Kate Millett dead: Feminist author of Sexual Politics dies aged 82

Author and activist passes away following cardiac arrest while on holiday in Paris

Kate Millett (Rex)

Kate Millett, the activist, artist and educator whose best-selling Sexual Politics was a landmark of cultural criticism and a manifesto for the modern feminist movement, has died at 82.

Millett died of a heart attack while on a visit to Paris on Wednesday, according to a person with knowledge of the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to speak for the family.

The publishing house that carried her books in French also confirmed the death but provided no details.

Sexual Politics was published in 1970, in the midst of feminism's so-called "second wave."

Millett's book was among the most talked-about works of its time and remains a founding text for cultural and gender studies programmes.

It chronicled millennia of legal, political and cultural exclusion and diminishment of women.

AP