Bio: (1934-2017) American feminist theorist. Kate Millett earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University and has taught at several universities, including the University of California, Berkeley. Her book Sexual Politics (1969) brought her great popularity and enabled her to be recognized as one of the main representatives of the second wave of feminism. In this book, the author introduces the difference between a biologically determined sex and the social construction of gender roles and sexual identities. Sexual politics, for Millett, represents the idea that gender is a status category within a stratified system of gender hierarchy, and therefore gender has great political implications. The patriarchy establishes norms that regulate gender and sexuality and creates a distinction between the role of both sexes in the public and private spheres. This causes the reproduction of inequality between men and women, both in the public, that is, the political sphere, and in the private sphere. She sees patriarchy as the most widespread ideology and as the most significant relationship of domination in every society.

Millett singles out eight factors that contribute to the emergence and maintenance of patriarchy: 1) the early socialization encourages the intensification of innate biological differences between the sexes (men should be strong and aggressive, and women passive); 2) the ideology of patriarchy has its roots in different socializations of the sexes, because men are brought up to have a dominant character, which gives them a higher social status and greater social power; 3) the family has a great role in maintaining patriarchy, because mothers and children get their social status through the social status of the father, and in addition, the family is the most important place of early socialization; 4) women form a separate caste, because they are economically dependent on men, and in addition, men have psychological superiority over women, which they achieve through physical and psychological domination and oppression; 5) economic inequalities are exacerbated by educational inequalities, as women are educated for professions that are less paid and less valued; 6) religions and myths are used to give patriarchy sacral legitimacy; 7) due to all the previously mentioned factors, as well as due to sexist language, women internalize the passive character and the attitude that male domination is something normal and given; 8) Physical violence against women, which also includes sexual violence, has a huge impact on maintaining patriarchy.

In her view, one of the main aspects of patriarchy is its regulation of sexual activity itself, and this is primarily done by defining which sexual practices are legal and which are not. Millett studies how literature, sociology, psychology, and anthropology are used to create a dominant theory that serves to strengthen existing gender hierarchies. These intellectual areas have always viewed and defined a woman as something different or inconsistent with the normal (man). She advocates the creation of a society free of culturally defined gender roles, where all people will be able to develop a complete personality and where everyone will have the freedom to express their own gender or sexual identity, without any social restrictions.

Main works

Sexual Politics (1969);

The Prostitution Papers: A Candid Dialogue (1971);

The Politics of Cruelty: An Essay on the Literature of Political Imprisonment (1993).