SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas - Discussion

[Labubus]

I’m about to start reading this and was wondering if anyone fancied a discussion on it?

Yes, I am aware that Solanas was violent. I am not excusing that behaviour. It is disgusting, and I denounce it. However, I hope that her writing can still be discussed alongside this.

Reading it is a bit like going to one of those primal scream workshops.

I think this is the full text https://editions-ismael.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/1968-Valerie-Solanas-S.C.U.M.-Manifesto.pdf

It’s satire.

You might think it satire but many, many lesbian feminist separatists and other radical feminists thought of it as a rallying cry!

" ... 'Life' in this 'society' being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of 'society' being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex. ... "

only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex

Maybe not all at once. At least, definitely not by the weekend, if we're looking for a timetable commitment.

Also available to read online here.

https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-2426/page/n1/mode/2up

While SCUM is interesting as a historical document, I'm not all that inclined to spend time reading it.

Why, of any of the books associated with radical feminism, would anyone read Solanas over Dworkin? Solanas’ thinking was pretty muddled and as someone else has already posted, her book is more of a primal scream than an interesting feminist text.

By all means read it as a piece of angry female art OP (maybe also watch “I Shot Andy Warhol” - I remember that being pretty good) but I’m not sure it merits a discussion thread in FWR. Maybe in the Books forum?

I think most of Dworkin’s work is worth revisiting now, though. Comparing and contrasting Right Wing Women to today’s “TRA intersectional feminists” could be really interesting.

I was aware of it when it first appeared and even for a freethinking, liberated, radical leftie feminist (which is what I thought I was at the time), it seemed to be total bunkum.

Actually, reading Right Wing Women while thinking of how intersectional feminism was hijacked by gender ideology AND looking at the rise of MAGA trad wives would be super interesting. Could get meta.

Something can be both satire and a rallying cry. cf The Modest Proposal.

Solanas was a paranoid schizophrenic. As I said, it may be an interesting historical text, but I'd not read it for feminist analysis, per se.

I don't recall many anybodies reading it, it was always a bit niche - even getting hold of a copy of it was difficult.

It is an amazing piece of writing, the righteous anger spits from it like sparks off metal, but it is not really a serious political 'manifesto', it is best read as a completely OTT satire.

How serious was Valerie Solanas about it? Did she write it as a satire, or did she actually expect it to be taken literally?
She was a survivor of much abuse, had serious mental health problems and was institutionalised several times. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia; sometimes that can produce incredible pieces of writing and this may have been the case with the SCUM manifesto.

The 'Cutting up men' referred to in the title is not something that any reasonable reader was inspired to do by the SCUM Manifesto, and I don't believe there was a spate of violent attacks on random men by angry women inspired by Solanas.

VS herself did use violence, extreme violence - she nearly killed Andy Warhol and left him with serious injuries for the rest of his life - but it was in a dispute about the rights to her work rather than an acting out of her manifesto.

I still think it is a stunning piece of writing, worth reading while bearing in mind the background of abuse, mental health issues and violence.

I’m simultaneously amazed,amused and appalled when this work is used as evidence of the violent, dangerous nature of radical feminism. Which it still is sometimes….

AS hardly anyone knows about it, I find that hard to believe!

I think there is a huge difference between writing something, and then presume to say would only be written by someone with mental health issues.

And written as I referenced up thread, as a sort of primal scream exercise. (She was after all more than willing to work with Warhol.)

For many women, to even think the thoughts that it was men, men in their lives, that were the cause of their difficulties was just another form of Consciousness Raising.

The fact that at a later date the author did then commit an act of violence isn't necessarily linked to the book, or as a motive.

Many authores, including women authors, have written important books for other women and are known to have had mental health issues. We still admire the books.

As far as I remember she was angry with Warhol for what she felt were his attempts to stop her writing career. She may have only meant to only wound him. That's the problem with US gun laws.

But as a man who have fame and followers on his side, who was oppressing her, there is obviously an overlap with the nub of the book.

Also worth remembering that this was the era of Liberation politics, a lot of which was hyperbole.

In the UK this was made more genteel but women's groups whose founding principles were "no men, no babies, no dogs".

I thought it was quite funny! She's right, men aren't groovy 😁

Absolutely!

You will find that many of the people who think that feminists hate men, or who talk about feminists being separatists are informed by the SCUM manifesto even if they don’t realise it.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. The absolute anger people feel about when it was ultimately just calling a reversal of the treatment of women is bemusing and the subversion goes over so many heads.

Well that's just typical of extremists. They create one "fact" and think that substantiates their prejudice. Whereas it just confirms their ignorance.

ie men and sadly a few hand maidens