By Carrie Gress
In 1970, the academically successful but mentally unstable Kate Millett found herself on the cover of Time magazine with the title “The Politics of Sex: Kate Millett and Women’s Lib,” featuring her book Sexual Politics. Considered groundbreaking, Millett quickly became the intellectual force behind radical feminism. Time called her the “high priestess” of the movement and her book, its bible.
The New York Times also called her book “the Bible of Women’s Liberation” and “a remarkable document because it analyzes the need and nature of sexual liberation while itself displaying the virtues of intellectual and emotional openness and lovingness.” Time also called her “the Karl Marx of the Women’s Movement” because her book laid out a course in Marxism 101 for women. “Her thesis: The family is a den of slavery with the man as the Bourgeoisie and the woman and children as the Proletariat.”