Scum Manifesto

Rating:
Summary: A protest against sexual stereotypes and passive acceptance
Review: To fully understand Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto, we must place it into historical context. It is not a violent attack against men, per se, much like a black man's raging indictment against slavery and bigotry isn't strictly against all whites. No, within the context of history, it is a scream of protest against those men who have affected her the most, the kind of men who were most vocally in charge at the time and who are still vying for power now, the kind of men who are "incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, of love, friendship, affection, or tenderness." It would be a disservice to evoke the oft-used derogatory term "red-neck" since this is a mere substitution of one generic term, "man", with another. A more appropriate phrase would be "a stereotype of man"--a stereotype enforced by the media and by society. To use Solanas' own words, society "tells the boy, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, to not be a sissy, to act like a 'Man'". Keeping this stereotype of what a man should be in mind, much of what Solanas writes fits into place. Men definitely are not from Mars and women definitely are not from Venus, but they are made to think that they are.*

However, this doesn't necessarily mean that everything she writes is true (e.g. "the problems of aging and death could be solved within a few years, if an all-out, massive scientific assault were made on the problem"). Like all observational pieces, it has its faults. And of course there's the final solution which at worst seeks to ignite a full-scale revolt against the status quo and at best seeks to engender a non-passive resistance against it.

Be as it may, it cannot be ignored that this is one of the first works to address these issues, albeit broadly, and it is important in that regard.

Read with a grain of salt.

Footnote:
*See page 40 for a "few examples of the most obnoxious or harmful types" which include politicians, the advertising industry, and clinical psychologists.

Rating:
Summary: dont take it serious
Review: when I read this book I laughed, obviously I dont agree with her views, and many ie the X is a deformed y is obviously scientifically incorrect. If this was an upstanding citizen with a middle class family, I would not buy the book, as I would then consider it possibly socailly unacceptable, or at least tasteless. If it was to be serious, I could not see it that way I saw it as a very funny book by a delusional girl who was possibly pathological who just wanted to put a reason and blame to her life. Do I believe this is a harmful book in a sense of someone doing something wrong because of this book, absolutley not. her views are not believable and She is not credible. This was also not a women who went around hunting men, and destroying them, no one could follow her as she wasn't a killer let alone a serial one. The only one she ever shot was Andy Warhol and it was not because He was a man, it was because he brushed her off and would not publish her scripts, she was paranoid. again, a funny short, easy to read book, for those who dont take things to seriously.