Firstly, it’s always a bit nerve-wracking to dive into the work of a mid-century feminist, because the world has changed so much and you never know where they’ll end up having settled. Luckily, the Big Ones are avoided here. It feels weird and disrespectful to talk about someone in this way, but at the same time, you know.
Anyway. Sexual Politics is Kate Millett’s best known work, published in 1970, and it is a beast. I was sort of expecting one of those classic-style works of early feminism, or rather, my impression of them, which are rousing and rallying and quite polemical. But Sexual Politics is ferociously academic. Meticulously sourced, hugely ambitious in scope, and containing some quite difficult to parse sentences that I needed to go over a few times before they sank in (though this could be partly due to the usual baby sleep deprivation and the fact that I often read now to force myself to stay awake in the middle of the night).
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