Kate Millett, a feisty icon of radical feminism best known for her groundbreaking 1970 work “Sexual Politics,” described herself as “just a farmer” during the 24th Annual Lambda Literary Awards Monday night. She was honored, along with Armistead Maupin, as a Pioneer for her writing and activism on behalf of women, gays, mental patients and the elderly.

Ms. Millett had traveled to the event at CUNY’s Graduate Center from her farm in Poughkeepsie, a 30-acre spread that also serves as a women’s artist colony and a summer retreat from her digs in the East Village. The writer and artist moved to the Bowery in the late 1950s. She also spent several years in Japan, where she met her husband of two decades, the late sculptor Fumio Yoshimura Fumio Yoshimura, in 1965. After her first Bowery residence was razed, she and Mr. Yoshimura shared a two-floor loft at 295 Bowery, a late-19th century building once known as the infamous McGurk Suicide Hall, where several teenage prostitutes were said to have committed suicide by lacing their last drinks with carbolic acid.

A day after receiving her “Lammy,” Ms. Millet sat down for an interview at her fifth-floor loft on East Fourth Street, just off of the Bowery. The city relocated her to the 1,662-square-foot space, managed by the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association, in 2004 after she lost a protracted battle to retain her residence of 38 years. She spoke to The Local about life, art, sexual politics and the changes in her neighborhood.

You used to pay $500 a month when you lived at 295 Bowery and that was for two floors – how much is your rent here?

They upped it, but not a lot. It’s more than $500. We’re going to buy it. It’s supposed to be a [condo] but it never seems to become one.

What was it like at McGurk’s Suicide Hall?

I like to think of it as McGurk’s suicide parlor. For so many years, we didn’t even know it was that. It was so beautiful. We fixed it up ourselves. Then we discovered that it had this awful history.

Did you ever think of doing a picture book? It’s all about suffering and the exploitation of women, themes in your work.

We looked up all the suicides and stuff like that. I’ve researched it thoroughly. We really got into it. I’ve written a text of 220 pages. We have photographs. We thought it would be a good movie. It’s such a compelling story. I couldn’t get the text published.

All these things close to 295 Bowery, like CBGBs and 35 Cooper Square, were symbols of your life on the Bowery and Lower East Side. How did you react as they disappeared?

Well, it’s a pity. We just got railroaded. Period. They really meant to kill us, to break our building down. We tried to buy [295 Bowery], but they [developers] had other plans.

But this street is very nice. What’s your favorite bar?

It is nice. La Mama is right across the street. The Bowery Bar on the corner is wonderful. I love to go eating, but I’m a very good cook.

Do you want to teach again?

I always want to teach again. But they won’t let me. First of all, I’m too old. I’m 78. And I’ve been fired from every university faculty. Barnard and also NYU. They’ve fired me.

Was this in Women’s Studies? Why would they fire a feminist author like you?

I’m always in Women’s Studies. But my politics are kind of different because I’m always on the side of the strikers. I’m always on the side of the teachers that get paid nothing at all.

Are you part of any neighborhood groups here in the East Village?

I’m still on the Bowery – just off it. I belong to the neighborhood. I know people here. I’m part of the community. Because for a long time I fought for my house so I got to know everybody.

With all the demolitions of neighborhood icons going on, are you worried about the future?

The big buildings are coming. Wall Street people now live here. That was the whole plan of what they did with my house – the developers – to accommodate Wall Street: you can walk to work. But there are other parts of town that are strong against them now. Chinatown is against them. We’ll go on living.

Where do you think feminism is going now?

It’s kind of muzzled because of George Bush. We’ve had a long time of Republican rule in this country. Now they’re threatening women with vaginal insertions. It’s crazy. There are states that have voted against [funding] for contraception. I mean, it’s really a backwards move.

Isn’t it striking that this happening during the seemingly liberal Obama administration?

It isn’t his fault. It’s all these crazy Protestants, all these evangelicals. The Catholics, sure. They’re both crazy, but the evangelicals are particularly vicious. It’s a Protestant country. Obama is pro abortion rights, he’s pro women’s rights, he’s pro gay liberation. He has very liberal views. But he’s only the president.

So is women’s movement kind of muzzled now, marginalized? Is there a war on women?

The Republican Party has marginalized women. This is a war on women that becomes a war on women’s wombs. That’s how you control women.

You control them through their reproductive function?

Always. That’s behind the whole idea of patriarchy.

The idea of patriarchy—that’s what you leveled your big guns at in “Sexual Politics.” How did this develop?

It’s really social. You convince women it’s their fault because they have babies. Then you say, your place is in the home. That’s about most of it.

You lived all those years on the Bowery which was the total opposite of the idyllic setting you grew up with in St. Paul, by the Mississippi.

One of my roommates said, “We came from St. Paul and we’re never going back. We’re living on the Bowery.” It was the furthest thing from St. Paul. It was a way of rebelling and rejecting everything. We had to be artists. And to be an artist you had to live among the poor.

Yes, but you’re an artist and it can’t always be fun waking up with someone vomiting on your doorstep.

You’ve got to sympathize with them. Dorothy Day lived right around the corner.

Did you ever become friendly with Norman Mailer? He was one of the male literary icons you attacked in “Sexual Politics,” in your critique of patriarchy in literature. He was friendly with feminists like Gloria Steinem and Germaine Greer.

He was friendly but condescending. He really hated Jill Johnston [late columnist for the Village Voice]. He demands that you be pretty for one thing and behave yourself. My friend Cindy MacAdams knew him. She’s a photographer and we invited over in Provincetown. I had drinks ready for him. We spent the whole day cleaning up the place, and we were really ready to entertain this distinguished writer. So when he got there, I made him a gin and tonic. And he discovered it was just the two of us. And he got scared and suddenly discovered he had to meet someone at the boat. And he took off like a bat out of hell.

By the way, what’s your favorite drink?

I’m a fan of gin and orange juice.