18.3.2

Kate Millett

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Kate Millett 1934 - 2017

Kate Millett was an American radical feminist, credited for giving birth to radical feminism in her work Sexual Politics (1970).

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Millett's key ideas

  • Family – undoing the traditional family was the key to true sexual revolution.
  • Portrayal of women in art and literature – she showed how patriarchal culture had produced writers and literary works that were degrading to women.
  • Patriarchy - she developed this idea and how “rule by men” operated at all levels in the public and private sphere.
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Patriarchy and family

  • A patriarchal society was based on a strict hierarchy and male dominance, with sexual oppression passing from one generation to the next.
  • Men ruled women within the family, through property ownership and male inheritance and in government, by excluding women or determining the rules of power.
  • Socialisation of patriarchal attitudes occurred in the family and was reinforced through friends, schools, the media, wider society and culture e.g. in popular literature.
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Millett's solution

  • She proposed a sexual revolution to remove the patriarchal system e.g. rejecting romantic love and calling for an end to monogamous marriage and the traditional family.

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