Scum Manifesto

Like some of the other reviewers, I treated Solanas' work light-heartedly. In some ways, it felt like the only way that you could read it! There is certainly no lack of logical fallacies and unvalidated assertions, nor could I see any sort of authentic argument at all. However, the reason I give this 5 stars, and I've titled this review "Unfortunately Necessary Reading," is what I learned about Valerie Solanas in the short bio following the manifesto. This book BROKE MY HEART. And I hope it breaks yours too. I went from having had an enjoyable read to tears. Her life must have been so full of misery and utter loneliness! Convinced of and advocating for such a misguided cause, beaten, abused, and used by the men she loved the most, and to top it all off, the end to her life as cruel and barbarous as could ever be designed. . . This isn't the SCUM Manifesto, this is one of the most honest exposés on the destruction of a fragile human being who was never loved by any one. I'm not a feminist nor a conservative, and I think attempts to understand it or critisize it from any political ideology are missing the larger point on compassion and reaching out to those in need. Please read it. Buy it for that matter.

The SCUM Manifesto is a brilliant work. Valerie Solanas, in forty or so swift pages, answers intelligently, cogently, and, most important, passionately 2000 years of misogynist writings which comprise the majority of the western history canon. She emulates both the rhetorical and the rational argumentative styles of all of the great men of history who have had far worse things than what is in SCUM to say about women. Lest we not forget: Aristotle: Women are Mutilated Men, Plato: Women are halfway between man and beast, Kant: Women should not be moral agents, Nietszche: Women, at best, are cows, Freud: Women can be understood completely in terms of the penis they lack. This list barely scrathces the surface of some of the horrible, awful things our most revered figures of history have had to say about women. When read against this background, the SCUM Manifesto no longer seems to be a frivolous, hateful call to violence, but rather an intelligent, thoughtful reflection on the unfortunate relationship between women and western history. Again, it is an unquestionably brilliant work which should be read and re-read by any serious scholar of history, philosophy, political science, gender studies and by all educated people; it is an instant contemporary classic!