Wednesday, February 7, 2018

Sisters

Mallory Millet, sister of late arch-feminist Kate Millet, has some eye-opening views on her sister and her cause. Here's a taste:
As I scan the wreckage of our beautiful America, knowing that my own sister was in great part responsible, I feel as if my heart has been kicked down the stairs. So, on pondering this question about the good and the bad of militant feminism, it reminds me of the joke in which the reporter asks, “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

6 comments:

RebeccaH said...

I certainly sympathize with Mallory Millet, having a younger brother who is just like that (although not a feminist, and having no influence on the larger society like Kate Millet had). I, too, eventually left the room and I don't know where he is today, and I don't want to know.

bruce said...

Millet's book was the first place in print you could read about shocking abuse of women in India's 'holy cities'. I used to carry a photocopy of that to show yoga enthusiasts.

That 60s generation were critical of other cultures' abuses of women and still are. I just read Gloria Steinem satirising 'intesectionality' and academic feminist blather, 'Put a sign on the road to Harvard, "Beware, deconstruction ahead"...They have to say "discourse" instead of "talk"... '

There is a war between multiculti feminists and the old liberal human rights ones like Millet. (Not to mention lesbian separatists like Dworkin).

But my grandfather's sister was a feminist born in the time of Queen Victoria:
http://www.womenaustralia.info/leaders/biogs/WLE0736b.htm

I don't think any of this is new. I just read where women during the French Revolution formed their own political societies to push for rights. Too much hyperbole about the 1960s methinks. Free women from drudgery. give them education and telecommunications, and a certain percentage will start to notice that men everywhere dominate women, and wonder what to do about it.

bruce said...

Mallory claims her sister helped spark the Iranian Ayatollah. But Kate Millet supported the Iranian women demanding education and was kicked out by the new regime.
https://www.amazon.com/Going-Iran-Kate-Millett/dp/0698110951

I have a friend with a PhD in all this, and she explained to me how the separatist and equality feminists are in opposition to each other.

However crazy she might have been personally, I'm grateful to Kate Millet for publicising some of the abuse of women in other cultures. Someone would have done it anyway eventually, but she had fame and used it, while others rested on their laurels (Germaine Greer? looking at you)

Paco said...

Well, that's to her credit, then.

Deborah said...

Rebecca, I'm sorry that you didn't have the sibling like mine. Your experience makes me more grateful. I admire your stength to walk away. Sadly, my nephew and I parted company two years ago. My sister was upset. She always holds out hope. I told her to tell him the door is open if he should choose. There have been no knocks on my door.

Anonymous said...

fascinating insight.
missred