Identifying patriarchy as a socially conditioned belief system masquerading as nature, Millett demonstrates in detail how its attitudes and systems penetrate literature, philosophy, psychology, and politics. Her incendiary work rocked the foundations of the literary canon by castigating time-honored classics -- from D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover and Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer to Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead and the plays of Jean Genet -- for their use of sex to degrade and undermine women.

Sexual Politics laid the foundation for subsequent feminist scholarship by showing how cultural discourse reflects a systematized subjugation and exploitation of women. Millett's new preface draws attention to some of the forms patriarchy has taken recently in consolidating its oppressive and dangerous control.