NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #20/NN_1992_20.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/6573

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Via The NY Transfer News Service ~ All the News that Doesn't Fit

Book Review:

Flying
by Kate Millett
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990

Review by MC5 9/13/92

  I. Overview of book
 II. Stardom and the Protestant Ethic
III. The Central Problem: Whose Perspective?
 IV. Feminine Role-Playing: Reactions to Male Radicals
  V. Conclusion

Overview of book

Flying is the autobiography of one of the earliest lesbian
feminist leaders in the United States. In her 20s in the
1960s, Millett comes from that political era in which Maoism
had a profound impact on youth and national minorities. MIM
reviews this book at length because it is such a perfect
statement of the kind of views that paralyzed and eventually
snuffed out the radical feminist movement of the late 1960s--
views that still predominate in the remnants of the women's
liberation movement.

Most of the book consists of small details common to
autobiographies, but Maoism is perhaps the third most
frequently discussed issue in a general list of issues causing
creative tension in the book. The most important area of
discussion is the practice of lesbianism. Millett sees herself
as accountable to women, lesbians in particular, and hence
women claiming to uphold a purer and more correct lesbian
feminism hold much of Millett's attention throughout the book.
(e.g. Jill Johnston, p. 345)

The second and largest area of tension in the book concerns
monogamy, especially Millett's guilts and desires in
connection to her lovers. With one of the lovers she would
like to do without, Millett brings up typical idealist-pseudo-
Marxism: "Private property is dead, I told Vita in the meadow
after the march." (p. 493) Millett talks at length about
making people get over jealousy evoked by her "free love"
practices so ardently defended. Told that "free love" is
impossible in society currently, Millett said, "to get out of
monogamy is hard but it's worth it." (p. 461) Again, there
does not appear to be any power structure to overthrow: if we
wish hard enough we can wish away private property or so it
would seem from Millett's writings typical of a generation's
fatuous idealism. Although she believes she is a socialist and
holds sympathy for the revisionist Communist Party of the
time, Millett seems to forget that the society she lives in is
capitalist still.

The third area of tension in the book concerns Maoism. In
Flying, Maoism does not receive the attention that lesbianism
and free love do, but in reality Millett's whole book is a
reaction to the Maoism dominant in the student and national
minority movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. We
Maoists are only so fortunate that Millett was honest enough
to present the evidence in connection to this point. Hence
although Maoists have little in common with Millett's
political approach, she has set up the contrast so well that
it is a kind of service to the proletariat. Her ideas eclipsed
those of Maoism in influence within Amerika by the mid-1970s
and ever since her ideas have continued to retain more
influence in larger numbers of Amerikans than Maoism has. We
now turn to a presentation and criticism of those views on
lesbian feminism, monogamy and Maoism.

Stardom and the Protestant Ethic

Like Gloria Steinem, Kate Millett came to fame through Time
magazine. Compared with Steinem, however, it appears that
Millett received slightly less favorable coverage. One of the
main areas of guilt that Millett deals with in the book is
becoming a media-selected "star" proponent of lesbian
politics. Throughout the book, she comes under attack from
feminists and hard-line lesbians as an "elitist." What makes
matters worse is that Millett is really a bisexual who is
married to a Japanese man. According to Millett, on her
speaking tours and in her organizing, she came under pressure
to be a more pure lesbian and she often felt hypocritically
trapped in the role her book Sexual Politics and Time magazine
created for her.

Here is one thought that crossed her mind regarding herself as
an instant role model of change: "It doesn't work out with
women. Should never have started again. Stick by your
principles: Support Gay Liberation the whole way. But forget
the practice. Nothing in it but the pain. They can say in
public that I'm a queer, but that doesn't mean I have to be.
Tell the truth--then outwit it in private." (p. 6)

This kind of hypocrisy is an issue throughout the book, mainly
because of Millett's steadfast refusal to take a structuralist
approach to patriarchy. When it comes down to it, Millett
believes patriarchy is not a system but an attitude and
lifestyle choice. Like many other unoriginal thinkers of the
last 2000 years, Millett rewrites the Ten Commandments and
then focuses people's attention on whether those commandments
are upheld. Like countless other Christians, Millett does not
care how successful her commandments are in practice in
society at-large, only that individuals carry out the
commandments after adequate preaching of them. She has no
sense that some structures of society make living her ethics a
lot easier than other structures.

When it comes to why she does not live life perfectly, Millett
says, "I am all waver, I doubt everything." (p. 14) An example
is how bad she feels about not being a pure lesbian: "Finally
I am accused. 'Say it! Say you are a Lesbian.' Yes I said.
Yes. Because I know what she means. The line goes, inflexible
as a fascist edict, that bisexuality is a cop-out. Yes I said
yes I am a Lesbian. It was the last strength I had." (p. 15)
Having no sense of revolutionary science, it is no wonder that
Millett believes correct practice is always a matter of being
personally "strong."

Millett buys into the Protestant ethic wholesale in other
aspects of life. She says repeatedly to her critics that the
reason that she is in Time magazine, gets speaking engagements
and obtains finances for films is that she works harder than
other women in the movement who criticize her. (p. 402-3) (MIM
agrees with Millett that it is legitimate to fight
Christianity with Christianity: defend one individual practice
relative to another; although, what good this does in the end
is dubious. What we should really compare is different
political lines and movements that embrace or could embrace
millions.)  Like the middle-class generally, Millett believes
good and bad are a matter of taking responsibility for one's
individual actions, working hard etc. (See page 21 for how she
is "one of the few productive women we have," page 29 for how
weakness is a reason "to despise myself all night," p. 55, how
all her "crazy theories" were "hot air" because of her weak
hypocritical practice.) Like many other lesbians, Millett
believes she has a strong disdain for the Church, but in the
end even she admits that she is caught in its discourse.

Whether to be monogamous or not and the question of how much
she satisfies or hurts various lovers is the preoccupation of
the book. "That book is all about your sex life." (p. 255)

This kind of individualistic and moralistic focus pervades the
book. Its only positive aspect is that one could get the sense
from the individual failings of so many people that it is
useless to speak of gender as other than a system. Millett
finds that lesbians play sex-power games against each other
(p. 124); she recognizes how her sexual relationship with her
secretary is fundamentally no different than the kind of thing
her movement condemns (p. 196) and finally she admits that her
own tastes in sex trouble her as she believes that she has not
escaped socialization (pp. 152-3 etc.).

The Central Problem: Whose Perspective?

"I found the Left could mean dull persons shouting at
meetings. Boring me to death with their egos. With words.
Verbiage more outrageous the less it meant. . . Living lives
of frenzied emotionality based on the sufferings of other
persons in other countries about whom they seemed to care very
little except to find them convenient for certain neurotic
needs and schemes of their own." (p. 359)

People who take the perspective of the international
proletariat as necessary for the most radical change are
suspect according to Kate Millett. Employing the
psychiatrists' smear against something she admits to knowing
nothing about, she finds these people "neurotic."
Psychological smear tactics are certainly a lot easier than
actually finding out what works in the history of social
change and what doesn't.

>From this book a person would hardly know it that women bear
the brunt of starvation in the world, the most important
source of violence; yet, Kate Millet claims to be a feminist.
Even in sexual matters, one would hardly know that Third World
women are the most oppressed and naturally disposed to radical
change.

As is clear in the acknowledgements of the Redstockings book
Feminist Revolution and as is clear from Millett's own disdain
for the feminist movement's copying the Black movement, (p.
209) women's movements learned strange lessons from Black
nationalism. A wishful kind of thinking still prevalent today
is that if Blacks pay attention to Black issues, women to
women's issues and workers to workers' issues, everything will
come out all right.

Millett quotes someone as follows: "'All day we've talked
about the working class yet all of us are middle class, we
talk about investment [in South Africa--mc5] but nobody here
has any money to invest, we talk about Africa and live in
suburbia. We talk about racism and have never had
relationships with persons of another race. We have been doing
it for years." (p. 298)

The problem with the above quote is that white nation workers
and white nation women do not have the same interests and
perspectives as the Third World laboring classes. Hence, they
cannot "work on their own oppressions first" and the kind of
things mentioned in the above quote without working against
the Third World proletariat and working against the Third
World masses in history is a futile exercise. That is not a
moralistic statement, the kind that Millett likes to shoot
down as a straw man. The point is not that Vietnamese peasants
are "superior." (p. 365) The point is that the Vietnamese
peasant during the Vietnam War had a much more desperate
interest in change than the First World lesbians like Millett
did. When we do not adopt that perspective of the Third World
toilers, we fail to take the most radical perspective, the
most effective perspective in moving forward.

Feminine Role-Playing: Reactions to Male Radicals

"He lectures me on politics, an old master with a store of
knowledge who has memorized the history of the Communist
Party, American radicalism since the Founding Fathers, and
every wrinkle of the New Left. Paul teaching me. His
affection. Also his sternness. Every fact he produces
intimidates me further, elaborate evidence of my absolute
incapacity to be what I'm supposed to." (p. 276)

This first admission amounts to the supposed historic
inability of women to engage in politics. That's Millett's
step one in buying into feminine socialization.

"One assassination follows another in his recital, the full
panorama of historical bad faith. I protest against the
inevitable pattern. 'You are too soft,' he says, dismissing
me. Now I am a cream puff. I sag." (p. 276-7)

All one gathers again is the gender roles and most likely when
she uses the word "assassination" she is referring to
criticism of herself. This was a tactic throughout the book to
protest how much she was hurt by her critics. The words
"stab," "knife" etc. are used to refer to verbal criticism,
not real acts of physical violence. She goes on.

"He has done this to me before. I feel bullied. I also feel
absurd. In paying me the compliment of taking me seriously, he
takes me too seriously. Paul has got it in his head I am some
kind of politico or another." (p. 277)

Now Millett invites male chauvinism by claiming not to be
serious about politics, that somehow she populates a different
world, the world of artist--a frequent refuge for women who do
not wish a direct confrontation with gender oppression. Next
she throws in the towel completely on politics itself, the
study of power.

"'Look, Paul, I just care about change. I'd like to dedicate
myself to that somehow. I'm not quite sure what it is or what
I can do. But I know it's not about power. And what I have in
mind is somehow more basic to experience than a 'politics'
that is 'out there.' ... I'm interested in something entirely
different and trying to figure it out with myself first--how I
could get it together, change myself.'" (p. 277)

The above emphasis opposing all politics and focussing on
self-change first shows that Millett is really the forerunner
of the New Age movement that absorbed all those not quite
conforming to the system but not ready to take it on either.
She certainly shares all the trite individualism, idealism and
historically ignorant claims to originality that the New Age
fad embodies.

Here is a clearer justification of what Millett thinks. "We
are naive and moralistic women. We are human beings. Who find
politics a blight upon the human condition. And do not know
how one copes with it except through politics. And more
directly through change, liberation, small personal things,
subjective exercises appropriate only to persons with enough
to eat, residence in one of the supposedly advanced, namely
developed, capitalist and imperialist nations. Who if they
made certain inroads upon their own society could redirect it
even to the advantage of the others upon whose neck it
stands." (p. 359, more on politics, p. 418)

This is the most direct statement Millett makes that justifies
taking the perspective she does instead of the scientific
outlook of the revolutionary proletariat. She admits that what
she does is limited, but still finds justification in that
somehow if more people could make her small steps, the
imperialist countries would not step on the oppressed anymore.

Yet, Millett also knows that she really can't make important
claims like that, because she does not claim to have studied
what she is talking about very much. She claims to be working
on her own oppression. However, no First World person who has
made no effort to understand how the world works--how First
World oppression is related to Third World oppression--can
understand much less be a positive factor in the eradication
of imperialism. As it turns out, people who cannot understand
the Third World and imperialism have done much less for
women's liberation than the movements that do address
imperialism head-on.

If Kate Millett did not exist, MIM would have had to invent
her to explain how it is that many 1960s radicals found their
way into a pseudo-feminist dead-end. In the guise of radical
feminism, Millett has already accepted that she is incapable
of politics; although she is capable of humanely apologizing
profusely for making so many lectures, talks and books without
studying what she is talking about systematically. In
addition, her coherent acceptance of the feminine role reaches
its epitome in her rejection of armed struggle, leadership and
Maoism. Her reaction to the Black Panthers is that the
"Radical Lesbians" were much more real than the Panthers.
"There is another way than playing god with life or performing
maniac as talking star. I cannot believe in the gun. As as for
the leader thing, I am a coward before the crowd, standing
before it dizzy with my ignorance." (p. 30)

Although this was dishonest on her part, because what she said
amounted to covering up and denying the leadership
(misleadership) role she was playing in her talks, movies and
press conferences, Millett again expresses the perfect
conservative disempowerment socialization of femininity. She
opposes both the leadership and armed struggle advocated by
the Black Panthers. "But the Left is wearing its jeans and its
stompers and is dying to kill you too, it's so revolutionary.
America is a prick on a rampage." (p. 233) She goes on to make
approving references to Gandhi, the overwhelming military
power of the Establishment and "prick gun Cleaver." (p. 330-1,
365-8, 379) "Cheer up, this is only England, you still need
not choose between violent revolution or the everyone-says-
empty stance of pacifism," she says. (p. 296)

In statements like the above, Millett also makes it clear that
at the time in the late 1960s, she felt constantly outnumbered
and pressured by Maoists. References to Maoists and their
organizations abound (p. 30, 68, 69, 209, 260, 331 etc.). For
example, Millett sums up the situation of many women like
herself who were involved in politics with her put-down of
some radical women from New Haven. Millett says of these women
that they sound "like everyone's Weatherman boyfriend." (p.
69) [The Weatherman was a semi-Maoist radical group--mc5] To
Millett it is inconceivably unfeminine for a woman to take up
revolutionary politics; hence women could only do so under the
coercion of their boyfriends. By saying this, once again
Millett buys into common views of women by maligning the
independent thought processes of women, as if it were
impossible for them to reach the conclusion of revolutionary
politics using their own brain cells.

Conclusion

In the end, Millett herself makes a good point about the
nature of the oppression she is fighting: "It always comes to
this, and I know that no freedom of mine justifies someone's
else's pain." (p. 91) She goes on to talking about the pain of
dealing with parents and heterosexual lovers when it comes to
her lesbianism. However, in this context, MIM agrees with
Millett: oppressions that do not involve loss of life itself
do not justify armed struggle. The liberty of sexual
orientation by itself is not cause for armed struggle except
where life is at stake, which it certainly is not in Millett's
context. Herein lies the reason why it is not enough to just
"work on one's own oppression first." Taking a narrow First
World lesbian perspective, one might conclude that armed
struggle and radical change are not necessary. That means one
would pit oneself against the Third World liberation
struggles. Instead, those of us who want effective and fast
social change should adopt the perspective of those social
groups most likely to be a vehicle of radical change.

While Millett opposes armed struggle and has no historic sense
of what works to promote change and what doesn't, we are not
surprised to find her adopting classic feminine strategies of
social change--charity and social work. She engages in both in
her practice. Something she talks about at length is
organizing herself and others to give labor-intensive help to
a crippled child needing physical therapy. (e.g. p. 282, p.
446 on food charity)

In conclusion, MIM agrees with Millett in her defense of
gay/lesbian lifestyles under attack by bigoted mainstream
heterosexuals. At the same time, MIM agrees with almost
nothing that Millett says to the "left" or radical feminists.
In fact, her book is a long list of what is wrong with
Amerikan pseudo-feminism. Kate Millett led the way in
constructing a new femininity in reaction to the revolutionary
movements of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Millett's
socialist veneer and insider status in the movement only makes
her all the more reactionary in her impact. The saddest part
of all is that her rejection of the Maoist ideas of her time
in the name of independent feminist politics has resulted in
an increase in the strength of patriarchy and the dependence
of women on men. That her ideas have proved to be a historical
dead-end is something she does not care to study, because
dirtying her hands in the study of politics would be improper
for someone of her kind of "feminism."

                               -30-

Related MIM Readings: Ask for these

Comparing Gandhi and Mao, MIM Notes 39
MIM Theory 2/3 on gender oppression
Why vanguard parties with strong leadership are necessary:
What Is To Be Done? and our reply to "American Leninism."
Redstockings, Feminist Revolution.

For more info:

MIM
PO Box 559
Cambridge, MA 02140

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