Politics & Power Quote by Kate Millett

There is a sly, almost weary humor in the way Millett frames political life as a series of invisible borders you’re “supposed” to stay within. “Women’s lib” reads like an assignment she’s been handed by the culture: a manageable, domesticated lane where women can be passionate as long as their passions don’t implicate the larger machinery of power. The punchline is that she “exceeded” it, as if feminism were a quota or a speed limit, and “gone over into international politics,” as if the natural consequence of taking sexism seriously is ending up at geopolitics. Which, of course, it is.

The line works because it exposes how movements get policed through scope. Feminism is tolerated when it’s framed as personal grievance or niche reform; it becomes threatening when it starts naming imperialism, war, state violence, and the ways global power gets gendered. Millett is also winking at the media’s tendency to treat political commitments like brand categories: you can be the “women’s liberation” person, but you can’t also speak authoritatively about Vietnam, Palestine, authoritarianism, or Cold War realpolitik without being accused of mission creep.

Coming from Millett - whose Sexual Politics didn’t just criticize patriarchy but mapped it onto literature, ideology, and institutional control - the remark signals a deliberate refusal to be contained. The subtext is strategic: if the system insists feminism is “only” about women, then feminism will keep expanding until that limitation collapses. The “international” turn isn’t a detour; it’s the unavoidable next chapter.