Sexual Politics
| File:Sexual Politics (first edition).jpg
Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Kate Millett |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Doubleday and Co., 1970 (US) Rupert Hart-Davis, 1971 (UK) Virago, 1977 (UK) University of Illinois Press, 2000 (US) |
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Publication date
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1970 (US); 1971 (UK) |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 393 |
| ISBN | 0-86068-029-0 |
| OCLC | 88446 |
Sexual Politics is a 1970 book by Kate Millett, based on her PhD dissertation.[1]
Summary
Millett argues that "sex has a frequently neglected political aspect" and goes on to discuss the role that patriarchy plays in sexual relations, looking especially at the works of D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, and Norman Mailer. Millett argues that these authors view and discuss sex in a patriarchal and sexist way. In contrast, she applauds the more nuanced gender politics of homosexual writer Jean Genet. Other writers discussed at length include Sigmund Freud, George Meredith, John Ruskin, and John Stuart Mill.
Reception
Sexual Politics has been seen as a classic feminist text, said to be "the first book of academic feminist literary criticism",[1] and "one of the first feminist books of this decade to raise nationwide male ire",[2] though like Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970), its status has declined.[3] Sexual Politics was an important theoretical touchstone for the second wave feminism of the 1970s. It was also extremely controversial. Norman Mailer, whose work, especially his novel An American Dream (1965), had been criticised by Millett, wrote the article “The Prisoner of Sex” in Harper's Magazine in response, attacking Millett's claims and defending Miller and Lawrence,[4] and later extensively attacked her writings in his non-fiction book of the same name.[5]
Cultural historian Richard Webster writes in his Why Freud Was Wrong (1995) that Millett's "analysis of the reactionary character of psychoanalysis" was inspired by Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex.[6] Psychoanalyst Juliet Mitchell argues that Millett, like many other feminists, misread Freud and misunderstood the implications of psychoanalytic theory for feminism.[7] Literary critic Camille Paglia called Sexual Politics an "atrocious book", which "reduced complex artworks to their political content". She accused it of spawning what she sees as the excesses of women's studies departments, especially for attacks on the alleged pervasive sexism of the male authors of the Western canon.[8]
Doubleday's trade division, although it declined to reprint it when it went out of print briefly, said Sexual Politics was one of the ten most important books that it had published in its hundred years of existence and included it in its anniversary anthology.[9]
Editions (incomplete list)
- Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1970)
- Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (London: Rupert Hart-Davis Ltd., 1971)
- Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (London: Virago, 1977)
- Kate Millett, Sexual Politics (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000)
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 P. T. Clough (1994). The Sociological Quarterly, vol 35 no 3, page 473 The Hybrid Criticism of Patriarchy: Rereading Kate Millett's "Sexual Politics"
- ↑ Norma Willson (1974). The English Journal vol 63 no 6 page 15 "Majority Report: A Liberated Glossary: Guide to Feminist Writings"
- ↑ http://lareviewofbooks.org/essay/feminist-artifacts-archive-germaine-greer
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- ↑ Chronicle of Higher Education 25 July 1997 C. Paglia "Feminists Must Begin to Fulfill Their Noble, Animating Ideal"
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