’ “We’re not out of this desert yet; in some ways we are more lost than ever,” Ms. Doherty continued. “But culture, Millett taught us, may help us find our way to a better land.” Gloria Steinem said that Ms. Millett and “Sexual Politics” had sounded a call. “Kate was brilliant, deep, and uncompromising,” she said in an email. “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. She was not just talking about unequal pay, but about woman-hatred in the highest places and among the most admired intellectuals. As Andrea Dworkin said, ‘The world was asleep, but Kate Millett woke it up.’ ” Daniel E. Slotnik contributed reporting.
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19 Memories, Stories & Photos about Katherine

Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/13/2020
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
This poster was signed by me (as Sandra Moseley) Kate Millett, Betty Friedan, Bella Abzug and the artist, Jeannie Friedman.
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
A photo of Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D. This two page MANIFESTO ended up changing the world's attitude toward gay life and gay marriage and anti-gay laws.
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
A photo of Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
A photo of Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
A photo of Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
A photo of Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
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Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Millett and Gloria Steinem.
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
17.8k+ favorites
06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
A photo of Kate Murray Millett Ph.D.
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
A photo of Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D. and others creating a manifesto that defended women who would not be defeated because they were called lesbians. That was the beginning of "GAY LIB." I am on the right and editing the manifesto. I organized the press conference and said, "WE ARE WOMEN'S LIB! WE DON'T NEED ANY ORGANIZATION BEHIND US!" Most organizations didn't want to be involved but after we made the newspapers, TV and radio all around the world, they backed us. Most of the women were NOT gay but wore lavender armbands to support gay women.
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
This is page 2 of the MANIFESTO. It's in my handwriting. I'd like to point out that there are millions of "Feminists" but I am the only one who created this tribute!
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Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
Photo of Amanda S. Stevenson Amanda S. Stevenson
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06/08/2018
Kate Murray Millett, Ph.D.
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Other Biographies

Other Katherine Millett Biographies

Millett, Katherine (Jan 26, 1915 - May 16, 1996) Millett, Katherine (Mar 16, 1907 - Aug 1981)
Millett, Katherine (Jun 7, 1897 - Feb 1975) Millett, Katherine (Jul 7, 1914 - Mar 1994)

Other Millett Family Biographies

Millett, Thomas (Nov 25, 1671 - Mar 1, 1722) Millett, Eugene (Feb 25, 1932 - Sep 23, 1999) Millett, Theodore (Jan 6, 1891 - Aug 1964) Millett, Judith (Mar 11, 1949 - Sep 4, 2008) Millett, Fannie (Nov 6, 1895 - Nov 1981) Millett, Herbert (May 16, 1910 - Feb 2, 2000) Millett, Eileen (Sep 16, 1897 - Feb 10, 1990) Millett, Everett (May 16, 1915 - Jan 9, 2002) Millett, Emma (Feb 27, 1918 - May 20, 1989) Millett, Walter (Jan 28, 1915 - Dec 1980)
Millett, Edward (Jan 29, 1930 - Nov 1, 2003) Millett, Agnes (Nov 26, 1905 - Apr 1983) Millett, Peter (Sep 25, 1927 - Feb 14, 1999) Millett, Herbert (Feb 26, 1909 - Oct 1968) Millett, Everett (Apr 15, 1897 - Dec 1982) Millett, Arthur (Jun 5, 1901 - Apr 1979) Millett, Clair (Oct 31, 1918 - Jan 9, 1986) Millett, Gladys (Nov 19, 1903 - Jul 1983) Millett, Mary (May 10, 1912 - Mar 14, 1992) Millett, Laurence (Feb 4, 1912 - Mar 15, 2003)
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