An interesting article about Kate Millett was published 8 years ago in Salon. Here is an excerpt:
“There is no denying the misery and stress of life,” she wrote in “The Loony-Bin Trip.” “The swarms of fears, the blocks to confidence, the crises of decision and choice.” This is her dark self, the one diagnosed as “constitutionally psychotic,” who, against her will, is given electroshock treatments. This is not the self-possessed mother of the feminist movement, this is the other woman who, Millett admits, is constantly wavering — “I doubt everything,” she says.
The feeding frenzy became too much for her. “How does one get out of the movement?” she asked. “Where is the exit? … I can’t be Kate Millett any more … A joke at cocktail parties … Just let me watch it from the sidelines. Like other women can. Enjoy the luxury of looking on while someone else does it for us.” Be careful of what you wish for. Over the next three decades, she slipped into obscurity. Millett stopped being Kate Millett, America’s favorite feminist.
The reality is that Kate Millett has continued doing what she had always done: writing, art and activism. In 1973, she published “The Prostitution Papers,” a defense of prostitutes’ rights; the following year, she came out with “Flying”; and in 1977, “Sita,” about an ill-fated love affair with another woman. In 1979, Millett went to Iran to work for women’s rights, was soon expelled, and wrote about the experience in “Going to Iran.” “The Politics of Cruelty,” published in 1994 — which brought her more attention than any book since “Sexual Politics” — exposed the ongoing use of state-sanctioned torture in dozens of countries. Some of her books get attention; many fall off the charts. Universities and small galleries occasionally exhibit her work, and colleges ask her to lecture, although less and less often. And she’s managed to hold onto her farm, today a well-established artists’ colony.
The Salon piece references an essay Millett published a year earlier, in 1998, called “The Feminist Time Forgot.” More recently, this essay about Millett appeared.
I remember reading that essay when it was published. Millett is, first and foremost, an artist, and I think all the attention stunned her. I met Millett over 25 years ago and did some work with her. She was very nice, very quiet, very easy to talk to. There was nothing about her persona that would make anyone think she was a political or social star of any kind (not that that’s good or bad). I have fond memories of her.