User:CaroleHenson/Kate Millett - personal life sub page

Note: This is a subpage that was used to update / create additional material for the Kate Millett's personal life - the information has been integrated into the article now.

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• Millett is among the activists who made possible "legal abortion, greater professional equality between the sexes and a sexual freedom nearly unimaginable 40 years ago."

Personal life

Interpersonal relationships

Millett was not the "polite, middle-class girl" that many parents of her generation and social circle desired, she could be difficult, brutally honest and tenacious. These qualities helped to make her "one of the most influential radical feminists of the 1970s". They could also make for difficult interpersonal relationships.

Millett wrote several autobiographical memoirs with remarkable honesty about herself, her husband, lovers, and family. Her relationship with her mother was strained by her radical politics, domineering personality, and unconventional lifestyle. Helen was particularly upset about examination of her lesbianism in her books. Familial relationships were further strained after she was involuntarily committed to psychiatric wards and again when she wrote The Loony Bin Trip.

She focused on her mother in Mother Millett, a book about how she was made aware by her sister Sally of the seriousness of her mother's declining health and came to her rescue. In it, "Millett writes about the situation—her mother's distance and wiktionary:imperiousness, her family's failure to recognize the humanity of the old and the insane—with brutal honesty. Yet she also describes moments of forgiveness, humility and admiration." During this time, she developed a previously inconceivable close relationship with her mother, which she considered "a miracle and a grace, a gift." The relationships with her sisters were troubled during this time, but they all came to support their mother's apartment-living. The suggestion of her role as the heroine in Mother Millett, however, may have been "at the expense of her two siblings".

Mental health

Mental illness has affected Millett's personal and professional life since 1973, when she lived with her husband in California and was a busy activist and teacher at the University of California, Berkeley. Yoshimura and Sally, Kate's eldest sister, became concerned about Kate's mental stability. Her family claimed that she went for as many as five consecutive nights without sleep and could talk non-sensibly for hours. During a screening of one of her films at University of California, Berkeley, she "began talking incoherently". According to her sister, Mallory Millett Danaher, "There were pained looks of confusion in the audience, then people whispered and slowly got up to leave." Sally, who was a law student in Nebraska, signed papers to have her involuntarily committed. Millett was forcefully taken and held in mental hospitals for ten days. She signed herself out using a release form intended for voluntary admissions. During a visit to St. Paul, Minnesota a couple of weeks later, her mother asked Kate to visit a psychiatrist and, based upon the psychiatrist's suggestion, signed commitment papers for Kate. She was released within three days, having won a sanity trial, due to the efforts of her friends and pro bono attorney.

Following the two involuntary confinements, Millett became depressed, particularly disturbed about having been confined without due process, which is a requirement of the criminal system. While in the mental hospitals, she was given "mind-altering" drugs or restrained, depending upon whether she cooperated or not. She was stigmatized for having been committed and diagnosed with manic depression, now commonly called bipolar disorder. The diagnosis affected how she was perceived by others and her ability to attain employment. In California doctors had recommended that she take lithium to manage wide manic and depression swings. Her depression became more severe when her housing in the Bowery was condemned and Yoshimura threatened divorce. To manage the depression, Millett began taking lithium. She also received electroconvulsive therapy a few times.

In 1980, with support of two friends and photojournalist Sophie Keir, Millett stopped taking lithium to improve mental clarity, relieve diarrhea and hand tremors, and better uphold her philosophies about mental health and treatment. Millett began to feel alienated and was "snappish" as Keir's watched for behavioral changes. Millett's behavior was that of a bipolar high, including "mile-a-minute" speech, which turned her peaceful art colony to "a quarrelsome dystopia." Mallory Millett, having talked to Keir, tried to get her committed but was unsuccessful due to New York's laws that controlled involuntary commitments.

Millett visited Ireland in the fall of 1980 as an activist. Upon her return the United States, there was a delay at the airport and she decided to extend her stay. Millett was involuntarily committed in Ireland after airport security determined from someone in New York that she stopped taking lithium. While confined, she was heavily drugged. To combat the aggressive pharmaceutical program of "the worst bin of all", she counteracted the affected of Thorazine and lithium by eating a lot of oranges or hid the pills in her mouth for later disposal. She said of the times when she was committed, "To remain sane in a bin is to defy its definition," she said.

[Millett] describes with loathing the days of television-induced boredom, nights of drug-induced terror, people deprived of a sense of time, of personal dignity, even of hope. What crime justifies being locked up like this, Millett asks. How can one not be crazy in such a place?

— Mary O'Connell, author of "How can one not be crazy here?"

After several days she was found by her friend Margueretta D'Arcy. With the assistance of an Irish parliament member and a therapist-psychiatrist from Dublin, Millett was declared competent and released within several weeks. She returned to the United States, became severely depressed, and began taking lithium again. In 1986, Millett stopped taking lithium without adverse reactions. After one lithium-free year, Millett announced the news to stunned family and friends.

Regarding her periods of depression, Millett attempted suicide a few times, she thought that the depression was the result of being found "crazy", which led to a period of grief and feeling broken. She said, "When you have been told that your mind is unsound, there is a kind of despair that takes over..." Millett documented her experiences in the book The Loony Bin Trip (1990).

Diagnoses or labels

Millett disputes diagnoses or labels—like manic depression (bipolar disorder) and schizophrenia—which she claims are placed upon people who exhibit socially unacceptable behavior. "Many healthy people, she said, are 'driven to mental illness' by society's disapproval and by the 'authoritarian institution of psychiatry.'

Stanford University scholar and Washington Post contributor, Marilyn Yalom said that regardless of the extreme highs and lows she experienced, "Millett refuses the labels that would declare her insane." She continues, "she conveys the paranoid terror of being judged cruelly by others for what seems to the afflicted person to be a reasonable act." However, in The Loony Bin Trip Millett described the highs and lows:

"At one point, listening to others talk about her "freaking out," Millett muses, "How little weight my own perceptions seem to have," and goes on: "Depression is the victim's dread, not mania. For we could enjoy mania if we were permitted by the others around us. . . . A manic person permitted to think ten thousand miles a minute is happy and harmless and could, if encouraged and given time, perhaps be productive as well. Ah, but depression - that is what we all hate. We the afflicted. Whereas the relatives and shrinks . . . they rather welcome it: You are quiet and you suffer."

Activism

Further information: Mad Pride

Angered by institutional psychiatric practices and lenient involuntary commitment processes, Millett became an activist. With her lawyer, they changed the State of Minnesota's commitment law so that a trial is required before a person is involuntarily committed.

Millett has been active in the anti-psychiatry movement. As a representative of MindFreedom International, she spoke out against psychiatric torture at the United Nations during the negotiations of the text of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2005).

Mother Millett

Kate wrote Mother Millett about her mother who in her later years developed several serious health problems, including a brain tumor and hypercalcaemia. Made aware of her mother's declining health, Millett visited her mother in Minnesota; their visits included conversations about their relationship and outings to baseball games, museums, and restaurants. When her mother was no longer able to care for herself in her apartment, she was placed in a nursing home in St. Paul, Minnesota, which was one of Helen Millett's greatest fears. Kate visited her mother and was disturbed by the care she received and her mother's demoralized attitude. Nursing home residents who were labeled as "behavioral problems", as Helen was, were subject to forcible restraint. Helen said to Kate, "Now that you're here, we can leave."

Cognizant of the efforts her mother made to give her life, support her and raise her, Millett became a care-giver, coordinated of many daily therapies, and pushed her mother to be active. She had a desire to give her "independence and dignity". In the article, "Her Mother, Herself", Pat Swift wrote: "Helen Millett might have been content to go "gently into that good night"—she was after all more afraid of the nursing home than dying—but daughter Kate was having none of that. Feminist warrior, human rights activists, gay liberationist, writer and artist, Kate Millett has not gone gently through life and never hesitates to rage at anyone—friend or foe, family or the system—to right a perceived wrong. When the dignity and quality of her ailing mother's life was at stake, this book's unfolding tale became inevitable." Even though Helen played a role in having her daughter committed to the University of Minnesota's Mayo wing, Kate had her mother removed from the nursing home and returned to her apartment where attendants managed her care. During this period, Millet could also "bully" her mother for her lack of cultural sophistication and the amount of television she watched and could be harsh with caregivers.

Other causes

She has also been involved in prison reform and campaigns against torture. Journalist Maureen Freely wrote of Millett's viewpoint regarding activism in her later years: "The best thing about being a freewheeler is that she can say what she pleases because 'nobody's giving me a chair in anything. I'm too old, mean and ornery. Everything depends on how well you argue.'"

Work space - sources

Work space

List of potential sources

• Consuelo Saah Baehr. "A Tale of Two Sisters." The Washington Post. Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive. 1990. HighBeam Research. 7 Sep. 2014 <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1142179.html>

• Quote: "IN the Bible there were sisters Martha and Mary. Martha was the drudge, cleaning, cooking and feeling resentful, while Mary Magdalene sat all day at the feet of Jesus merchandising her sins and generally getting media attention. A modern hard-luck sibling is Kate Millett's younger sister, Mallory, who has said she feels like she is playing 'Milton Eisenhower to Kate's Ike.' "

• FREY, HILLARY. "Mother Courage.(Review)." The Nation. The Nation Institute. 2001. HighBeam Research. 7 Sep. 2014 <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G1-76563736.html>. gets into a lot of family dynamics

• Great phrasing / description of her book "Flying", also info about "Sita" (lover who killed herself), and "Mother Millet"
•  Done Mentions her unflattering portrayal of family and friends
•  Done Interactions with her mother about writing about her lesbianism, and her mother's fear of nursing homes, treatment while there, and ultimate rescue from one, their dynamics after the "rescue", her mother's ultimate return to a senior apartment complex
• Info for a "Legacy" section

• Christina Robb, Globe Staff. "KATE MILLETT: FREE AT LAST THE NOTED FEMINIST ESCAPES FROM 'THE LOONY-BIN TRIP'." The Boston Globe (Boston, MA). The New York Times Company. 1990. HighBeam Research. 7 Sep. 2014 <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-8176365.html>

• "Dropped from mainstream media" and lost the momentum she had from "Sexual Politics" after she had said she was a lesbian
• Quote: "celebrated, defended and made literature of her lesbianism, art and politics"
• Tree farm self-supporting by 1990
•  Done Mentions some of the details of the two of the times her family had her committed to psych wards (CA, Minn)
•  Done Terms explored: supportive psychotherapy, Institutional psychiatry, involuntary commitment
•  Done Lithium treatment
•  Done Being "saved" in NY from the "white police" - another attempt to have her involuntarily committed
•  Done Involuntarily committed in Ireland, sparked or more by the airport security in Ireland and their becoming aware that she was off her lithium from someone in NY - found by a friend who with others had her released
•  Done Millet's further experiences with/without lithium, her viewpoint about the family's recognition of what the commitments did to her, her explanation of how depression followed these events because of the labeling of being mentally ill - and not having had a justice process (as a criminal would)

• Marilyn Yalom. "Kate Millett's Mental Politics." The Washington Post. Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive. 1990. HighBeam Research. 7 Sep. 2014 <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-1126613.html>.

•  Done Regarding her write-as-you-go style towards autobiographical books and its affect on family and friends: "What right did she have, I wondered (recalling George Sand's judgment of Rousseau's Confessions), to "confess" so many others as she confessed herself?
•  Done Lithium
•  Done Manic periods per Sophie, people at the art colony, etc., warnings particularly about going to Ireland
•  Done Ireland info
• Her viewpoints and approaches to manage commitment, etc. Others who share her view
• Release of psych patients from "defunct" institutions
•  Done Quote: "She conveys the paranoid terror of being judged cruelly by others for what seems to the afflicted person to be a reasonable act."
• <points essentially covered > Quote: "it is valuable as a literary representation of what it is like to go mad and to be institutionalized against one's will-'the shame, the terror of being locked up,' the feel of being 'cornered' and 'busted,' 'convicted but never convinced.'"

• PAT SWIFT. "HER MOTHER, HERSELF." The Buffalo News (Buffalo, NY). Dialog LLC. 2001. HighBeam Research. 7 Sep. 2014 <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-22372623.html#>

• Humble lifestyle
• Quote by Millett and her later years: "Too ornery for the university to buy me, too radical for them to want to, too old by now even to qualify or be considered, there isn't much to hope for except a nice marginal life"
•  Done The nature of Millett's visits to Minn to take care of her mother - prodding her to be active
•  Done Quote: "Helen Millett might have been content to go "gently into that good night" -- she was after all more afraid of the nursing home than dying -- but daughter Kate was having none of that. Feminist warrior, human rights activists, gay liberationist, writer and artist, Kate Millett has not gone gently through life and never hesitates to rage at anyone -- friend or foe, family or the system - - to right a perceived wrong. When the dignity and quality of her ailing mother's life was at stake, this book's unfolding tale became inevitable."
•  Done Rescue --> apartment --> slow development of support system and return of some of Helen's capabilities --> changes within the family dynamics
•  Done essentially. Quote: She has developed a closeness with her mother that she had "never believed possible." She sees her days with her dying mother as "a miracle and a grace, a gift."
•  DoneQuote: "Kate Millett has made herself the heroine of this tale, and it is impossible not to believe there is some exaggeration of her role at the expense of her two siblings. But we forgive her, as the family has so often. She is a woman who bares her love and emotions with an intensity so powerful that it speaks to all of us who have searched for a way to say goodbye to a parent."

• Mary O'Connell. "How can one not be crazy here?." Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-Times News Group. 1990. HighBeam Research. 7 Sep. 2014 <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-4000480.html>

• <covered> about 1980: "stop taking the lithium prescribed to control her manic depression"
• <points essentially covered> due to stigma of manic-depression / bipolar and side effects
• people "worried" about her
•  Done Quote: "At one point, listening to others talk about her "freaking out," Millett muses, "How little weight my own perceptions seem to have," and goes on: "Depression is the victim's dread, not mania. For we could enjoy mania if we were permitted by the others around us. . . . A manic person permitted to think ten thousand miles a minute is happy and harmless and could, if encouraged and given time, perhaps be productive as well. Ah, but depression - that is what we all hate. We the afflicted. Whereas the relatives and shrinks . . . they rather welcome it: You are quiet and you suffer." "
• <not really needed, high and lows expressed other ways already> description of how her writings style reflects the highs and lows of bipolar disorder
•  Done powerful insight into her several week stay in a psych facility in Ireland, particularly "How can one not be crazy in such a place?"
• defines a continuum of sanity, rather that defining mental illness

• "Millett, Kate 1934–." Concise Major 21st Century Writers. Gale. 2006. HighBeam Research. 7 Sep. 2014 <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1G2-2590000475.html>. -- Great, comprehensive article of professional and personal life...and struggles

• • There's lots of content here in the Sidelights section - both for her biography and to expand the article... but so many quotes in the article now are also in this source that it's probably good to look at this only at the last for gaps of information to fill in.

• Reviewed by Liza Featherstone. "Daughterhood Is Powerful." The Washington Post. Washingtonpost Newsweek Interactive. 2001. HighBeam Research. 7 Sep. 2014 <http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-444642.html>

•  Done Quote / great summary: "When Millett's mother, Helen -- having collaborated in Kate's confinement years earlier -- becomes incapacitated by age and a brain tumor, relatives place her in a St. Paul, Minn., nursing home, where she is kept against her will. When Kate visits from New York, she's appalled by the institution's blandly depressing environment, in which seniors stare listlessly at the television all day. (We later learn that uncooperative residents are often forcibly restrained, and that the genteel and courteous Helen Millett had been labeled as having a "behavior problem.") Her tirelessly optimistic mother is dispirited, demoralized and deprived of basic freedoms. It's too close to Kate's ordeal as a mental patient; she cannot leave her mother in this place. Helen, perhaps anticipating this, is counting on Kate to save her: When her daughter arrives, the older woman says simply, "Now that you're here, we can leave." "
•  Done Quote / great summary: "Mother Millett can be painful reading, not only because of its grim subject matter -- aging and death -- but because it is draining to spend time with the inconsiderate, often unkind Kate Millett. (To her credit, she is strikingly honest about her flaws.) Just when her sister Sal has found a generous, responsible attendant to look after Helen, Kate alienates the woman by making an unpleasant scene in front of her. Bullying Helen about watching too much television, Kate cruelly derides her lack of sophistication about art and music. (The aide almost quits but then realizes that Kate will soon leave and go back to New York.)"
•  Done Quote / great summary: "...she's one of the most influential radical feminists of the 1970s. Many of the activists in that movement were -- and still are -- difficult, angry and even "crazy" people; yet the rest of us owe them legal abortion, greater professional equality between the sexes and a sexual freedom nearly unimaginable 40 years ago. We're lucky that women like Millett didn't act like the polite, middle-class girls most of them had been raised to be. Self-importance, blunt honesty and a refusal to shut up about injustice can start cultural brushfires, even if they don't make for easy dinner companions."
•  Done Quote: "one is left wondering how Kate's sisters would tell this story."