SEXUAL POLITICS. KATE MILLET. 1969
'Sex is a political category with status implications' (p24)
Sex is political. That is to say, sex is not merely a biological category but a political one, and relationships between men and women are structured by systematically unequal power. In Sexual Politics1, Millet reveals this political system and explores the mechanisms by which it is enforced. She illustrates its long reach through history, and its deep roots in our culture and psychology. Although Sexual Politics was published in 1969, it remains relevant because it exposes the underlying mechanisms of patriarchy, not only its historically and culturally contingent details.
In this review, we’ll roughly follow the shape of the book. Firstly we’ll look at Millet’s theory of patriarchy, in which she outlines eight different aspects of the system. Next we’ll consider the first wave of the sexual revolution, which began in the 1800s. Lastly we’ll look at the anti-feminist counterrevolution that followed in the early to mid 1900s.
All quotes are Millet's unless otherwise stated.
THE ELEMENTS OF PATRIARCHY
In this first section, Millet aims to set out a comprehensive theory of patriarchy and how it is enforced. She examines eight aspects of sexual politics: ideology, biology, sociology, class, economics, force, myth, and psychology.
IDEOLOGICAL roles, temperaments, statuses
'Male supremacy, like other political creeds, does not finally reside in physical strength but in the acceptance of a value system.' (p27)
Millet explains that patriarchy is maintained through a mixture of violence and consent, as with all hierarchies. Force alone does not prop up the patriarchy. Nor is male muscular strength a sufficient explanation for male domination. Rather, consent to patriarchy is achieved by socialising men and women into temperaments that are appropriate to their divided roles, both of which justify their differing statuses. Millet argues that “masculine” traits are those traits that men value in themselves, or that are useful for the roles of leadership, achievement and ambition: 'aggression, intelligence, force and efficacy'. Meanwhile, the traits that girls are socialised into are those that fit them for the role of service and subordination: 'passivity, ignorance, docility, “virtue,” and ineffectuality' (p26). Higher status is attributed to the masculine temperament and role, but someone who is attributed high status is also likely to develop the dominant temperament suitable for dominant roles.
(NOT) BIOLOGICAL gender identity
Millet argues that strength differences between males and females cannot explain patriarchy, just as they cannot explain class and racial hierarchies. All three class systems are enforced and maintained in other ways.
'Although a technological and capitalist culture puts a very low salary value on the muscle it attributes to the male, it never for a moment relinquishes male control. In fact, muscle is class—lower class.' (p225)
She says we won’t know to what extent men and women are innately psychologically different until we treat them alike—something we have never done. She believes that “gender identity” is arbitrary and learned, not innate. She derives this conclusion from sexologists Stoller and Money2, who claimed to have shown that babies were psychologically identical at birth and developed gender identity by the age of 18 months (one wonders what evidence can be gathered from babies, other than stereotypical behaviour). But what is gender identity? Stoller defines gender as the psychology that is related to anatomical sex, but not identical with it3. Millet uses the term “psychosexual personality”. She seems to mean an individual’s affiliation with a gendered role and temperament, caused by social conditioning. Her assertion that gender identity is learned (but nearly impossible to change) differs from the claim of modern trans activists that gender identity is innate and independent of socialisation, such that a male person can have a female/feminine gender identity even if they were raised and socialised as male from birth.
I would point out that not all development that occurs after birth is learned. Puberty is an example of a non-learned, delayed, sex-specific development. But there is no doubt that we are deeply socialised into gender temperaments and roles. In fact, Millet proposes that men’s and women’s life experiences are so different they should be understood as two separate cultures. She says masculinity and femininity appear natural partly because the socialisation starts so young, and the expectations are often self-fulfilling. There is now some evidence for this assertion; in Delusions of Gender4, Fine’s chapters on children expose just how early gendered expectations of children begin, and how insistent they are. Fine explains how babies eagerly absorb all clues about how they should behave, making them astute “gender detectives”. There should be no doubt that gendered temperaments and roles are highly socialised, though we cannot yet know what innate differences might exist beneath them.
SOCIOLOGICAL the family unit
'Patriarchy’s chief institution is the family. It is both a mirror of and a connection with the larger society; a patriarchal unit within a patriarchal whole.' (p33)
Millet writes that in patriarchal societies, the state and the family support each other in order to function. Traditionally, males have been considered the head of the family, and have had control and ownership over wives and children. The family is an important site of patriarchal socialisation into the required masculine and feminine temperaments, though schools, the media, peers and other sources also contribute to the training. Millet says that although reproduction and socialisation could theoretically be separated, revolutionary attempts to alter the family have failed because the family serves the interests of the patriarchy so well.
I think marriages have become significantly more egalitarian, at least in some progressive spheres, since Millet wrote. But economic insecurity and gendered expectations still prevent many women from forming fully free and egalitarian partnerships. I also think the media and corporations have become very significant sources of gender training; heavily gendered products and advertising help firms to manufacture profitable insecurities and desires. Meanwhile, there is a seemingly unlimited thirst for entertainment media in which women are sexually objectified and men earn status through violence and domination—apparently even nominally egalitarian societies have trouble giving up these addictive fantasies. Parents attempting to raise their children in a more egalitarian way are therefore working against considerable outside influence.
CLASS male supremacy as a palliative
Some women enjoy higher economic class status than some men. This can obscure the political dynamic of male superiority and female subordination. Millet is clear that patriarchy places some men over other men, as well as placing men generally over women generally. Neither class nor racial privilege completely neutralise a woman’s lower sex status, or alleviate the psychic injuries of living in a male supremacist society. Millet says a lower class man 'has always his “manhood” to fall back on. Should this final vanity be offended, he may contemplate more violent methods.’ (p36) In other words, male supremacy gives men a palliative ego boost, which is why so many men defend it so vigorously. Millet also notes that lower class men 'may still participate in the joys of mastery through the one human being any male can buy—a female as boss.' (p21) They can also engage in misogynistic bullying, a 'psychological gesture of ascendancy' (p36). Such bullying doesn’t threaten the class system, but it does help reinforce male supremacy. In short, male supremacy provides compensatory benefits to men that dissuade them from developing class solidarity with women.
Millet writes that economic class also divides women and makes them conservative, as they associate their survival with the wellbeing of the males who support them. She says that white men have traditionally attributed higher status to their own women than to black men, but she believes that as racism erodes, men will continue protecting male supremacy and we may see racist “protective” attitudes to white women disappear. It’s an interesting hypothesis. I don’t think racism has eroded yet, but it does seem to be at least nominally unacceptable in some progressive social milieus in which explicit sexism is still very much allowed (in the form of misogynistic slurs, sexual objectification of women, and the slander and silencing of radical and gender critical feminists).
ECONOMIC provisional inclusion
'Since women have always worked in patriarchal societies, often at the most routine or strenuous tasks, what is at issue here is not labor but economic reward.' (p39)
Millet writes that economic control of women has been one of patriarchy's most effective tools. Even when women are allowed to do paid work, they still do most of the unremunerated domestic and care work. Millet proposes that capitalist societies merely use women as a “reserve” labour force: women enter the professions in economic expansion or wartime, and are laid off during recessions. It’s remarkable that this is still relevant today; the COVID-19 lockdowns have disproportionately affected women, as mothers are more likely than fathers to give up paid work in order to take care of children when schools are closed. Women’s entry into paid work, then, seems provisional, not assured. Millet also contends that when women enter a profession previously reserved for men, the prestige and monetary rewards drop! 'The humanities, because not exclusively male, suffer in prestige.' (p42) This contradicts the explanation I usually see for the wage gap, namely that women choose less highly paid fields. I would love to see some empirical evidence on this matter.
FORCE rarely needed but always available
'Control in patriarchal society would be imperfect, even inoperable, unless it had the rule of force to rely upon, both in emergencies and as an ever-present instrument of intimidation.' (p43)
Millet observes that patriarchy doesn’t need to be enforced with violence, since our socialisation into the required temperaments is so effective. The plausible threat of violence suffices, even if it is not carried out very often. (Not that male violence against women is especially rare!) Millet says that we tend to interpret patriarchal violence as “individual deviance”, concealing its relationship to an ideology and political system. Millet writes that reproductive control of women is an indirect form of violence, since many women die in illegal abortions. But she says patriarchal violence is 'realized most completely in the act of rape' (p44) Patriarchal societies associate sex with cruelty, masculinity with sadism, and females with victimisation. 'In rape, the emotions of aggression, hatred, contempt, and the desire to break or violate personality, take a form consummately appropriate to sexual politics.' (p44) Hostility is also expressed in sadistic pornography or misogynistic literature, and Millet lists a range of brutal historical and current practices such as foot binding, suttee, FGM, child marriage, prostitution, and segregation that have existed in various cultures. Some of these forms of violence are still common today.
MYTH & RELIGION men rationalising male supremacy
'Under patriarchy the female herself did not develop the symbols by which she is described… The image of women as we know it is an image created by men and fashioned to suit their needs.' (p46)
Patriarchal myths about women help to justify their subordination. Millet says that myths about women begin as taboo and magic in primitive societies, then are upgraded to religion, ethics, literature, and finally scientific rationalisations in advanced cultures. Two of the most nakedly self-serving myths are those of Pandora and Eve. In the ancient Greek myth of Pandora’s box, a woman wilfully gives in to temptation/curiosity and unleashes all evil and suffering upon the world by disobeying a command to not open a box. In the Myth of the Fall, Eve wilfully gives in to temptation/curiosity and brings all evil and suffering upon mankind by disobeying a command not to eat a fruit. In both cases, curiosity/knowledge is a metaphor for sexuality and sex. In both, men have written stories in which women take the blame for everything, thus justifying their subjugation. Millet notes that these attitudes still reverberate in our modern attitudes to sex and women. Patriarchal culture attributes sex to men when it is to be celebrated as virile, and attributes it to women when it is to be abhorred as sinful and unclean.
PSYCHOLOGICAL ego damage
'As the history of patriarchal culture and the representations of herself within all levels of its cultural media, past and present, have a devastating effect upon her self image, she is customarily deprived of any but the most trivial sources of dignity and self-respect.' (p54)
Millet writes that each of us internalises the patriarchal values in our history, culture and religion, and these continue to affect us deeply, even where women have made legal advances in terms of bodily freedom and economic freedom. She says ego damage to women is caused by: language that attributes humanity to the male and not the female; frequent denigration; patriarchal media and images; and daily discrimination. As a result, 'women develop group characteristics common to those who suffer minority status and a marginal existence… having internalized the disesteem in which they are held, women despise both themselves and each other.' (p55) We internalise misogyny.
Millet says the psychological traits of women and other oppressed groups include self hatred, self rejection, and insecurity. In addition, women apply harsh judgement and double standards to other women, swiftly denouncing any member of their group who might portray them in a negative light. Women adopt tactics of ingratiation, concealment, appeasement, and supplication. These are not feminine traits but the behaviour of subordinated people. As with other groups, a small number of women may be allowed to achieve higher positions, but must make apologies through public displays of deference to male power.
Millet regrets that there is little research on the psychological effects of patriarchy on women, probably because we mistake the status quo for natural and inevitable: 'Perhaps patriarchy’s greatest weapon is simply its universality and longevity. A referent scarcely exists with which it might be contrasted.' (p58)
In my view, this entire section on the theory of patriarchy was fantastic. I especially valued the insights about temperament and ego damage. Recently, I have seen “feminist” analyses stating that sexism is not the existence of differences per se, but the fact that we undervalue femininity. The implication seems to be that we are all somehow naturally feminine or masculine and the solution to patriarchy is to value femininity more highly, whether we find it in women or men. This proposal is a scam, and Millet has driven it home for me by explaining that “feminine” traits are in fact the traits of subordinates in a hierarchical system. In addition, I feel as though many people lazily assume that whatever women “choose” is good enough and cannot be criticised. I have heard it said that the idea of “adaptive preferences” or “false consciousness” is paternalistic or fails to take women’s agency seriously. But Millet explains that consent is always extracted from subordinate people by various means. Socialisation is one of the most powerful tools of women’s subordination: it makes force unnecessary most of the time, and it makes “choice” a dubious metric for justice.
THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION (FIRST WAVE)
Having set out a theory of patriarchy to illuminate the political nature of sex relations, Millet turns to the history of the sexual revolution and counterrevolution.
THE WOMAN'S MOVEMENT education, work, the vote
The Woman’s Movement began in the USA in the 1840s. Women first gained experience fighting for abolition. Millet says working for other causes before their own 'fulfilled the “service ethic” in which they were indoctrinated.' (p80) It also taught them some skills in political organisation. Eventually women in the USA and England got the vote, but since 'public feeling, together with party practices…combined to prevent candidacy or election to office for women, the vote grew more and more meaningless.' (p83)
Education for women was at first part of the patriarchal plan—it was intended to make them sweeter and more agreeable companions to men. But proper education did eventually open to women, and it was hugely important for the women’s movement: 'Even the taste of knowledge was sufficiently revolutionary to spark an enormous unrest.' (p76) In addition to education, investigations into the working conditions of women and children prompted outrage and triggered changes in labour laws that benefited all workers, including men.
Millet writes that for seventy years, opposition to the Woman’s Movement was so unrelenting that the feminist movement collapsed in exhaustion after winning the vote. They had failed to upset our socialisation into patriarchal roles, temperaments and statuses. Patriarchy was deep seated and resilient enough that it was merely reorganised slightly. Reflecting on this, Millet says changes of mind may be even more important that changes in institutions: 'The arena of sexual revolution is within human consciousness even more pre-eminently than it is within human institutions. So deeply embedded is patriarchy that the character structure it creates in both sexes is perhaps even more a habit of mind and a way of life than a political system.' (p63)
Millet explores three schools of thought about women that arose during the first phase of the sexual revolution: historical materialism, chivalry, and the rational approach of J. S. Mill.
HISTORICAL MATERIALISM patriarchy as reproductive and sexual exploitation
In The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State 5, Engels uses the historical materialist approach to try to explain how patriarchy came to exist. He asserts that patriarchy began with the invention of private property, particularly ownership of women. It was the first form of slavery and the first class divide.
He says that patriarchy brought about the existence of marriage and prostitution. Patriarchal marriage was invented to ensure heirs of known paternity to whom private property could be bequeathed. Monogamy entailed chastity for wives (not for husbands), which meant men’s demand for extramarital sex could only be met elsewhere. Thus, marriage gave rise to prostitution, as an underclass of women was set set aside for commercial sexual exploitation. Engels writes that as long as women are economically dependent on men, and have to barter sex for security, marriage will remain a patriarchal and coercive contract. As an alternative, he envisions full economic participation for women, free and voluntary sex-love associations between economic equals, and professionalised childcare. Millet agrees, saying that as long as women are obliged to be the primary caretakers of children, they won’t be completely free. This sounds like the best case scenarios in our time—those countries and situations in which affordable childcare is readily available, and hetero- and homosexual couples enter into voluntary romantic and sexual partnerships as legal equals.
Millet writes that Engel’s analysis of the family is valuable, because if the family is historically contingent, then it can be criticised and perhaps changed. 'The radical outcome of Engels' analysis is that the family, as that term is presently understood, must go.' (p127) That is indeed radical, though it is reassuring to hear that voluntary partnerships shall be approved.
Millet wonders why recent economic advances and the relaxation of sexual taboos have not led to a reduction in prostitution. She suggests that a need to 'affirm male supremacy through the humiliation of women seems to play a leading role.' (p123) I agree, since first hand testimony from prostituted women reveals that men visit them to act out violent or degrading acts they have seen in pornography. Humiliating women is central to the sex industry, not incidental. Men pay for access to women who have little to no bargaining power, because they want to perform acts and express attitudes that no free woman would willingly endure. In addition, women’s economic advances have not been universal. The majority of prostituted girls and women are still from economically vulnerable and socially marginalised groups.
CHIVALRY chauvinism with a pretty paint job
Millet writes that undisguised chauvinism gave way to chivalry in the Victorian era. Chivalry is still patriarchy, but disguised with romance and sentiment as a palliative to women to compensate for their low status.
Millet analyses Ruskin6, a chivalrous art critic and writer from the Victorian era, to demonstrate how chivalry works. Ruskin eschews clear descriptions of women’s material conditions, instead waxing poetic about “nature” and the doctrine of separate spheres. Separate spheres is the idea that men and women are equally worthy, but different, and have different roles in life by nature. Ruskin’s poetic writing disguises the power relations between men and women, and inflates the influence women have over men, calling it power. He says women are men’s conscience and that they guide men (from within the home, obviously). He flatters women as “queens” but in his ideal world no concrete power is given to women. As Millet notes, he 'pretends to forfeit status through semantics. Yet no forfeiture is involved.' (p102)
Ruskin paints sentimental pictures of domestic tranquility. He assumes male benevolence and deems women’s demands for legal protections unnecessary. Millet says part of the chivalrous mythology was that 'woman was superbly well cared for by her “natural protector.”' (p66) But as she points out, the beautiful picture of chivalrous relationships assumes that all women are middle or upper class ladies who enjoy protection and courtesy. It ignores the unprotected poor, and the underclass of prostitutes. Ruskin declines to speak of these, pretending prostitution is an unsavoury matter of personal morality rather than the brutal result of male supremacy.
'One begins to understand how tactically vital is the chivalrous posture… an attempt to beautify the traditional confinement of women at any cost.' (p79)
RATIONALITY unmasking chivalry
John Stuart Mill, whom Millet describes as the “rational” counterpart to Ruskin’s chivalry, wasn’t deceived. Mill presents clear descriptions of women’s material conditions with humanist arguments for equality7. He argues that we cannot know what women’s temperaments are like “naturally”, because women are so shaped and constrained by society; femininity is artificial, distorted, repressed in some regards and cultivated in others. Mill says every man except the worst brute wants more than a servant from his wife—he wants a pleasant, favoured companion whose mind and feelings belong to him, too. For this reason, women’s entire education is designed to create a temperament sympathetic to men.
While Ruskin focused on happy families, Mill points out the worst case scenarios of (legally permitted!) brutality against wives. Not every husband has to use his legal right to violence in order for the law to be wrong, or for the threat to shape women’s behaviour and social position. Further, Mill claims that the sexual politics of subordination, and the incredible selfishness and self-interested behaviour it encourages in men, is the psychological basis of all oppression. It is an interesting theory, and one that would require empirical investigation. But as Millet notes, we tend not research patriarchy’s psychological effects on people since we do not view it as a contingent situation. Of the insincerely chivalrous claim that women are the purer half of humanity, Mill retorts that there is no other scenario in which we consider it right and normal for the worse people to rule over the better ones.
Millet argues that we cannot excuse people like Ruskin as merely ignorant, or as products of their time. They could have taken the path of rationality and justice, as Mill did. They chose not to.
THE COUNTERREVOLUTION
Next Millet considers the counterrevolution—a period in which patriarchy reasserted itself after the incomplete sexual revolution. She looks at authoritarian states and the patriarchal “social sciences” that arose in universities. She also explores the cultural flavour of the backlash in a literary analysis of four authors.
AUTHORITARIAN SOCIETIES Nazi Germany & the Soviet Union
Millet writes that Nazi Germany made a very deliberate attempt to create patriarchal conditions through policy and propaganda. Nazis infiltrated and overtook existing women’s organisations. Motherhood was chivalrously exalted. The government made a quota policy to keep women out of universities, and drove women out of parliament. They implemented loans and taxes that penalised spinsterhood or childlessness and rewarded childbearing. They limited when women could work, restricted sale and advertising of contraceptives, outlawed abortion (except for eugenic purposes), denounced homosexuality, and allowed prostitution (controlled by the police, for the privilege of higher ranking Nazis).
Millet points out that states that wish to increase their population can motivate motherhood by making it agreeable, or they can legislate to make it inescapable. Nazi Germany opted for the latter. Millet argues that it would have been rational to allow women to be doctors, lawyers, and judges, in order that the maximum number of men could be free for military service. But the Nazis’ patriarchal tendencies were not merely pragmatic; they were preferred. Nazis were devoted to male supremacy independently of its usefulness for their economy and military.
Millet reports that the Soviet Union first attempted to free people from the patriarchal family. They declared every person’s right to 'economic, social, and sexual self determination' (p168) and promised childcare centres, nurseries and collectivised housekeeping. They did nothing to eliminate habits of patriarchal thought and temperament, though, and the childcare centres were never delivered. When the Soviet Union took an authoritarian turn, it completely reversed its position on women and the family, and began engaging in chivalrous exaltation of family and motherhood. The government outlawed abortion, penalised homosexuality, punished divorce, stigmatized illegitimacy, and described Engles’s view on love and family as irresponsible.
ACADEMICS & EXPERTS Freudianism & functionalism
'As the major trend of the sexual revolution had been to de-emphasize traditional distinctions between the sexes both as to role and to temperament, while exposing the discrepancy in status, the most formidable task of reactionary opinion was to blur or disguise distinctions in status while re-emphasizing sexual differences in personality by implying that they are innate rather than cultural.’ (p221)
Millet says that fresh ideological support for patriarchy came from the social sciences: 'Psychology, sociology, and anthropology—the most useful and authoritative branches of social control and manipulation.’ (p178) Freud was a major inspiration for anti-feminist ideology. He observed women’s distress at their inferior status, and concluded that it was caused by sexual inhibition at the individual level, rather than by social oppression. He determined that women’s personalities were innately masochistic, passive, and narcissistic, and that their psychological lives developed out of penis envy—not a metaphor but literal envy of the male organ.
Millet argues plausibly that girls learn about their inferior status long before they first observe penises. They learn it from school, family, media, religion, and everywhere else. They envy the freedom, power and status denied them due to their sex, not penises as such. And their masochism, passivity and narcissism are the results of female socialisation. But this explanation didn’t appeal to Freud, who felt threatened by feminism. Millet points out that his apparently apolitical work is actually a defence of the unjust status quo: 'A philosophy which assumes that “the demand for justice is a modification of envy,” and informs the dispossessed that the circumstances of their deprivation are organic, therefore unalterable, is capable of condoning a great deal of injustice.' (p187)
Functionalism was the second academic branch of the counterrevolution. It was a sociological approach whereby researchers described how society functions. The problem, as Millet explains, was that description became prescription. Since they measured and preferred “stability”, functionalists praised and prescribed the status quo. Functionalists approved patriarchy and separate spheres, deciding they were natural, biological, and necessary. The biological argument somehow led the Freudians and functionalists to “discover” that a university education and intellectual career are male pursuits, for which women are unsuited.
Although we usually assume that the prestige and remuneration of work is determined by its innate value, Millet insists this is untrue: 'In a culture where men weave and women fish, just as in a culture where men fish and women weave, it is axiomatic that whichever activity is assigned to the male is the activity with the greater prestige, power, status, and rewards.' (p224) Millet also examines a list of supposedly masculine and feminine traits compiled by functionalist researchers. Masculine traits include tenacity, aggression, ambition, originality, while the feminine traits include affection, obedience, friendliness, and being sensitive to approval from adults. Again, Millet argues that these are simply the traits a ruling class finds valuable in itself, and useful in its subordinates, respectively. She writes that the lie would be perfectly clear if we swapped man and woman for aristocrat and peasant, or white and black.
LITERARY penis worship and quivering fear of being unmanned
Millet analyses the literature of four authors whose work illuminated the sexual politics of patriarchy in some way—D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller, Norman Mailer and Jean Genet. I have not read these authors, so these are Millet's impressions, summarised.
According to Millet’s analysis, D. H. Lawrence is a devoted believer in male supremacy and the need for women to be subject to male power. He also cherishes hierarchy between men, and Millet describes his favoured world: 'every female abject before every male; most males abject before the super-males.' (p279) Lawrence describes women as base and animal, yet he is also aware that due to the Woman’s Movement, women are gaining power and dignity. This is why Lawrence is so concerned with humiliating women—he wants to destroy their new-found ego and sense of self in order that they might be shoved back in their place. The citations from Lawrence reveal a man who is deeply convinced of his entitlement to superior position (yet simultaneously anxious about whether he truly is a great man) and profoundly angry that women have desires of their own that do not involve worshipping him and his penis.
'Miller’s genuine originality consists in revealing and recording a group of related sexual attitudes, which, despite their enormous prevalence and power, had never (or never so explicitly) been given literary expression before.' (p295)
Henry Miller has done us the favour of saying the quiet parts out loud. He views sex as a zero sum game in which one wins or loses. Women are to be tricked, cheated, used and discarded. To be emotionally involved is to lose status. So Miller reduces women to objects by having his characters constantly refer to them as “boss” (an interchangeable commodity). Sexual pleasure seems to be secondary to him—the main point is humiliation and subjugation. His work oozes hostility toward sex and toward women, who for him, represent sex itself. Describing Miller’s obsession with toilets and elimination, Millet writes 'the unconscious logic appears to be that since sex defiles the female, females who consent to sexuality deserve to be defiled as completely as possible. What he really wants to do is shit on her.' (p309) Unfortunately, even a distant acquaintance with modern pornography (which frequently involves men eliminating bodily fluids onto women, especially onto their faces) renders Miller’s analysis plausible.
'In Mailer’s work the sexual animus behind reactionary attitude erupts into open hostility.' (p315)
Millet’s literary analysis of Norman Mailer reveals a truly disturbed mind that associates sex with violence and violence with sex. Mailer treats rape as “hip” and sees creativity and artistry in violence. He creates a semi-religious worldview in which masculinity and sex are a test; the male must prove himself by avoiding “capitulation” to women. He portrays 'society as a female intent on destroying courage, honesty and adventure' (p329) and seems to feel that masculinity is in constant peril. Mailer is afraid of sexuality since, like Miller, he believes one party must be the victor, while the other is the victim.
'When a biological male is described as a “boss,” one gets a better notion of the meaning of the word.’ (p343)
According to Millet’s analysis, Genet recognises the arbitrariness and artifice of gendered temperaments, statuses, and sex roles. He makes this clear by writing about homosexual men; in his novels, men play both the masculine role (sadism, domination, virility) and the feminine role (passivity, subordination, humiliation, masochism). Genet’s feminine male characters “rebel” by fully accepting their status as bosses and queens, reclaiming the insults that were intended to dissuade them from femininity. But Millet reponds 'To be a rebel is not to be a revolutionary. It is more often but a way of spinning one’s wheels deeper in the sand.’ (p349) Nevertheless, she values Genet’s exploration of the psychology of the dominated. He shows how ‘oppression creates a psychology in the oppressed… how thoroughly the oppressed are corrupted by their situation, how deeply they envy and admire their masters, how utterly they are polluted by their ideas and values, how even their attitude toward themselves is dictated by those who own them.’ (p350)
Genet’s characters sink to “female” status by being sexually dominated. This isn’t rebellious, in my view. It’s regressive and offensive to define womanhood in such a way. Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon. Men with transvestic fetishism or autogynephilia are sexually aroused by playing feminine roles or imagining themselves as women. This reaches its ugliest form in sissy porn, a pornographic genre in which men to fantasise about becoming women (defined by stereotypical femininity) and being sexually abused and humiliated as women.
Men have always defined women in the ways that serve them, and this is no exception. While gendered roles are very real and have profound effects on us, women are not the roles they are forced or coaxed into. We are female people, and we have a very strong political and personal interest in not being defined by men’s sexual role-playing preferences, regardless of whether those men are straight, gay, or trans.
THE REVOLUTION
Since Millet believes the sexual revolution was never completed, what does she believe would be involved? Firstly, she says sexual taboos, double standards and exploitation would end and be replaced by 'a permissive single standard of sexual freedom, and one uncorrupted by the crass and exploitative economic bases of traditional sexual alliances.' (p62) She says extra-marital and pre-marital sex would be allowed, as would homosexuality and adolescent sexuality, but not prostitution, which is commercial exploitation. We would need to abolish male supremacy and our socialisation into gendered temperaments, roles and statuses. Once the moral authority and economic structure of the family is gone, it might be replaced with voluntary associations and the professionalisation of childcare.
I have a minor objection here. The concepts of adolescent sexual freedom and bodily autonomy are sometimes used as part of apologies for pederasty, as we saw in Firestone’s Dialectic of Sex. In addition, it is now a standard tactic to dismiss legitimate feminist critiques of harmful sexual practices as “sex negative,” “kink-shaming” or “prudish”. But as Catherine McKinnon writes in the foreword to this edition of Sexual Politics1, more sexual permissiveness for men is probably not the answer to our problems. Men's sexuality is not repressed. Indeed, there is scarcely any aspect of their sexuality they cannot express: 'For dominant groups in any event, it is and has been expressed and expressed and expressed.' (p.xiii) Today, women are certainly allowed to express their sexuality in ways that are compatible with male interests. They are more likely to encounter difficulties when setting boundaries against unwanted, abusive or predatory male sexual behaviour.
However, I like some of Millet’s other proposals, especially voluntary love associations and professionalised childcare, which are already happening to some extent. Sadly, we seem to be nowhere close to eliminating socialisation into patriarchal temperaments and ideology. Commercial sexual exploitation is thriving, and has spilled into mainstream culture in the form of rampant sexual objectification of women in the media. Some women have made considerable economic and legal gains, but many women are still very economically vulnerable. Outright hatred of and violence toward women are mostly unacceptable in polite and progressive spaces, but they remain an option for men, and are always a background threat in women’s lives. And although chivalry is largely out of fashion, new ideas and language have been invented and used to continue camouflaging gendered differences in power and status while justifying and naturalising differences in temperament and role. Today, sexual politics even hides from examination and critique under the guise of “feminism” and “empowerment”, allowing people who consider themselves progressive to unreflectively continue supporting patriarchal institutions and ideology.
CONCLUSION
There was so much fantastic material in this book. Modern Western cultures still do a fair job of disguising the political aspect of how men and women relate to one another, emphasising the individual perspective while concealing the hierarchical background structures. But Millet describes the background conditions clearly, giving us a framework and terminology to understand and discuss what she calls sexual politics. Millet explores how patriarchy works, especially through socialisation and ideology. She gives us the useful terminology of temperaments, roles and statuses to explain our training into patriarchal patterns. And she emphasises that “masculine” and “feminine” characters are neither biological nor random, but are quite specifically the traits required of dominant and subordinate groups. She explains how masculinity is a palliative to lower status men, while chivalry is a palliative for women. And she draws our attention to the fact that violence is rarely needed to enforce patriarchy because our socialisation is so thorough that it generates “consent”. She argues for the need to better understand internalised misogyny and the ego damage done to women by our socialisation and by thousands of years of male supremacist culture.
She finishes the book by saying that the sexual revolution must go beyond economic and political reorganisation and involve a cultural revolution, a deep alteration in our psychology. She hopes the second wave will achieve this.
Sadly, I don’t think the second wave quite finished the job. But there seems to be a renewed interest in feminism—real feminism—which is why I’m here, reading from the treasure hoard of the second wave. Millet’s Sexual Politics is a most illuminating volume, and it was too packed with valuable details for me to convey its full depth. I therefore recommend it be read by everyone, immediately.
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Millett, Kate. 2016. Sexual Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.
Robert Stoller was a psychologist who worked on gender identity. John Money was a sexologist who experimented with sex-reassignment for intersex children.
Stoller, Robert J. 1968. Sex and Gender. New York: Science House.
Fine, Cordelia. 2011. Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference. Norton paperback. New York, London: W.W. Norton & Company.
I haven’t read it, but here is an English version.
Ruskin, John. 1902. Sesame and Lilies, “Of Queen’s Gardens”. Chicago: Homewood.
Mill, John Stuart. 1869. The Subjection of Women. 2nd ed. London : Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer.