Kate Millett pioneered the term ‘sexual politics’ and explained the links between sex and power. Her book changed my life

By Barbara Caine, University of Sydney

I still think of Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics as the book that changed my life. Its insistence on the importance of patriarchal structures and sexual hierarchies in literature and history, as well as in contemporary society, was eye-opening.

The 1970s saw the publication of several classic feminist texts, including Shulamith Firestone’s The Dialectic of Sex, Eva Figes’ Patriarchal Attitudes and Germaine Greer’s The Female Eunuch. For the most part, these books grew out of the discussions and consciousness-raising groups associated with the early stages of the Women’s Liberation movement.

Many women who became feminists in the 1970s still ask which of these books was most important to them. For me, the answer is unquestionably Sexual Politics.

I was a graduate student, just embarking on a PhD on a Victorian man of letters, when I first read Sexual Politics (or rather, a review of it that sent me racing for the book). It offered a whole new approach to history and to intellectual life.

Until I read it, I lacked the self-confidence – and even the language required – to address the history of the 19th century from the vantage point of a woman. I had believed in the notions of scholarly impartiality and “objectivity” that were dominant in the 1960s – and would come to be seen as expressing views reflecting the position of privileged white men.

Armed with a new critical stance, I went on to become a feminist historian, teaching and researching women’s lives and the history of feminism.

The term “sexual politics”, very widely used now, was then quite new. Millett was the first person to use it in print. Aware it was not only new, but controversial (and to some, incomprehensible), she explained at some length why she saw sexual relationships – and indeed the act of sex itself – as political.

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