Kate Millett

Kate Millett, born on September fourteenth, nineteen thirty-four, was a pioneering American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She made history as the first American woman to earn a degree with first-class honors from St Hilda's College, Oxford, after attending the University of Oxford. Millett's influential work, particularly her seminal book Sexual Politics, published in nineteen seventy, was based on her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University and has been credited with shaping the second-wave feminist movement.

Throughout her life, Millett was deeply involved in various social causes, including feminist, human rights, peace, civil rights, and anti-psychiatry movements. Her activism inspired her writing, which often focused on women's rights and mental health reform. Many of her works were autobiographical, delving into her sexuality, mental health, and personal relationships. Notable later publications include The Politics of Cruelty, released in nineteen ninety-four, and Mother Millett, published in two thousand one, which explored her relationship with her mother.

In addition to her writing, Millett taught at prestigious institutions such as Waseda University, Bryn Mawr College, Barnard College, and the University of California, Berkeley during the sixties and seventies. Her contributions to literature and activism were recognized with several accolades, including the Lambda Pioneer Award for Literature between two thousand eleven and two thousand thirteen, Yoko Ono's Courage Award for the Arts, and induction into the National Women's Hall of Fame.

Born and raised in Minnesota, Millett spent much of her adult life in Manhattan and at the Woman's Art Colony in Poughkeepsie, New York, which was later renamed the Millett Center for the Arts in two thousand twelve. In nineteen seventy, the same year her landmark book was published, she came out as a lesbian, later identifying as bisexual. Millett was married to sculptor Fumio Yoshimura from nineteen sixty-five to nineteen eighty-five, and until her passing in two thousand seventeen, she was married to Sophie Keir.