Passage Two

1．Second-wave feminism in the United Sates took its impetus from the civil-rights，peace and other protest movements^[42]，and Kate Millett's radical feminism is of this order．First published in 1969，a year after Mary Ellmann's Thinking About Women and just before Germaine Greer's The Female Eunuch，Eva Figes's Patriarchal Attitudes and Shulamith Firestone's The Dialect of Sex(all in 1970)，Millett's Sexual Politics at once marks the moment when second-wave feminism becomes a highly visible，self-aware and activist^[43]movement，and when it itself became the cause-célèbre^[44]text of that moment．It has been—certainly in the significant legacy of its title—perhaps the best-known and most influential book of its period，and it remains a ferociously upbeat，comprehensive，witty and irreverent demolition-job on male culture;and in this，perhaps，it is a monument to its moment．

2．Millett's argument—ranging over history，literature，psychoanalysis，sociology and other areas—is that ideological indoctrination^[45]as much as economic inequality is the cause of women's oppression，an argument which opened up second-wave thinking about reproduction^[46]，sexuality and representation(especially verbal and visual“images of women”，and particularly pornography)．Millett's title，Sexual Politics，announces her view of“patriarchy”，which she sees as pervasive and which demands“a systematic overview—as a political institution”．Patriarchy subordinates the female to the male or treats the female as an inferior male，and this power is exerted，directly or indirectly，in civil and domestic life to constrain women．Millett borrows from social science the important distinction between“sex”and“gender”，where sex is determined biologically but“gender”is a psychological concept which refers to culturally acquired sexual identity，and she and other feminists have attacked social scientists who treat the culturally learned“female”characteristics(passive，etc．)as“natural”．She recognizes that women as much as men perpetuate these attitudes，and the acting-out of these sex-roles in the unequal and repressive relations of domination and subordination is what Millett calls“sexual politics”．

3．Sexual Politics was a pioneering analysis of masculinist historical，social and literary images of women，and is a formative text in feminist literary criticism．Millett's privileging of literature as a source helped to establish writing，literary studies and criticism as domains especially appropriate for feminism．One crucial factor in the social construction of femininity is the way literary values and conventions have themselves been shaped by men，and women have often struggled to express their own concerns in what may well have been inappropriate forms．In narrative，for instance，the shaping conventions of adventure and romantic pursuit have a“male”impetus and purposiveness．Further，the male writer addresses his readers as if they are always men，while advertising provides obvious parallel examples in mass culture．However，as we have noted in relation to Woolf and de Beauvoir，it is also possible for the female reader to collude(unconsciously)in this patriarchal positioning and read“as a man”．In order to resist this indoctrination of the female reader，Millett exposes the oppressive representations of sexuality to be found in male fiction．By deliberately foregrounding the view of a female reader，she highlights the male domination which pervades sexual description in the novels of D．H．Lawrence，Henry Miller，Norman Miller and Jean Genet，offering in the case of Lawrence，for example，often hilarious and devastatingly deflationary analyses of his phallocracy^[47]．

4．Millett's book provided a powerful critique of patriarchal culture，but other feminist critics believe that her sole selection of male authors was too unrepresentative and that she does not sufficiently understand the subversive power of the imagination in fiction．It appears that，for Millett，male authors are compelled by their gender to reproduce the oppressive sexual politics of the real world in their fiction，an approach which would underestimate，say，James Joyce's treatment of female sexuality．Some feminists therefore have seen Millett as holding a onedimensional view of male domination，treating sexist^[48]ideology as a blanket oppression^[49]which all male writers inevitable promote．(Rewritten from Raman Seldon，Peter Widdowson，and Peter Brooker，A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory，pp．130-132)

Questions for Understanding

1．How significant is the fact that Millett's book appeared against awide background of social movements?

2．Why does the author of the essay think that Millett's book is a“demolition job”?

3．What is Millett's main argument in the book?What does the title of the book mean?

4．How does Millett distinguish“sex”and“gender”?How significant is such a distinction?

5．Why does the author of the essay believe that Millett's book is“a formative text in feminist literary criticism”(paragraph 3)?

6．In what way does Millett cite the novels of D．H．Lawrence，Henry Miller，Norman Miller and Jean Genet in her book?

7．How well is Millett's book received among feminists?