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| Letter: Val McDermid on the importance of Kate Millett, author of Sexual Politics | Letter: Val McDermid on the importance of Kate Millett, author of Sexual Politics |
| (4 months later) | |
| Val McDermid | |
| Sun 10 Sep 2017 18.14 BST | |
| Last modified on Mon 27 Nov 2017 17.15 GMT | |
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| I tore through Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics over a weekend in 1973. At the time I was in my second year at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, studying English, which was in many respects a deeply conservative course. But after a friend lent me the book, it was as if an explosion had gone off in my head. | I tore through Kate Millett’s Sexual Politics over a weekend in 1973. At the time I was in my second year at St Hilda’s College, Oxford, studying English, which was in many respects a deeply conservative course. But after a friend lent me the book, it was as if an explosion had gone off in my head. |
| My politics had always been of the left, but I’d never really encountered a feminist perspective before. Sexual Politics allowed me – it forced me – to look at the world in a different way. | My politics had always been of the left, but I’d never really encountered a feminist perspective before. Sexual Politics allowed me – it forced me – to look at the world in a different way. |
| I was on fire with what I had read. I couldn’t stop talking about it. I went into my tutorial the next week and launched into a 10-minute rhapsody about the book and how it had transformed the way I looked at the canon. My tutor, Anne Elliott, a distinguished middle-class English Christian who specialised in The Faerie Queene, listened patiently, then said:“Ah yes, dear Kate. I supervised the thesis that became Sexual Politics.” It was as if Margaret Thatcher had claimed responsibility for Simone de Beauvoir. | I was on fire with what I had read. I couldn’t stop talking about it. I went into my tutorial the next week and launched into a 10-minute rhapsody about the book and how it had transformed the way I looked at the canon. My tutor, Anne Elliott, a distinguished middle-class English Christian who specialised in The Faerie Queene, listened patiently, then said:“Ah yes, dear Kate. I supervised the thesis that became Sexual Politics.” It was as if Margaret Thatcher had claimed responsibility for Simone de Beauvoir. |
| That didn’t take the wind out of my sails; if anything, it made me more confident in the power of what I had found. If she could convince Anne Elliott, I thought, clearly this Millett woman spoke from solid ground. | That didn’t take the wind out of my sails; if anything, it made me more confident in the power of what I had found. If she could convince Anne Elliott, I thought, clearly this Millett woman spoke from solid ground. |
| Thanks to Kate Millett, I became a feminist. I met other women who espoused similar ideas and it led me to a place where I also came to understand my own sexuality. | Thanks to Kate Millett, I became a feminist. I met other women who espoused similar ideas and it led me to a place where I also came to understand my own sexuality. |
| Years later, I met Kate Millett at a St Hilda’s Gaudy weekend. She was gracious and good-humoured in the face of my tongue-tied fangirldom. I know she had her struggles with depression and physical ill-health over the years, but I hope she truly understood how very important she was to so many of us. | Years later, I met Kate Millett at a St Hilda’s Gaudy weekend. She was gracious and good-humoured in the face of my tongue-tied fangirldom. I know she had her struggles with depression and physical ill-health over the years, but I hope she truly understood how very important she was to so many of us. |
| Feminism | |
| Women | |
| Gender | |
| obituaries | |
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