Sexual Politics

Rating:
Summary: More time for porn!
Review: It would be difficult to overstate the historical importance of Kate Millett's book today. In 1970, her pioneering analysis of mysogyny in American literature was a radical break from tradition and a risky move for a young scholar. In addition to helping to inaugurate a new school of literary criticism, feminist analysis, this book was highly influential among a certain segment of the women's movement of the 1970's. It is a must read for anyone seeking to understand that movement or the origins of feminist literary criticism.

Rating:
Summary: The First of Its Kind
Review: It would be difficult to overstate the historical importance of Kate Millett's book today. In 1970, her pioneering analysis of mysogyny in American literature was a radical break from tradition and a risky move for a young scholar. In addition to helping to inaugurate a new school of literary criticism, feminist analysis, this book was highly influential among a certain segment of the women's movement of the 1970's. It is a must read for anyone seeking to understand that movement or the origins of feminist literary criticism.

Rating:
Summary: More time for porn!
Review: Norman Mailer dealt with this book in his "Prisoner of Sex." Millett's book is now dated beyond repair, but it is a milestone of sorts. After this book, feminist academics everywhere started yanking "phallocentric" writers off the reading lists. Now, thanks to Millett, undergraduates are not wasting their time reading D.H. Lawrence or Henry Miller; instead they're spending that time downloading porn.

Rating:
Summary: Overrated & misguided.
Review: Though peppered with occasionally interesting obversations and statistics (even if those statistics don't always, to me, suggest what they seem to suggest to Kate), Millett's "analysis" -- particularly of literary figures -- is unjust, misguided, and amateurish. She quotes passages ENTIRELY out of context to suit her agenda, and is painfully lacking in sympathy for men who were struggling with the meaning of sexual identity with a profundity and sophistication that she herself sorely lacks. I am not thrilled with the male-dominated history of the West, but I feel Millett projects too much of her own anger onto those most undeserving, and her ideas are frequently stifled by her sheer lack of personality. As a woman I would like to view feminism in as positive a light as possible, but women like Millett, with often contradictory ideas, a clear bias against any accomplishment which has been achieved by men, strike me as what they most abhor being thought of as: bitter weaklings! Bitter weaklings with too little appreciation for nuance, wit, and actual human compassion. For someone so staunchly ready to believe that differences between men and women are anatomical only, she certainly evokes an atmosphere of "otherness" when it comes to those men her claim would necessarily render her -- and all women -- spiritually similar to. If men and women are just "human beings" with different plumbing, how to account for what Millett sees as the terrible oppression of women *by* men? Stupid. Men and women are not the same, nor *should* they be, and the desperation of so many feminists to try to prove otherwise (by clinging to cold, unimaginative scientific investigations) is borderline pathetic to me, as is their inability and unwillingness to address why cultural androgeny is some kind of unquestionable good.

I believe in some of the fundamental tenets of feminism and women's liberation, but too many feminists, like Millett, are such hack-n-slash, a priori researchists, with so little personality or charm, that they just leave me shaking my head. Statistics can be staggering -- particularly when selected and polished just so -- as can a good cynical slice-up of a particularly course paragraph from a Henry Miller novel, for example. But underneath Millett's wry, cold, shallow wit, her ideas suffer from profound simplicity and a sometimes blind devotion to science and technology. And I find it difficult to believe that feminists like Millett are looking for a common ground, or equality between the genders. I find myself buying into the notion -- hold your breath, fellow sisters! -- that feminists such as Millett are just angry about their own inadequacies of spirit, imagination, not to mention their lack of cultural power (or what they perceive as their lack of cultural power at any rate.)

There is much study to be done yet as regards gender psychology, and I often reach for a book like Millett's with hope; but too often but it back down simply disgusted.

Rating:
Summary: Overrated & misguided.
Review: Though peppered with occasionally interesting obversations and statistics (even if those statistics don't always, to me, suggest what they seem to suggest to Kate), Millett's "analysis" -- particularly of literary figures -- is unjust, misguided, and amateurish. She quotes passages ENTIRELY out of context to suit her agenda, and is painfully lacking in sympathy for men who were struggling with the meaning of sexual identity with a profundity and sophistication that she herself sorely lacks. I am not thrilled with the male-dominated history of the West, but I feel Millett projects too much of her own anger onto those most undeserving, and her ideas are frequently stifled by her sheer lack of personality. As a woman I would like to view feminism in as positive a light as possible, but women like Millett, with often contradictory ideas, a clear bias against any accomplishment which has been achieved by men, strike me as what they most abhor being thought of as: bitter weaklings! Bitter weaklings with too little appreciation for nuance, wit, and actual human compassion. For someone so staunchly ready to believe that differences between men and women are anatomical only, she certainly evokes an atmosphere of "otherness" when it comes to those men her claim would necessarily render her -- and all women -- spiritually similar to. If men and women are just "human beings" with different plumbing, how to account for what Millett sees as the terrible oppression of women *by* men? Stupid. Men and women are not the same, nor *should* they be, and the desperation of so many feminists to try to prove otherwise (by clinging to cold, unimaginative scientific investigations) is borderline pathetic to me, as is their inability and unwillingness to address why cultural androgeny is some kind of unquestionable good.

I believe in some of the fundamental tenets of feminism and women's liberation, but too many feminists, like Millett, are such hack-n-slash, a priori researchists, with so little personality or charm, that they just leave me shaking my head. Statistics can be staggering -- particularly when selected and polished just so -- as can a good cynical slice-up of a particularly course paragraph from a Henry Miller novel, for example. But underneath Millett's wry, cold, shallow wit, her ideas suffer from profound simplicity and a sometimes blind devotion to science and technology. And I find it difficult to believe that feminists like Millett are looking for a common ground, or equality between the genders. I find myself buying into the notion -- hold your breath, fellow sisters! -- that feminists such as Millett are just angry about their own inadequacies of spirit, imagination, not to mention their lack of cultural power (or what they perceive as their lack of cultural power at any rate.)

There is much study to be done yet as regards gender psychology, and I often reach for a book like Millett's with hope; but too often but it back down simply disgusted.