SCUM Manifesto?

[Hermes]

This is probably (yet another) ignorant question, but could anyone give me some background on this? Both on the work, and on Solanas? I'm currently reading through it, and I know that as a male I'm... not really the audience, and probably biased. I really can't see much validity to the majority of her points, though.

Am I just reading poorly, or ill-informed, or is this the generally held view?

[Os Cangaceiros]

There's a good wikipedia article about Valerie Solanas.

Background on Solanas? Well, she had a tough life and was mentally ill. No doubt those factors colored her ideological output vis-a-vis "SCUM".

[TheGodlessUtopian]

The wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valerie_Solanas

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The SCUM Manifesto can be read as misandrist, proto-radical feminist nonsense. "Males are bad because of their chromosomes," etc. Or it can be read as satire.

[blake 3:17]

I'd read it as a sort of satire. I can't believe nobody;s mentioned the film I Shot Andy Warhol.

My main criticism of Solanas was not having slightly better aim.

Stewart Home, in his Assault On Culture, describes it as ultra-feminist in the same way that some of the Black Mask quasi-Situ stuff can be read as ultra-Left.

[Hermes]

So it is satire? Reading through that wikipedia article you linked, it doesn't seem like Solanas intended it to be read that way (unless I'm missing the point, of course, I suppose 'dead serious' could still be satire).

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

So it is satire? Reading through that wikipedia article you linked, it doesn't seem like Solanas intended it to be read that way (unless I'm missing the point, of course, I suppose 'dead serious' could still be satire).
Only Solanas really knows what she intended, so I don't think the matter will be settled now.

[Sea]

If the 'manifesto' was written as satire, it was written in very bad taste. I'm surprised that some here have heads too thick to realize even this. Hell, I'm surprised that people on a leftist website are taking that hate seriously. Just because the hatred is coming from the oppressed doesn't give it any validity. Just because she's a she and she wasn't a big fan of patriarchy doesn't mean she should get special treatment.


Only Solanas really knows what she intended, so I don't think the matter will be settled now.Mind you she was very clear that the work was intended to be taken literally.

The fatal flaw in feminism is that the men are blamed, rather than the conditions that both genders are put into from birth. This general idea is what's wrong with all identity politics, in fact.

It's the shallow and childish assumption that the oppressing group is oppressive by some inherent personal quality (maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, whatever) rather than the conditions that both groups are subjected to.

There's a reason us commies harp on about those oh so important material conditions, while liberals sit around the campfire and foolishly blame the big bad white straight male anglo-saxon hate machine. When men are born into positions of control and are encouraged to be controlling and unemotional from birth (to better fulfill their gender role in perpetuating said conditions) and women likewise are taught to be selfless and petty so as to not challenge such conditions, the feminist goes on to exclaim that the evil of men is inherent to maleness, but there is nothing in women that causes them to be weak! Bullshit. There is nothing inherent to either gender that brings such qualities.

How fucking convenient it is that the feminist acknowledges that any "weakness" of the female gender is due to upbringing, but ignores all this for the man and claims him to be horrid and brutish from birth!

edit: I might open up a thread about feminism / identity politics in general.. Or I'll wait for someone else to do it.

[Quail]

The fatal flaw in feminism is that the men are blamed, rather than the conditions that both genders are put into from birth. This general idea is what's wrong with all identity politics, in fact.

Wrong. Feminists don't blame men for the oppression of women, rather the patriarchal values our society promotes which lead to gender roles and the different sets of expectations we're supposed to live up to based on our gender. Certainly men can be sexist on an individual level and it is their responsibility to challenge the sexist values that they may hold, and many women also hold sexist values, but sexism is more structural.



It's the shallow and childish assumption that the oppressing group is oppressive by some inherent personal quality (maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, whatever) rather than the conditions that both groups are subjected to.

Simply being a male doesn't make you some kind of enemy of women, and doesn't automatically make you an oppressor. However, as a male you're playing the game of life on the "easy" setting relative to a woman of similar social standing.


There's a reason us commies harp on about those oh so important material conditions, while liberals sit around the campfire and foolishly blame the big bad white straight male anglo-saxon hate machine. When men are born into positions of control and are encouraged to be controlling and unemotional from birth (to better fulfill their gender role in perpetuating said conditions) and women likewise are taught to be selfless and petty so as to not challenge such conditions, the feminist goes on to exclaim that the evil of men is inherent to maleness, but there is nothing in women that causes them to be weak! Bullshit. There is nothing inherent to either gender that brings such qualities.

I think this is a bit of a straw man. Did anyone actually "sit around the campfire foolishly blaming the big bad white straight male anglo-saxon hate machine" (whatever that means exactly)? I doubt you'll find anyone on this website doing so, and if they do they'll be ripped to shreds. Why would feminists talk about gender as a social construct and aim to abolish patriarchy (i.e. gender roles) if they blamed sexism on men? If sexism was in inherent quality of men, there would be no point in feminism because we wouldn't be able to deconstruct gender roles and stop men from being sexist.


How fucking convenient it is that the feminist acknowledges that any "weakness" of the female gender is due to upbringing, but ignores all this for the man and claims him to be horrid and brutish from birth!
Feminists don't do this though.


edit: I might open up a thread about feminism / identity politics in general.. Or I'll wait for someone else to do it.
Try this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/feminism-and-gay-t176146/index.html) thread.

[l'Enfermé]

It's silly sexist nonsense written by a lunatic. It's really not worth the air wasted talking about it.

[Sea]

Wrong. Feminists don't blame men for the oppression of women, rather the patriarchal values our society promotes which lead to gender roles and the different sets of expectations we're supposed to live up to based on our gender. Certainly men can be sexist on an individual level and it is their responsibility to challenge the sexist values that they may hold, and many women also hold sexist values, but sexism is more structural.

Simply being a male doesn't make you some kind of enemy of women, and doesn't automatically make you an oppressor. However, as a male you're playing the game of life on the "easy" setting relative to a woman of similar social standing.

I think this is a bit of a straw man. Did anyone actually "sit around the campfire foolishly blaming the big bad white straight male anglo-saxon hate machine" (whatever that means exactly)? I doubt you'll find anyone on this website doing so, and if they do they'll be ripped to shreds. Why would feminists talk about gender as a social construct and aim to abolish patriarchy (i.e. gender roles) if they blamed sexism on men? If sexism was in inherent quality of men, there would be no point in feminism because we wouldn't be able to deconstruct gender roles and stop men from being sexist.

Feminists don't do this though.

Try this (http://www.revleft.com/vb/feminism-and-gay-t176146/index.html) thread.*sigh*

Don't take any of that personally, I was tired and pissed off (here I go making excuses again) when I wrote that. It was mainly directed against those feminists with all their edgy fringe and hate-mongering, not all or even most feminists.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

Jesus! What an insane person. I've saw someone talking about this a while back, but I've haven't read about this until now.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

I'm surprised that some here have heads too thick to realize even this.
Was this comment really necessary?

[#FF0000]

*sigh*

Don't take any of that personally, I was tired and pissed off (here I go making excuses again) when I wrote that. It was mainly directed against those feminists with all their edgy fringe and hate-mongering, not all or even most feminists.

idk what you mean by those feminists

[Rugged Collectivist]

idk what you mean by those feminists

I think s/he means ultra feminist weirdos like Solanas.

[Robespierres Neck]

In case anyone is interested in reading it:
http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm

[Yuppie Grinder]

If Solanas is an ultra-feminist, Pol Pot is an ultra-lefist. Her "feminism" boils down to men are bad so shoot them.

[Rugged Collectivist]

If Solanas is an ultra-feminist, Pol Pot is an ultra-lefist. Her "feminism" boils down to men are bad so shoot them.

Point taken. But I didn't know what else to call her.

[Yuppie Grinder]

Mentally ill?

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

Has anyone heard of Cell 16? I saw it while look this up. It's a feminist (magazine/zine?) and it's fairly similar to this. It's about being a celibate and separation from men. It's pretty sad these types of "feminists" exist, they've made people believe man-hating is what feminism is about.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

According to their wiki they only advocated separation from men who were not working for women's liberation, which seems perfectly fine to me. I'm not sure man-hating feminists exist in any meaningful numbers and I don't think the ones that do exist give any ammunition to reactionaries, I think reactionaries just strawman the hell out of very reasonable feminist positions.

[Jesus Saves Gretzky Scores]

According to their wiki they only advocated separation from men who were not working for women's liberation, which seems perfectly fine to me. I'm not sure man-hating feminists exist in any meaningful numbers and I don't think the ones that do exist give any ammunition to reactionaries, I think reactionaries just strawman the hell out of very reasonable feminist positions.

I might have missed that.

[GoddessCleoLover]

SCUM Manifesto was a Sixties' curiosity written by a person suffering from severe psychological illness whole lived a short and troubled life. A sad story.

[Luís Henrique]

The fatal flaw in feminism is that the men are blamed, rather than the conditions that both genders are put into from birth.

Supposing that what Solanas wrote was indeed feminism, which I fear is far from granted.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

It was mainly directed against those feminists

I think you are trying to refer to "radical feminism".

Marxist feminism (or, for what is worth, liberal feminism) have very little in common with such nonsense.

Luís Henrique

[Luís Henrique]

According to their wiki they only advocated separation from men who were not working for women's liberation, which seems perfectly fine to me. I'm not sure man-hating feminists exist in any meaningful numbers and I don't think the ones that do exist give any ammunition to reactionaries, I think reactionaries just strawman the hell out of very reasonable feminist positions.

This is more or less like saying that Maoism Third Worldism or Juche don't exist in meaningful numbers and that those who exist don't give any ammonition to reactionaries.

Granted, reactionaries will strawman everything the can, but it doesn't mean the left is somehow above criticism.

Luís Henrique

[GoddessCleoLover]

Query whether anyone takes the SCUM Manifesto seriously. Perhaps it is just seen as an iconic part of the radical Sixties.

[A Sovereign Womb]

SCUM Manifesto was a Sixties' curiosity written by a person suffering from severe psychological illness whole lived a short and troubled life. A sad story.
This is the worthiest approximation in this thread.

Valerie Solanas was an endlessly brutalized woman who reacted to her situation in the manner with which she was best acquainted - violence and hatred. That this was misdirected toward the male sex in general is unfortunate, but still perfectly understandable considering the circumstances. Despite her extreme errors and problems, she retained a brilliant mind and a strong, tenacious spirit; she was a pioneer of the radical feminist movement (if indeed grossly misguided) as well as in the struggle for homosexual rights. I don't believe she is deserving of our scorn and I'm saddened by some of the responses here. I defy anyone not to break under the strains she bore throughout her life. Moreover, I would argue that her Manifesto has an underlying revolutionary socialist character that cannot be denied. Would you dismiss the aggregate of Malcolm X's career over his more dubious pronouncements?

Her case is a tragedy, not some garish sideshow to be pointed out and sneered at.

[Yazman]

I find it hard to respect somebody who wrote a book advocating the mass killing of all men. It's a good thing Solanas never gathered any real power.

[Luís Henrique]

We should respect everybody, even Valerie Solanas, Glenn Beck or Andreas Breivik.

But that's pretty much of it. Their ideas are reactionary, and can't be used by the working class movement for any end - except of course refuting them.

Luís Henrique

[Noa Rodman]

I intend to write a lengthy refutation.

I could use some help. Eldridge Cleaver wrote an article mentioning Solanas's Manifesto, but it's not available online (dated somewhere in August 1968 in the Berkeley Barb, and reprinted in Play power: exploring the international underground). Can anyone help me access Cleaver's article? I don't have much hope that Cleaver had refuted her well though.

I find her mentioned in Mailer's Prisoner of Sex, but Mailer's text reads just like a ramble without point.

So I think it's up to me to write a critique of the SCUM manifesto.

[Quail]

I intend to write a lengthy refutation.

...

So I think it's up to me to write a critique of the SCUM manifesto.
A refutation/critique in what sense?

I actually quite like it, in that it draws attention to the sexist way in which women were commonly described by describing men in a similar way. Flipping oppressive stereotypes is quite a good way of drawing attention to them and making them seem as outrageous as they are. At the time the SCUM manifesto was written, similar things were being written about women all the time (see things like advertising, etc.).

[RedBen]

It's the shallow and childish assumption that the oppressing group is oppressive by some inherent personal quality (maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, whatever) rather than the conditions that both groups are subjected to.

There's a reason us commies harp on about those oh so important material conditions There is nothing inherent to either gender that brings such qualities.
This. i like to think i can call bullshit when i smell it, no matter who is flinging it.... but i have gotten into more arguments about nature vs nurture, race vs race or sex vs sex. i think what is tragic about the battle of the sexes is that both are human with human emotion. both have instincts, emotions, passions, drives, and i think that most of them are manufactured by society. men and women need to see eachother as people before a sexual opponent.

[The Garbage Disposal Unit]

The fatal flaw in feminism is that the men are blamed, rather than the conditions that both genders are put into from birth. This general idea is what's wrong with all identity politics, in fact.

It's the shallow and childish assumption that the oppressing group is oppressive by some inherent personal quality (maleness, whiteness, heterosexuality, whatever) rather than the conditions that both groups are subjected to.

There's a reason us commies harp on about those oh so important material conditions, while liberals sit around the campfire and foolishly blame the big bad white straight male anglo-saxon hate machine. When men are born into positions of control and are encouraged to be controlling and unemotional from birth (to better fulfill their gender role in perpetuating said conditions) and women likewise are taught to be selfless and petty so as to not challenge such conditions, the feminist goes on to exclaim that the evil of men is inherent to maleness, but there is nothing in women that causes them to be weak! Bullshit. There is nothing inherent to either gender that brings such qualities.

Where there is some ironic idealism. From whence came the conditions? Is patriarchy some sort of Spirit of the Age? Divorced from its real practice?
Hell, after all, the bourgeoisie are by in large born into their positions of ownership . . . and their poor cops were raised in conditions that made them cops. Pity the deformation their blessed souls suffered here in the sinful capitalist metropolis!

Just as overthrowing capitalism is going to inevitably mean stringing up (many) capitalists and their lackeys, overthrowing patriarchy is going to mean killing (many) men. Get over it.

[blake 3:17]

I'll say it again more clearly: Wished she'd had better aim.

[Noa Rodman]

A refutation/critique in what sense?

I actually quite like it, in that it draws attention to the sexist way in which women were commonly described by describing men in a similar way.

I think it's more serious than that. I'd critique it in the sense that capitalism is doing SCUM's work (destroying males), which eg also Badiou sees, and he warns against a certain (pro-capitalist) image of women (in French: WrztvUrUoXI). So as a simple attack, I'd try to paint Solanas's manifesto as nonetheless pro-capitalist (in short). A second point is to try to overcome the classical problem of (male) masochism.

Since I collected a ton of literature references I will find a way to throw them in as well.

[Noa Rodman]

Notes to the SCUM Manifesto. http://www.womynkind.org/scum.htm (that text has some errors)

http://2.images.spike.com/images/massives/2011/Bruce-Lee-8ETD.jpg?quality=0.91


“However loudly personal interests and prejudices may rebel against it, the labor of women presses itself forward more and more into the various professional pursuits. It is not vanity, nor forwardness nor arrogance, but the force of economic development that drives women to labor in these as well as in other fields of human activity.”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky ... t/ch02.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1892/erfurt/ch02.htm)


“The division of labour, which is here [Birmingham] carried out to the last detail (in the needle industry, for example), and the use of steam-power, admit of the employment of a great multitude of women and children, and we find here precisely the same features reappearing which the Factories' Report presented, – the work of women up to the hour of confinement, incapacity as housekeepers, neglect of home and children, indifference, actual dislike to family life, and demoralisation; further, the crowding out of men from employment, the constant improvement of machinery, early emancipation of children, husbands supported by their wives and children, etc., etc.”

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch09.htm (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/condition-working-class/ch09.htm)

Yet in her manifesto Solanas doesn't speak of capital or of the capitalist mode of production (it's not a treatise on political economy, but still). Apropos the prospect of curing all diseases she writes that this “will not occur with the male establishment because: [...] 5. Lack of automation. There now exists a wealth of data which, if sorted out and correlated, would reveal the cure for cancer and several other diseases and possibly the key to life itself. But the data is so massive it requires high speed computers to correlate it all. The institution of computers will be delayed interminably under the male control system, since the male has a horror of being replaced by machines.”
(Of course if capitalists don't update their technology it's not because of any male horror of being replaced by machines.) Meanwhile the “male establishment” or the “male control system” has witnessed the institution of high speed computers.

“The elimination of money and the complete institution of automation are basic to all other SCUM reforms; without these two the others can't take place; with them the others will take place very rapidly.” It can also be argued that money as such no longer exists (with the rise of a system of state-slavery, disconnected from gold). Thus a highly automated mode of production without money by itself does yet not amount to communism (a term which Solanas also doesn't use). This means that the SCUM reforms could already be taking place.
She does write that: “There's no reason why a society [consisting of females] should have a government, laws or leaders.” However thereby the existence of these structures in the present ends up getting justified by appeal to the (here only) “male nature”. The problem with government and laws (why doesn't she say the State?) for Solanas seems just to be that men thereby “usurp” woman's “function as Guider and Protector” (“wanting to play Woman”). For Solanas it is the male who wants “the female (Mama) to guide him”. The usage of laws etc., if they are created by the female, against the male seems okay for Solanas. Thus even without a fully female society she proclaims:


“Prior to the institution of automation, to the replacement of males by machines, the male should be of use to the female, wait on her, cater to her slightest whim, obey her every command, be totally subservient to her, exist in perfect obedience to her will, as opposed to the completely warped, degenerate situation we have now of men not only not existing at all, cluttering up the world with their ignominious presence, but being pandered to and groveled before by the mass of females, millions of women piously worshiping the Golden Calf, the dog leading the master on a leash, when in fact the male, short of being a drag queen, is least miserable when his dogginess is recognized -- no unrealistic emotional demands are made of him and the completely together female is calling the shots. Rational men want to be squashed, stepped on, crushed and crunched, treated as the curs, the filth that they are, have their repulsiveness confirmed.”


And who will do this squashing, stepping on, etc. if not the “government”, composed of women and their helpers? I'll return to this and the issue of money.

The second question is; is it the case that “rational” men want to be treated as filth? If SCUM stands for 'Society for Cutting Up Men', it recalls the literal (masochistic) cutting in Mishima's novel House of Kyoko (depicted in A Life in Four Chapters http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmwi8ryuMQA) and Mishima's own death by seppuku (Roy Starrs's Deadly Dialectics: Sex, Violence, and Nihilism in the World of Yukio Mishima).

In support of Solanas let's further quote The Worth of Women: Wherein Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men (1600, Moderata Fonte):


“Just think,” said Corinna, “if men could have heard what we've been saying about them, how many much worse things they'd say about us in return. Because men will never put up being outdone in malice (though it hardly counts as malice on our part to speak the truth).”
“They'd probably write some contemptuous book about women as a reply,” said Lucretia.
“Oh, they wouldn't be doing anything they haven't already done a thousand times,” said Corinna. “I can tell you, men haven't been sitting around waiting for us to attack them.”
“Yes, we can hardly aspire to come up with anything as old and tired as those arguments they keep churning out against us, without a shred of truth in them,” said Leonora.
“Oh, as to that,” said Corinna, “let them go ahead and keep conjuring up these groundless chimeras and fantasies, which aren't worth the paper they're written on and which I'm certainly not going to bother reading. But that kind of pigheadedness just brings shame on them, not honor, and it's not something to be taken seriously, especially since what's behind it all is obviously just the great envy they feel for women (which is also, as I was saying earlier, the explanation for why they can't bring themselves to love us sincerely).”

By the way, manhood also suffers under pollution, cf. The Disappearing Male http://vimeo.com/15346778. There is a serious issue with the water system after toxic impact of the contraceptive pill: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2 ... ptive-pill (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/jun/02/water-system-toxic-contraceptive-pill) This is discussed in the EU http://www.neurope.eu/article/political ... -chemicals (http://www.neurope.eu/article/political-solution-endocrine-disrupting-chemicals) And the biological damage happens not only among males of the human species (cf. State of the science of endocrine disrupting chemicals – 2012 http://www.who.int/ceh/publications/end ... index.html (http://www.who.int/ceh/publications/endocrine/en/index.html)). This is by the way.


Let's hear Solanas's description of man: “[...] males are emotional cripples. The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, of love, friendship, affection or tenderness. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations.”


This is like a description of autism, a concept developed by Bleuler (http://archive.org/stream/theoryofschizoph00bleu#page/19/mode/1up/) and which was indeed derived from Freud's autoeroticism, who took this from Havelock Ellis (http://archive.org/stream/philosophyconfl00elligoog#page/n207/mode/1up, see Studies in the Psychology of Sexvolume I (http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/e#a2654). In 1928 Havelock Ellis added a 7th volume (which is not online) of his Studies in the Psychology of Sex: Eonism and other supplementary studies. Also cf. An autistic completeness, in Irigaray's Speculum of the Other Woman.

Further support; the point that late capitalist subjectivity takes the form of escape into the self (see the chapter Inner Life and Something about Goethe, here: http://www.leninist.biz/en/1983/MPA295/ ). And as Julius Evola writes in The Metaphysics of Sex (Eros and the Mysteries of Love, 1958): “Nowadays sex has, to quite an extent, permeated the psychic field and caused a constant, insistent gravitation toward woman and love. Thus we have [...] a widespread and chronic excitement, almost independent of every concrete, physical satisfaction because it persists as psychic excitement; and second, partly as an outcome of the first characteristic, this sensualism can even coexist with apparent chastity. [...] The natural counterpart of this universal feverishness is gynocracy, that tacit preeminence of everything conditioned directly or indirectly by the female element; in another book, too, I have indicated the varieties of recourse to the female element in our civilization (Revolt Against the Modern World: Politics, Religion, and Social Order in the Kali Yuga).”

Solanas continues: “He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings -- hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt -- and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn't.”

In support let's quote Steven Connor from The Shame of Being a Man
http://www.stevenconnor.com/shame/:
“Male shame operates without models or objects. This may be one of the reasons for the energetic production of consensual male narcissism to match that of women. Without the projection and internalisation of narcissistic ideals, the intensity of shame being undergone by men would be quite unbearable. (But it is you see.) To be ashamed of oneself without a regulatory ideal, or sense of a standard from which one has fallen short, for that kind of unorientated self-disgust to prosper, would be dangerous indeed. In one sense, a strong pedagogy of the masculine such as we have today - with all these tips on male grooming, emotional literacy schemes, encouragement to new forms of citizenship, the conduct manuals of women's magazines, men's magazines, and, far from least, masculinity studies - multiplies the opportunities for regulatory shame of the kind traditionally directed at women. It thus gives a containing shape and coating to shame, allowing shame to become savingly attached to men's actions or omissions and then their making good, rather than their being. It serves the purposes of masochism, and is enlisted (unavailingly) against the true, quivering, speechless shame of the dog's body.”Solanas does well not to bother with anthropological references (cf. Cynthia Eller's“The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory: Why An Invented Past Will Not Give Women a Future”, and “Gentlemen and Amazons: The Myth of Matriarchal Prehistory, 1861–1900”), unlike many socialists, eg Lafargue, who relied on myth analysis (approved by Engels: http://www.marxists.org/deutsch/archiv/lafargue/1891/07/adam-eva.htm#n1)

About couvade Lafargue sounds almost like Solanas: “L'homme, le plus cruel et le plus grotesque des animaux, travestit parfois les phénomènes sociaux les plus considérables en des cérémonies les plus ridicules. La couvade est une des supercheries qu'employa l'homme pour déposséder la femme de ses biens et de son rang. La parturition proclamait le droit supérieur de la femme dans la famille : l'homme parodia l'enfantement pour se convaincre qu'il était bien le faiseur de l'enfant. La famille patriarcale fit son entrée dans le monde escortée par la discorde, le crime et la farce dégradante.” http://www.marxists.org/francais/lafargue/works/1886/10/matriarcat.htm (http://www.marxists.org/francais/lafargue/works/1886/10/matriarcat.htm)


On the idea of matriarchal primitive society, it was not only crazy ol' Belfort Bax who was suspicious, not being convinced by Bebel or Engels (although Bax's disagreement with them focused on English law: http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1896/11/proletarian-home.htm). It was Kautsky who also argued against Bachofen(Bd. 1. Natur und Gesellschaft, p. 317-319 http://archive.org/details/DieMaterialistischeGeschichtsauffassung). But they were a minority AFAIK. Even Lester Ward's gynaecocentric theory (summarized here; http://www.marxists.org/archive/montefiore/1920/xx/race.htm)could find support among socialists, like Dora Montefiore http://marxists.org/archive/montefiore/1909/xx/justice.htm#09-04 (again, Bax's respone:http://marxists.org/archive/bax/1909/09/interpret.htm).


The only note from Lafargue that could be of use against Solanas (but in a way again confirms her) is the following: “Auguste Comte prédisait la formation d'une race supérieure de femmes, débarrassées de la gestation et de la parturition. La courtisane réalise en effet l'idéal du bourgeois philosophe.” http://www.marxists.org/francais/lafargue/works/1886/02/religion3.htm (it's difficult to find where this would be in Comte, perhaps;http://archive.org/stream/catchismeposit00comt#page/276/mode/2up)

After these quotes on male shame and envy, let's return to Solanas's position towards the government and money. To be clear, she does say that both must be abolished: “The elimination of money and the complete institution of automation are basic to all other SCUM reforms... The government will automatically collapse. With complete automation it will be possible for every woman to vote directly on every issue by means of an electronic voting machine in her house.Since the government is occupied almost entirely with regulating economic affairs and legislating against purely private matters, the elimination of money ... will mean there will be practically no issues to vote on. After the elimination of money there will be no further need to kill men; they will be stripped of the only power they have over psychologically independent females.”


It's not clear how the government (again, does she not rather mean state?) will automatically collapse. Is it due to the elimination of money? This could still be state-slavery. Or is it due to the electronic voting machine? This is conceivable within today's system. Or is it due to there being practically no issues to vote on? That could correspond with a technocratic government. Anyway, there is no mention of socializing the means of production, abolishing classes. Money should be eliminated just for the reason that it strips the power of men over females. Man, a non-human, is said to be responsible for the existence of money. Even if you'd put capitalist everywhere instead of man (and proletarian instead of woman) the Scum manifesto still wouldn't be a socialist critique. Yes, everyone can agree that there is a lack of opportunity for emotionally satisfying, meaningful activity, that war is bad, money is bad, suburbs, conformity, lack of privacy, etc. all suck. But blaming the capitalist class for this, instead of the males, still doesn't constitute critique:


“To prevent possible misunderstanding, a word. I paint the capitalist and the landlord in no sense couleur de rose . But here individuals are dealt with only in so far as they are the personifications of economic categories, embodiments of particular class-relations and class-interests. My standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the individual responsible for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them.” (Marx)

For now, here's a concluding word of Plekhanov:


“[...]It may be said with full conviction that the tendency on the part of man to distinguish himself from women appears earlier than the inclination to consider himself superior to the lower animals. Is it not true that in this instance the basic characteristics of the psychological nature of man are expressed in a rather paradoxical manner?” http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1899/arts.htm#n34 (http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1899/arts.htm#n34)







A list of other possibly interesting writings:


Alain Badiou: Le malaise des fils dans la civilisation contemporaine, in Anthropologie de la guerre (similar lecture; http://le-voyage-a-geneve.over-blog.com/article-badiou-sur-les-fils-et-les-filles-70312383.html ).

Bruno Bettelheim: Symbolic wounds; puberty rites and the envious male.

Eldridge Cleaver: “An age-old female weapon has been revived with a new name: pussy-power. Some of its manifestations recall the aura of suffragette days, others are psychotically 20th century, like SCUM (The Society for Cutting Up Men) created by Valerie Solanas, who began by cutting up Andy Warhol. Her manifesto asserts what is...” (this is all what google preview shows from an article in Berkeley Barb August 1968, reprinted in “Play power: exploring the international underground”). “You have the power to bring a squeaking halt to a lot of things that are going on, and we call that pussy power. We say that political power, revolution power grows out of the lips of a pussy.” (Post-prison Writings and Speeches, 1969, p. 143)

Hedwig Dohm: Die Antifeministen http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Dohm, (http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Dohm,+Hedwig/Essays/Die+Antifeministen)+Hedwig/Essays/Die+Antifeministen (http://www.zeno.org/Literatur/M/Dohm,+Hedwig/Essays/Die+Antifeministen)

The[I] Encyclopédie – 3 entries on Woman:

Antoine-Gaspard Boucher d'Argis
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx? (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0 000.288)c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did22 22.0000.288 (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0 000.288)
Joseph-François-Édouard de Corsembleu de Desmahis
http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx? (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0 000.287)c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did22 22.0000.287 (http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0 000.287)
Paul-Joseph Barthez http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/text-idx?c=did;cc=did;rgn=main;view=text;idno=did2222.0 000.181

Susan Faludi: Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (+ a dismissal by Christina Hoff Sommers: http://www.unz.org/Pub/WomensQuarterly-1999q4-00004)


David Greven: Manhood in Hollywood from Bush to Bush.

Sarah Kofman (/Penelope Deutscher's essay in Sarah Kofman's Corpus): - Aberrations:Le devenir femme d'Auguste Comte.
- Le respect des femmes (Kant et Rousseau).
- The Enigma of Woman: Woman in Freud's Writings.

Vivian Liska: Die Moderne - ein Weib. Am Beispiel von Romanen Ricarda Huchs und Annette Kolbs
R. B. Tobias, Mary E. Marcy: Women As Sex Vendors. (referenced by Bax) http://www.gutenberg.org/files/28050/28050-h/28050-h.htm

Michael Meloy: Sex Fiends of the Fifties: Intersections of Violence, Sexuality, and Masculinity in the Work of Norman Mailer, William Styron, and Ken Kesey.

No More Fun and Games, A Journal of Female Liberation http://www.greenlion.com/NMFG/nmfg.html

Pelloutier: La Femme dans la Société moderne. http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k58146772/f296

Mark Poster: Critical theory of the family.http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/CTF/ (http://www.hnet.uci.edu/mposter/CTF/)

Rousseau on Women, Love, and Family. http://books.google.com/books?id=SzoIjvU_-d0C [

Sacher-Masoch: Die Republik der Weiberfeinde. http://archive.org/details/dierepublikderw00sachgoog

Joannès Sagnol: L'Égalité des sexes (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5823055c/f690 (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k5823055c/f690.image.r=La%20Revue%20socialiste.langFR) et http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k58146705/f85 (http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k58146705/f85.image.r=La%20Revue%20socialiste.langFR) )

Isabelle Stauffer: Weibliche Dandys, blickmächtige Femmes fragiles: Ironische Inszenierungen des Geschlechts im Fin de Siècle

On Otto Weininger: - Ladislaus Gumplowicz: Polemisches zur Frauenfrage.http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/digisomo.pl? (http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/digisomo.pl?id=03807&dok=1904/1904_11&f=1904_0901&l=1904_0913)id=03807&dok=1904/1904_11&f=1904_0901&l=1904_0913 (http://library.fes.de/cgi-bin/digisomo.pl?id=03807&dok=1904/1904_11&f=1904_0901&l=1904_0913)

- Oskar Baum's essay on him in Juden in der deutschen Literatur; Essays über zeitgenössische Schriftsteller. http://archive.org/details/judeninderdeutsc00krojuoft

Éric Zemmour: Le Premier Sexe.



Articles in The American Mercury:

Emancipating the American Male http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1938may-00044

The Brides of Marx http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1938may-00011

Sex Differences http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1938dec-00444

The Miserable Male http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1948nov-00537

Women Have Nothing to Kick About http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1949apr-00400

The Bisexual American Woman http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1950mar-00279

American Women vs. the Next Kinsey Report http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1953aug-0012

I Surrender, Dear! http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1956jun-00011 (http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1956jun-00011)

TV Makes a Fool Out of Dad http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmMercury-1957feb-00035

[Noa Rodman]

It's not like my notes above are the end of discussion, they just try to work through the manifesto.

I feel that my first objection (that SCUM is compatible with capitalist authoritarianism) is rather weak. She does list the discontents of capitalism. In the best case, it even seems that Solanas is hiding behind Wom. Lib. (and blaming man) as a screen, as an additional quirk to make for a witty original text, to attract attention for her real goal, socialism (but which is boring): "What will liberate women, therefore, from male control is the total elimination of the money-work system, not the attainment of economic equality with men within it."

My second objection (that man is not ashamed of being man and envious of woman) is even more difficult to make. If you just go by love songs (eg Billy Joel's She always a woman) it's difficult to deny that man's life (proletarian and capitalist alike) revolves around woman (this is extremely the case for Eldridge Cleaver, see his Soul on Ice). Life is such a misery in capitalism, that love is deified. And it seems that what Solanas proposes to women (to at least downplay the importance of sex) can be proposed to everyone (in the USSR eg this was done by Aron Zalkind).

[blake 3:17]

Very weird cool! That is an extra compliment in my world. Not sure I get it, but that's okay.

Never thought of Mishima in relation to Solanas. There was an art or literary journalist here who committed an honour based hari kari suicide I think because of plagiarism. A relatively small social infraction, but one that involved loss of meaning/self.

[blake 3:17]

And Lafargue is dopeness

[Tam Istmat]

Solanas withwas crimminally insane she was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic she called for women to overhrow the government and destroy the male sex.

[blake 3:17]

Wish she'd had better aim.

[Bea Arthur]

Solanas was a brilliant writer. The manifesto was a parody skewering the widespread misogyny she witnessed first hand. People who cannot understand this obvious fact about her manifesto don't have the first clue about sexism and how to fight it because they cannot see the intimate connections between what Solanas writes and the reality of the sexist social order she was fighting.

[Noa Rodman]

Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge registers the same change:

"Faded blue jeans and desert boots completed the costume, and--as I have already noted--it is costumes that the young men now wear as they act out their simpleminded roles, hopefully constructing a fantasy world in order to avoid confronting the fact that to be a man in a society of machines is to be an expendable, soft auxiliary to what is useful and hard. Today there is nothing left for the old-fashioned male to do, no ritual testing of his manhood through initiation or personal contest, no physical struggle to survive or mate. Nothing is left him but to put on clothes reminiscent of a different time; only in travesty can he act out the classic hero who was a law unto himself, moving at ease through a landscape filled with admiring women. Mercifully, that age is finished. Marlon Brando was the last of the traditional heroes and, significantly, even he was invariably beaten up in the last reel, victim of a society that has no place for the ancient ideal of manhood. Since Brando, there has been nothing except the epicene O'Toole, the distracted Mastroianni, and the cheerfully incompetent Belmondo. The roof has fallen in on the male and we now live at the dawn of the age of Woman Triumphant, of Myra Breckinridge!"

The movie version is pretty loyal to the book.

Vidal mentions Karen Horney, who in 1926 (http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/1927-00096-001)wrote 'The flight from womanhood: the masculinity-complex in women, as viewed by men and by women.':

"An attempt to correct the current psychoanalytical picture of feminine development, which is stated to be exactly that which the boy typically makes of the girl in a masculine civilization. The man's envy of motherhood has been undervalued. It is easier for the man to sublimate this desire than for the woman to sublimate her wish to play man's sexual role. Man's envy leads to depreciation of woman and over-compensation along culturally creative paths."

Also I would be interested to read 'Myra & Gore: a new view of Myra Breckinridge and a candid interview with Gore Vidal: a book for Vidalophiles' (1974).

I do think that feminist writers have over-estimated the potential for peace/harmony through women liberation, voting rights etc (eg in 1913 Jean Finot (http://archive.org/stream/problemsofsexes00fino#page/392/mode/2up)*). The idea is not even radical or subversive. For instance Wonder Woman, created by William Moulton Marston, brings the idea to mainstream culture (at the time it could not avoid serving the function of anti-nazi propaganda, thus the woman-peacebringer idea served war propaganda - though I'm not saying that's the only role Wonder Woman was created for).

*another example is Pierre Bonnier. (a quote in a review (http://archive.org/stream/jstor-2763224/2763224_djvu.txt)of his Sexualisme): "In body and mind woman is a higher, less animal type than man, a more creative thinker, a greater contributor to the higher forms of human life. She is the truly social being."

[brawler5k2]

I intend to write a lengthy refutation.

I could use some help. Eldridge Cleaver wrote an article mentioning Solanas's Manifesto, but it's not available online (dated somewhere in August 1968 in the Berkeley Barb, and reprinted in Play power: exploring the international underground). Can anyone help me access Cleaver's article? I don't have much hope that Cleaver had refuted her well though.

I find her mentioned in Mailer's Prisoner of Sex, but Mailer's text reads just like a ramble without point.

So I think it's up to me to write a critique of the SCUM manifesto.

Sorry if bumping a thread this old is inappropriate on this forum, but I actually have a link to share:

itsabouttimebpp (dot) com/underground_news/underground_news_index (dot) html

Has some of the old Berkeley Barb newspapers link, but only one from August 1968. Although that edition has some stuff by Cleaver, it doesn't seem as if it has any pertinence to Solanas. But there's some other editions of the newspapers on that link, so maybe one of them has some information pertinent to that interest.

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

The SCUM Manifesto can be read as misandrist, proto-radical feminist nonsense. "Males are bad because of their chromosomes," etc. Or it can be read as satire.

The word misandrist is a dumb word made up by MRA assholes, but other than that word pretty much. It is dumb but part of me kinda likes some of the ideas behind it. But yeah, its mostly bullshit. Fuckin' TERFs are dumb, IMO, not inherently because of the separatism but because of how they define what makes people men and what makes people womyn.

[Danielle Ni Dhighe]

The word misandrist is a dumb word made up by MRA assholes
The word misandry is attested to as early as 1871, and it and derivative words have an understood meaning. MRAs blatantly misuse the word, but that doesn't mean the word is inherently bad.


womyn.
:rolleyes:

[Bad Grrrl Agro]

:rolleyes:

:tt2:

[Sentinel]

Please do not necro old threads, start a new one instead. People may not realise how old it is and answer users no longer posting here, or ones whose views have since changed/developed.

Thread closed.