Valerie Solanas' S.C.U.M. Manifesto

The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone.

Ehh, herself, guys she's known. The extrapolation of one's very specific and rarefied personal experience to represent all human experience. Always tiresome. =)

The extrapolation of one's very specific and rarefied personal experience to represent all human experience. Always tiresome. =)

Yep. And as online Whedonverse fans, we've seen quite a bit of that, haven't we?

I would never argue for Valerie Solanas as a paragon of sanity, or as a particularly insightful observer of gender relations. She is, however, tremendously funny. I have friends who love to read rants of all kinds (religious, conspiratorial, etc). I can never get through the damn things. But the SCUM Manifesto is hilarious. Try the opening line:

"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 destroy the male sex.

This is not a critique of patriarchy or capitalism. It's not just a scream, either. The SCUM Manifesto is not an hysterical outpouring of emotion. It's a work of fantasy -- shorter and funnier than The Female Man (although not a fraction as smart). An attempt to imagine a world more free and less boring. Not a work of politics -- a poem.

I read it about a year ago and my memory on it isn't perfect, but it seemed to me that every time she was saying 'men are women and women are men' (or however it went) she was really saying that she wished that she was a man.

The Transrationalist Manifesto

I have created my response to the SCUM Manifesto in my own manifesto, called the Transrationalist Manifesto.

Re: The Transrationalist Manifesto

Bwahahahah! That's the best response there probably could be.

Hi also to wanderingaengus; is your avatar a pencil drawing of Will Ferrel? Well, anyway... who knows why we find different things funny? I laugh my ass off when I hear Wesley Willis atonally singing "I whupped Batman's ASS!" over and over, but I know other people may not find it funny. And I don't find SCUM funny.* Except for the parts that are probably unintentionally hilarious. On the other hand, I don't find it very threatening either, because it's too over-the-top to take seriously.

Did Solanas herself intend it to be taken seriously? Hard to say... I recall reading that she claimed that it was satirical, but that's rather undercut by the fact that she seemed to be putting the essay's recommendation into practice herself.

Hi also to the anonymous person. That's another way of looking at it; that she both despised and envied the men who held most of the power in her society. A lot of the essay works on inversion; taking terms that men commonly used to describe themselves (logical, responsible) as well as those they used to describe women (animalistic, undifferentiated, etc) and simply turning them on their head. In the hands of someone with more coherent thought processes this might've worked, but in SCUM it seems more like schoolyard taunting (no, you're the stupidhead!) than anything else.

(I've just re-read the section in which it describes the way that every boy wants to "fuse" with his mother... there's something really, really funny about a crazy misandrist regurgitating Freud whole. =) )