Sexual Politics
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Cover of the first edition
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| Author | Kate Millett |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Gender role, literary criticism |
| 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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1969 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover and paperback) |
| Pages | 393 |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 88446 |
Sexual Politics is a 1969 book by Kate Millett, based on her PhD dissertation.
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.
Sexual Politics has been seen as a classic feminist text, said to be "the first book of academic feminist literary criticism", and "one of the first feminist books of this decade to raise nationwide male ire", though like Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch (1970), its status has declined.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, and later extensively attacked her writings in his non-fiction book of the same name.
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