Going to Iran

by Kate Millett

A new book by Kate Millett, one of our most important feminists, is always a major literary event, and "Going to Iran", illustrated with dramatic photographs by Sophie Keir, is a powerfully political and beautifully written work. Iran has been in the international headlines continuously for more than three the Shah's expulsion, his sickness and death, the struggles before the Ayatollah Khomeini dropped the curtain to the world, the taking of the hostages. Millett had worked for many years with a humanitarian group of Iranian dissenters, CAIFI, the Committee for Artistic and Intellectual Freedom in Iran, which protested conditions under the Shah. After his downfall, when Iran was poised between a new democracy and religious totalitarianism, Iranian feminists sent an urgent please to their sisters around the world as they began to organize an Iranian women's movement to protect their threatened rights. Kate Millett and Sophie Keir answered the call, and they were among the very few Americans to see that nation in the nascent stages of revolution. "Going to Iran" is the dramatic, highly personal account of their extraordinary stay in the "new" Iran, where they made friendships with courageous Iranian women but where they were defamed and threatened with death, where one can get seventy-five lashes for taking a drink, where homosexuals and children as arbitrarily executed. Millett decries the Shah, who presented a civilized face to the world but kept vats of acid to dispose of his torture victims, but she decries the Ayatollah as well, for sanctioning the fanaticism of Moslems who disrupt women's rallies, attacked women demonstrators, even schoolgirls, and threatened all those who refused to wear the "chador" (veil), which the new regime has made a compulsory symbol of female submission.

Genres: Iran

333 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1982

About the author

Katherine 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.

Reviews

[Hypathie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Les événements en Iran de ce dernier mois, les femmes ayant amorcé le mouvement, en première ligne pour revendiquer leurs droits humains, ont fait que l'ouvrage de Kate Millett est revenu dans l'actualité. L'ouvrage est le journal de ces quelques jours d'avant le 8 mars où Kate Millett réfléchit, puis fléchit, se prépare au voyage, visas, bagages, enthousiasme, projets, amies accompagnatrices, contacts avec Simone de Beauvoir, Antoinette (Fouque), Claude (Servan-Schreiber)..., toutes promettent, soit de la rejoindre, soit de s'occuper des relations publiques, communiqués de soutien et contacts avec la presse depuis Paris. Récit aussi de son arrivée à Téhéran, des contre-temps de la manifestation, des contacts avec les féministes iraniennes, de ses changements de campement chez l'habitante ou à l'Intercontinental, son dernier hôtel. Jusqu'à son expulsion autoritaire par le nouveau régime qui la déclare indésirable sur le territoire iranien. Dans une soixantaine de dernières pages crucifiantes, Kate Millett décrit son angoisse d'être arrêtée arbitrairement, de devoir même faire un seul jour en prison. Elle est claustrophobe, elle écrit avoir déjà été enfermée en hôpital psychiatrique et elle ne supportera pas un nouvel enfermement. La désorganisation des différents services de police, l'incompétence bureaucratique ordinaire des dictatures, le pouvoir discrétionnaire qu'ils exercent sur elle et sur sa compagne Sophie Keir, arbitraire dont ces hommes qui savent qu'elles sont lesbiennes, vont jouer jusqu'au bout, les menaçant même de viol. http://hypathie.blogspot.com/2022/12/...

[Camille · Rating 5 out of 5]

Le récit du voyage de Kate Millett en Iran, peu après la Révolution lorsque le nouveau régime se met en place. Elle est invitée par des féministes iraniennes pour le 8 mars. Une lecture bouleversante !