American writer and activist Kate Millett was BOTD in 1934. Born and raised in St Paul, Minnesota, she studied at the University of Minnesota, winning a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford University. After teaching briefly at the University of North Carolina, she moved to New York City to pursue a career as an artist, relocating to Japan, where she married sculptor Fumio Yoshimura. She returned to the United States to complete a doctorate at Columbia University. In 1970, she published Sexual Politics, an analysis of sexism in the writings of D. H. Lawrence, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer. Challenging all three men’s status as prophets of sexual liberation, Millett argued that they were misogynists who subordinated and humiliated their female characters, promoting the work of gay playwright Jean Genet as an alternative to patriarchal conceptions of gender and power. An instant bestseller, the book became a foundational text of second-wave feminism, kick-starting the academic study of feminist literary theory. Millett’s disclosure of her bisexuality and marriage enraged many mainstream feminists, an experience recounted in her 1974 memoir Flying. Her other works include Sita, a memoir about her affair with a married woman; Going to Iran, a study of political oppression in Iran following the 1979 Revolution; The Loony-Bin Trip, a harrowing memoir of her institutionalisation for mental illness; and The Basement, a non-fiction account of the torture and murder of teenager Sylvia Likens by her foster carer Gertrude Baiszewski. She also founded the Women’s Ant Colony Farm, a community of female artists and writers in rural New York. After divorcing her husband, Millett formed a relationship with Sophie Keir, remaining together for 40 years. They married shortly before Millett’s death in 2017, aged 82.