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colinlievens's review
At the very core of SCUM is a eugenicist message. It doesn’t call for racial cleansing or to sterilise disabled people. It calls for us to, as a Society, Cut Up Men.
From the first page of her manifesto, Solanas implicitly compares maleness to some sort of genetic disability; “the male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene”. Even if we imagine, just for a moment, that Solanas’ observations about men are true, surely we should be thinking about them through the lens of the social model of disability?
Perhaps, with modern, more ‘woke’ eyes we can still learn something from this text. Even if men are bad, are mean, are unthinking, unfeeling, maybe this isn’t a result of how they’re wired, maybe really it’s a society that doesn’t make space for them, for their emotions, for their softness. Just as a wheelchair user may need a ramp to access a space, perhaps men just need a little assistance to access a world outside of toxic masculinity.
I was also irked by Avital Ronell’s introduction. Not only was it incredibly academic (the exact thing that Solanas hated), but I also think it did nothing to prepare me for the text that was about to come. It didn’t give me enough historical context, and it didn’t give Solanas the sympathy she deserves.
I feel like Solanas, as a woman who is clearly very mentally ill, very traumatised, but who also did some incredibly bad things, should either be demonised or given sympathy. This introduction doesn’t do that. Instead, it almost validates her undeniably insane manifesto. This is the rambling, self-contradicting, barely proof-read, babbling of someone who is clearly very unwell and months away from shooting two people for no real reason.
When I looked up Ronell, I found that, more recently, she’s been accused of sexual abuse. I was so conflicted about this, I considered using it as an excuse to skip past her very academically-toned introduction and get straight to Solanas. But then it occurred to me that Solanas literally shot two people, and - although I wasn’t entirely prepared for what was to come - I didn’t expect to morally agree with much of what she had to say.
I think there’s a lot to consider about how we celebrate people who have done bad things. Perhaps we should take her crimes as a sign that she really believed in what she had to say in this manifesto, but she also worked with Warhol, she wanted him to publish her play. The manifesto, however, goes on and on about how “The male “artist” attempts to solve his dilemma of not being able to live, of not being female, by constructing a highly artificial world in which the male is heroized”. And she didn’t shoot Warhol because he was an evil man, she shot him because she thought he’d stolen her play, because she was stuck outside of his gang of outsiders.
I also think there’s a lot to be learned about asexual erasure from this text. Solanas is hailed as a lesbian, the SCUM Manifesto is broadly considered a seminal work in the development of man-hating dykes. And yet, within this very manifesto, she actively refers to herself (and the other, hypothetical, women of SCUM) as “skirting asexuality”. Solanas loved women, but I don’t think in a gay way, just a feminist way. She may have hung around in lesbian bars, but probably just because there weren’t any men there!
This book feels like the kind of book someone like me should read. As a grumpy political dyke, as an Andy Warhol fan, as a non-fiction girly. Was it all I could talk about to anyone who would listen for the last month? Yes. Would I recommend it? Probably not.
I’m so incredibly conflicted about this book. I’m both glad I read it and regretful that anyone ever did. For this reason, I don’t think I could actually give it a star rating. Solanas exists outside of such structures.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Ableism, Death, Genocide, Mass/school shootings, Mental illness, Misogyny, and Sexism
Minor: Drug abuse, Emotional abuse, Gaslighting, Gun violence, Hate crime, Injury/Injury detail, Murder, Physical abuse, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, and Violence
itszosia's review against another edition
slow-paced
3.25
Content Warnings
Graphic: Transphobia
Moderate: Murder, Violence, Genocide, Misogyny, and Sexual content
Minor: Suicide
miss_hva's review against another edition
dark
funny
fast-paced
2.5
Content Warnings
Graphic: Physical abuse, Murder, Misogyny, Sexism, Violence, Sexual violence, and Bullying
Moderate: Transphobia and Homophobia
gagne's review
challenging
tense
fast-paced
Content Warnings
Graphic: Violence, Genocide, and War
Moderate: Domestic abuse, Misogyny, and Murder
Minor: Transphobia and Ableism
suggestion of elimination of males (likely male sex), call to violence and murderemmariana97's review
challenging
emotional
reflective
fast-paced
4.0
This manifesto is balls to the wall insane, speeding ahead at 500 miles an hour and chock full of sentences that give you psychological whiplash. THIS book is rage made manifest.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Drug use, Homophobia, Dysphoria, Murder, Violence, Classism, Gaslighting, Physical abuse, Sexism, Mental illness, Emotional abuse, and Cursing
astridrv's review against another edition
challenging
dark
informative
This one is controversial. If you're looking for a calm, composed, respectful analysis of sexism, walk away. This manifest is incendiary, trash, smart, angry, provocative, satirical, relatable, rude, sassy, daring, violent (and also, ableist as fuck). If you used most of these words to describe a book written by a man, I would be unlikely to read it. But Solanas, of course, turns everything on its head in her infamous self published, self distributed manifest of misandry.
I laughed almost every page - because it was irreverent, it spared no punches, because it is not allowed to say things like that or to laugh at sentences like hers. And that alone felt like a catalyst. It made me a bit emotional about how easy it is to find this book now (internet!) and how underground it must have been at the time.
This is not a nuanced and thoughtful critique of a misogynistic world. It is carefully constructed, in its own way, and I resent anyone seeing it as a delirious rant by a traumatized woman. Yes she was traumatized, and yes she is not polite - does that mean her voice and her tone have no value?
It's definitely not a book for everyone, but if it's for you, you'll know by page 1. (CW on murder, ableism and eugenics. Although I know plenty of trans women loved this book, it can be very triggering, including for transmasc people) I wanted to add some quotes here, but I highlighted almost all of the book. Lemme try nonetheless, to give you an idea of the tone of the book:
"In actual fact, the female function is to relate, groove, love and be herself, irreplaceable by anyone else; the male function is to produce sperm. We now have sperm banks."
"Although the male, being ashamed of what he is and almost of everything he does, insists on privacy and secrecy in all aspects of his life, he has no real regard for privacy. Being empty, not being a complete, separate being, having no self to groove on and needing to be constantly in female company, he sees nothing at all wrong in intruding himself on any woman's thoughts, even a total stranger's, anywhere at any time, but rather feels indignant and insulted when put down for doing so, as well as confused - he can't, for the life of him, understand why anyone would prefer so much as one minute of solitude to the company of any creep around. Wanting to become a woman, he strives to be constantly around females, which is the closest he can get to becoming one, so he created a 'society' based upon the family - a male-female couple and their kids (the excuse for the family's existence), who live virtually on top of one another, unscrupulously violating the female's rights, privacy and sanity."
"The male's inability to relate to anybody or anything makes his life pointless and meaningless (the ultimate male insight is that life is absurd), so he invented philosophy and religion. Being empty, he looks outward, not only for guidance and control, but for salvation and for the meaning of life. Happiness being for him impossible on this earth, he invented Heaven. (...) Most men, utterly cowardly, project their inherent weaknesses onto women, label them female weaknesses and believe themselves to have female strengths; most philosophers, not quite so cowardly, face the fact that male lacks exist in men, but still can't face the fact that they exist in men only. So they label the male condition the Human Condition, posit their nothingness problem, which horrifies them, as a philosophical dilemma, thereby giving stature to their animalism, grandiloquently label their nothingness their "Identity Problem" and proceed to prattle on pompously about the "Crisis of the Individual", the "Essence of Being" etc. A woman not only takes her identity and individuality for granted, but knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others, and that the meaning of life is love."
I laughed almost every page - because it was irreverent, it spared no punches, because it is not allowed to say things like that or to laugh at sentences like hers. And that alone felt like a catalyst. It made me a bit emotional about how easy it is to find this book now (internet!) and how underground it must have been at the time.
This is not a nuanced and thoughtful critique of a misogynistic world. It is carefully constructed, in its own way, and I resent anyone seeing it as a delirious rant by a traumatized woman. Yes she was traumatized, and yes she is not polite - does that mean her voice and her tone have no value?
It's definitely not a book for everyone, but if it's for you, you'll know by page 1. (CW on murder, ableism and eugenics. Although I know plenty of trans women loved this book, it can be very triggering, including for transmasc people) I wanted to add some quotes here, but I highlighted almost all of the book. Lemme try nonetheless, to give you an idea of the tone of the book:
"In actual fact, the female function is to relate, groove, love and be herself, irreplaceable by anyone else; the male function is to produce sperm. We now have sperm banks."
"Although the male, being ashamed of what he is and almost of everything he does, insists on privacy and secrecy in all aspects of his life, he has no real regard for privacy. Being empty, not being a complete, separate being, having no self to groove on and needing to be constantly in female company, he sees nothing at all wrong in intruding himself on any woman's thoughts, even a total stranger's, anywhere at any time, but rather feels indignant and insulted when put down for doing so, as well as confused - he can't, for the life of him, understand why anyone would prefer so much as one minute of solitude to the company of any creep around. Wanting to become a woman, he strives to be constantly around females, which is the closest he can get to becoming one, so he created a 'society' based upon the family - a male-female couple and their kids (the excuse for the family's existence), who live virtually on top of one another, unscrupulously violating the female's rights, privacy and sanity."
"The male's inability to relate to anybody or anything makes his life pointless and meaningless (the ultimate male insight is that life is absurd), so he invented philosophy and religion. Being empty, he looks outward, not only for guidance and control, but for salvation and for the meaning of life. Happiness being for him impossible on this earth, he invented Heaven. (...) Most men, utterly cowardly, project their inherent weaknesses onto women, label them female weaknesses and believe themselves to have female strengths; most philosophers, not quite so cowardly, face the fact that male lacks exist in men, but still can't face the fact that they exist in men only. So they label the male condition the Human Condition, posit their nothingness problem, which horrifies them, as a philosophical dilemma, thereby giving stature to their animalism, grandiloquently label their nothingness their "Identity Problem" and proceed to prattle on pompously about the "Crisis of the Individual", the "Essence of Being" etc. A woman not only takes her identity and individuality for granted, but knows instinctively that the only wrong is to hurt others, and that the meaning of life is love."
Content Warnings
Moderate: Ableism, Transphobia, Murder, and Violence
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