Feminist icon and author Kate Millett, who came to be described as the principal theoretician of the women’s liberation movement for her 1970 book titled ‘Sexual Politics’, died aged 82 on Wednesday in Paris. She was a notable voice for human rights and mental health.
Born Katherine Murray Millett in September 1934, Kate enrolled in the University of Minnesota and went on to attend Oxford. She briefly taught at University of North Carolina following which she moved on to pursue an art career in Japan and New York. She married Japanese sculptor Fumio Yoshimura in 1965 but later rejected traditional ideas of marriage and came out as a lesbian.
Millett passed away due to cardiac arrest according to her spouse Sophie Keir who also told The New York Times that the couple living in staying in New York had been visiting Paris every year to celebrate their birthdays. Kate became known after her dissertation at Columbia University was published when she was in her mid-30s.
Her premise was that the relationship between sexes is political in nature, something she described as arrangements where one group of people is controlled by another. Her work became central to the second wave of feminism.
Her other notable books were ‘Flying’ in 1974 which talked about the effects of fame that followed ‘Sexual Politics’ and ‘Sita’ in 1977 where Kate wrote about her sexuality. She chronicled her 1979 trip to Iran during the revolution in a 1981 book titled ‘Going to Iran’.
