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Flying
Traces the author's strict Irish-Catholic upbringing in St Paul, Minnesota, and the shock of early sexual feelings and events. This book recounts the guilt of her first love for another woman and the joy of her relationship with her husband, the Japanese sculptor Fumio Yoshimura.
560 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1974
19 people are currently reading
1304 people want to read
About the author
Kate Millett
38 books329 followersKatherine Murray "Kate" Millett was an American feminist writer, educator, artist, and activist. She attended Oxford University and was the first American woman to be awarded a postgraduate degree with first-class honors by St. Hilda's. She has been described as "a seminal influence on second-wave feminism", and is best known for her 1970 book Sexual Politics," which was her doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. Journalist Liza Featherstone attributes previously unimaginable "legal abortion, greater professional equality between the sexes and a sexual freedom" being made possible partially due to Millett's efforts.
The feminist, human rights, peace, civil rights, and anti-psychiatry movements have been some of Millett's key causes. Her books were motivated by her activism, such as woman's rights and mental health reform, and several were autobiographical memoirs that explored her sexuality, mental health, and relationships. Mother Millett and The Loony Bin Trip, for instance, dealt with family issues and the times when she was involuntarily committed. Besides appearing in a number of documentaries, she produced Three Lives and wrote Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography. In the 1960s and 1970s, Millett taught at Waseda University, Bryn Mawr College, Barnard College, and University of California, Berkeley.
Millett was raised in Minnesota and has spent most of her adult life in Manhattan and the Woman's Art Colony, which became the Millett Center for the Arts in 2012, that she established in Poughkeepsie, New York. Self-identified as bisexual, Millett was married to sculptor Fumio Yoshimura from 1965 to 1985 and had relationships with women, one of whom was the inspiration for her book Sita. She has continued to work as an activist, writer, and artist. Some of her later written works are The Politics of Cruelty (1994), about state-sanctioned torture in many countries, and a book about the relationship with her mother in Mother Millett (2001). Between 2011 and 2013 she has won the Lambda Pioneer Award for Literature, received Yoko Ono's Courage Award for the Arts, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
The feminist, human rights, peace, civil rights, and anti-psychiatry movements have been some of Millett's key causes. Her books were motivated by her activism, such as woman's rights and mental health reform, and several were autobiographical memoirs that explored her sexuality, mental health, and relationships. Mother Millett and The Loony Bin Trip, for instance, dealt with family issues and the times when she was involuntarily committed. Besides appearing in a number of documentaries, she produced Three Lives and wrote Not a Love Story: A Film about Pornography. In the 1960s and 1970s, Millett taught at Waseda University, Bryn Mawr College, Barnard College, and University of California, Berkeley.
Millett was raised in Minnesota and has spent most of her adult life in Manhattan and the Woman's Art Colony, which became the Millett Center for the Arts in 2012, that she established in Poughkeepsie, New York. Self-identified as bisexual, Millett was married to sculptor Fumio Yoshimura from 1965 to 1985 and had relationships with women, one of whom was the inspiration for her book Sita. She has continued to work as an activist, writer, and artist. Some of her later written works are The Politics of Cruelty (1994), about state-sanctioned torture in many countries, and a book about the relationship with her mother in Mother Millett (2001). Between 2011 and 2013 she has won the Lambda Pioneer Award for Literature, received Yoko Ono's Courage Award for the Arts, and was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
August 29, 2017
Such a behemoth of a memoir. I should've adhered to the practices of previous readers and taken my sweet time, absorbing Millet's decadent (occasionally pearl-clutching) work.
I was also pleasantly disoriented by her breaking of the fourth wall. This strategy didn't feel like your usual "writing about writing" moments that seem to be a dime a dozen in more contemporary feminist memoirs; that feel like the writer is stalling on telling you the actual story. I became so grounded in the intimacy of someone telling her to write about x or y (which have already transpired within the text) that I failed to realize that the book I was reading IS the book she's writing.
Maddening perspective from one of the preeminent madwomen of the 20th century.
Gleaned the most from the first 200 or so pages. Second wave feminist anything is certainly out of fashion at the moment but there are so many parallels between ongoing fight for gender justice and Kate Millett's experiences. This book is a toolkit of secrets and feisty wisdom; the rhetoric used to shun her and other LGB women from the feminist movement is damned near identical to that used to shun transwomen today. HB2 initiation is only a stone's throw away from ERA's failure.
I was also pleasantly disoriented by her breaking of the fourth wall. This strategy didn't feel like your usual "writing about writing" moments that seem to be a dime a dozen in more contemporary feminist memoirs; that feel like the writer is stalling on telling you the actual story. I became so grounded in the intimacy of someone telling her to write about x or y (which have already transpired within the text) that I failed to realize that the book I was reading IS the book she's writing.
Maddening perspective from one of the preeminent madwomen of the 20th century.
Gleaned the most from the first 200 or so pages. Second wave feminist anything is certainly out of fashion at the moment but there are so many parallels between ongoing fight for gender justice and Kate Millett's experiences. This book is a toolkit of secrets and feisty wisdom; the rhetoric used to shun her and other LGB women from the feminist movement is damned near identical to that used to shun transwomen today. HB2 initiation is only a stone's throw away from ERA's failure.
April 28, 2022
this book is so special to me, i am actually trying not to finish it.
i've been reading it for years, and bring it along with me every time i go on a trip. i guess i don't need to explain that i don't go on very many trips.
but i end up having a lot of free, dilated time with this book. i've set it aside many times in favor of restorative sex.
the only way to survive the trauma of the 70s; wisdom, between many kisses up the neck.
i've been reading it for years, and bring it along with me every time i go on a trip. i guess i don't need to explain that i don't go on very many trips.
but i end up having a lot of free, dilated time with this book. i've set it aside many times in favor of restorative sex.
the only way to survive the trauma of the 70s; wisdom, between many kisses up the neck.
December 27, 2021
Content note: child abuse
2.5 stars.
There were parts of this book that were so compelling, and I admired the sweepingness and honesty of it. What a feat to write! But it was very, very long and its stream of consciousness style means there aren’t many grand events to hang your hat on - nothing feeling like an arc. The story is the story of the book itself being written. Millett rips down the fourth wall, showing us in the book her showing the book draft to her loved ones, struggling to write the book, doubting the very project we are reading. Its focus on the minutia of Millett’s day-to-day inner and outer life, as she writes the book we are reading was by turns fascinating and dull. Amazingly dull, even with the number of lovers she has (she is our poly foremother!)
There was just a lot of it. Nearly 700 pages.
I persisted in part because interspersed with this minutia are astute observations about the political landscape of feminism and the left that are still biting today. One of my favourite parts of the book was when Millett meets with Doris Lessing and they talked about how nobody on the left has actually read Marx. They just hate art and like shouting at each other. That still seems kinda true!
The book gave me hope, because you can see the difficulties and struggles within the movements Millett is a part of, and the weight of being an activist, especially one in the public spotlight the way Millett was, but in retrospect, you know that she and others in the movement had a tremendous impact. In the midst of things, it’s easy to feel like nothing is changing, like there is no point; it is only looking back you can see how much it did matter and how much has changed.
There were also these sad brilliant portrayals of what it means to live in a different world from your parents, when they don’t get you. What her inner life feels/sounds like - as she anxiously replays things, regrets, games interactions in her head hoping to get things right, was very relatable.
In some ways, Millett’s politics are terribly dated from the vantage point of our current identity politics on the left, and even unsettling at times as in her/her contemporaries’ ideas about womanhood can be seen precursors of TURF logic. There are some gestures towards intersectionality—-a strong awareness of class (with the Marxist influence of the 70s), some awareness of race (though the weird orientalist ways she describes her Japanese husband were pretty terrible). She also at several points expresses her frustration at the divisions created within movements along race and sexuality lines. The devisions between queer and straight women are particiularly relevant to the book because it deals in part with the pile-on from both within the feminist movement and from the media that Millett experienced after she came out as bisexual. The book is partly a fuck-you to the women who called her a traitor to the movement and to the homophobic media. Millett unabashedly portrays desire and explicit sex between women, revelling in the joys of it. Those scenes with Claire towards the end were on fire! Worth hanging in for.
Despite some proto-intersectionality, there are some extremely cringey moments of anti-fatness, as well as SO MUCH ABLEISM.
There is an extended portion of the book where Millett is living with her friend Nell in London. Nell has a developmentally disabled son, Winnie, and she and her husband are trying to cure Winnie through “patterning” a forced 12-hr a day regime of physical activities such as crawling that are supposed to re-do developmental stages Winnie missed or failed at, thus giving him a second chance at “normal” development. Psychomotor patterning, aka the Doman-Delacato technique, which I looked up, was controversial even at the time and has long since been discredited as pseudo science. From Millett’s descriptions, this patterning (even hitting Winnie to make him comply) was clearly child abuse wrapped in a big ugly shit bow of “saving” him so he can be a real man someday. She believes in this so strongly that she not only helps Nell and Paul with the patterning, she recruits a bunch of men from the gay liberation front to help with it too. It was super disgusting and disturbing. And definitely stood out to me as one of the most memorable (not in a good way) parts of the book. This is why we need intersectionality and a strong disability/crip/Mad/neurodivergent analysis!
2.5 stars.
There were parts of this book that were so compelling, and I admired the sweepingness and honesty of it. What a feat to write! But it was very, very long and its stream of consciousness style means there aren’t many grand events to hang your hat on - nothing feeling like an arc. The story is the story of the book itself being written. Millett rips down the fourth wall, showing us in the book her showing the book draft to her loved ones, struggling to write the book, doubting the very project we are reading. Its focus on the minutia of Millett’s day-to-day inner and outer life, as she writes the book we are reading was by turns fascinating and dull. Amazingly dull, even with the number of lovers she has (she is our poly foremother!)
There was just a lot of it. Nearly 700 pages.
I persisted in part because interspersed with this minutia are astute observations about the political landscape of feminism and the left that are still biting today. One of my favourite parts of the book was when Millett meets with Doris Lessing and they talked about how nobody on the left has actually read Marx. They just hate art and like shouting at each other. That still seems kinda true!
The book gave me hope, because you can see the difficulties and struggles within the movements Millett is a part of, and the weight of being an activist, especially one in the public spotlight the way Millett was, but in retrospect, you know that she and others in the movement had a tremendous impact. In the midst of things, it’s easy to feel like nothing is changing, like there is no point; it is only looking back you can see how much it did matter and how much has changed.
There were also these sad brilliant portrayals of what it means to live in a different world from your parents, when they don’t get you. What her inner life feels/sounds like - as she anxiously replays things, regrets, games interactions in her head hoping to get things right, was very relatable.
In some ways, Millett’s politics are terribly dated from the vantage point of our current identity politics on the left, and even unsettling at times as in her/her contemporaries’ ideas about womanhood can be seen precursors of TURF logic. There are some gestures towards intersectionality—-a strong awareness of class (with the Marxist influence of the 70s), some awareness of race (though the weird orientalist ways she describes her Japanese husband were pretty terrible). She also at several points expresses her frustration at the divisions created within movements along race and sexuality lines. The devisions between queer and straight women are particiularly relevant to the book because it deals in part with the pile-on from both within the feminist movement and from the media that Millett experienced after she came out as bisexual. The book is partly a fuck-you to the women who called her a traitor to the movement and to the homophobic media. Millett unabashedly portrays desire and explicit sex between women, revelling in the joys of it. Those scenes with Claire towards the end were on fire! Worth hanging in for.
Despite some proto-intersectionality, there are some extremely cringey moments of anti-fatness, as well as SO MUCH ABLEISM.
There is an extended portion of the book where Millett is living with her friend Nell in London. Nell has a developmentally disabled son, Winnie, and she and her husband are trying to cure Winnie through “patterning” a forced 12-hr a day regime of physical activities such as crawling that are supposed to re-do developmental stages Winnie missed or failed at, thus giving him a second chance at “normal” development. Psychomotor patterning, aka the Doman-Delacato technique, which I looked up, was controversial even at the time and has long since been discredited as pseudo science. From Millett’s descriptions, this patterning (even hitting Winnie to make him comply) was clearly child abuse wrapped in a big ugly shit bow of “saving” him so he can be a real man someday. She believes in this so strongly that she not only helps Nell and Paul with the patterning, she recruits a bunch of men from the gay liberation front to help with it too. It was super disgusting and disturbing. And definitely stood out to me as one of the most memorable (not in a good way) parts of the book. This is why we need intersectionality and a strong disability/crip/Mad/neurodivergent analysis!
June 10, 2009
I was young when I read this, and it meant a lot to me.
August 23, 2017
Feminist Politika adlı kitabı yayımlandıktan sonra, Time dergisinin kapağına çıkan yazar, hiç istemediği halde kadın hareketinin öncüsü olarak görülmeye başlar. Uçuş adı İle Türkçe'ye çevrilen kitap Kate Millett'in aktivist günlerinin öz yaşam öyküsü,
December 21, 2023
for being written in the 70s kate millet continues to eat. she has some takes that i was like 🤨🤨 but i think her writing ab her mental health in tandem to the book itself is a great choice. long live lesbian drama it’s a beautiful thing
December 14, 2018
I am queer and poly (and a titch neurotic) and boy does this resonate. It's like she wrested everything good and true about stream of consciousness right from the hands of the Beats.
April 22, 2022
Drug addled and alcohol soaked, uninhibited lesbo sex play fueled, Flying is a chaotic year in the life of a feminist author (Sexual Politics) and NYC artist after being outed by a journalist and becoming (involuntarily) the sapphic avatar of the second wave 70s women's movement.
September 8, 2019
I read this directly after reading Millett's "Sexual Politics." I did like this one but found it "choppy" and "scattered."
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews