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Transcription: [00:04:01]
{SPEAKER name="Carolyn Carr"}

She met her husband, Fumio Yoshimura, I think was his name. And they came back to the States in 1965.
[00:04:09]

Millett considered teaching, and realized in order to teach at the university level, she would need her PHD.
[00:04:19]

So, she enrolled in Columbia University. And I have to tell you, I don't know how many of you here have struggled for your PHD, when you finish it, what you pray for is that somebody will publish it.
[00:04:35]

Well, Millett had the good fortune to have a thesis topic, that was a hot topic, and that was timely.
[00:04:45]

Her thesis for Columbia was the book, "Sexual Politics," and I had the pleasure of skimming that book again recently, and I was absolutely startled.
[00:05:02]

And I could see why it made such a tremendous impact.
[00:05:08]

It wasn't just nearly a thesis that women have been systematically put down, that it is a patriarchal society.
[00:05:19]

It started with literary examples in the 18th Century and went on to the 19th Century and took it up to the mid 20th Century by
[00:05:31]

quoting Henry Miller from the "Tropic of Cancer" and "Tropic of Capricorn",
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books that, I can tell you, in the 1960s, were outlawed in the United States.
[00:05:45]

So she was clearly on top of her literature. A clever agent realized that this was a timely thesis.
[00:05:56]

Betty Friedan had written the "Feminine Mystique" in 1963, had founded The National Organization for Women, which Millett had joined, in 1966 that is.
[00:06:13]

It was a moment of change, a moment of realization. The reason, one of the reasons that Time Magazine selected her for the cover was that the book sold instantly 15,000 copies.
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Well, today we hear, a million copies here, a million copies there, but I can tell you for a dissertation, 15,000 copies, in hardback is a lot.
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Millett was not happy.
[00:06:46]

Transcription Notes:
Take umms out of the transcription ---------- Reopened for Editing 2023-06-15 15:40:22 Added timestamps, corrected names, added missing words