A review by colinlievens
SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas

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. 
 
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