idolizing wednesday: Valerie Solanas

A witty, sarcastic, insightful and important book, The SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas is one of the texts that have had a great impact on my thinking. It is not a book eager to please and it is not a book that is easy to digest. It doesn't contain blueprints for anything, yet the message is clear. This world is fucked up, because we fucked it up.


In the preface of Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche writes that an attempt to understand his philosophy, his aphoristic style, can be compared to the rumination of cows. "Of course, in order to practice this style of reading as an art, one thing is above all essential—something that today has been thoroughly forgotten (and so it will require still more time before my writings are “readable”)—something for which one almost needs to be a cow, at any rate not a modern man—rumination." I think this can be said of The SCUM Manifesto as well. You need a good stomach.


Solanas' text is packed with disclosure. It is written from the perspective of rage and this is an essential aspect to keep in mind when reading it.
On a general level it can be said that some things are revealed only from a perspective of anger or rage. It is unclear what it would mean to fight for justice if injustices and cruelty would never anger us. The concept of "injustice" and "cruelty" are related to particular responses, but this is not a psychological point about human inclinations. (There is a huge discussion about this in post-wittgensteinian philosophy, but I won't go into that now.)
It's Ok for some to be angry, for others - less so.

Glorified male anger. "Angry young men". Testosterone. Males waging their just, lonesome wars (accompanied by a squaking guitar, a car, a dog or a bottle of Jack Daniel's.) Male anger and the dark secrets of Humanity. Existentialism.
Feminist anger is reduced to female hysteria. Silly PMS women who don't know their place in the world yet. (They will learn, or will be forced to learn.) Have you considered a visit at the psychiatrist's, dear? There are pills for those hormones, babe. Why don't you sit down at the negotiation table instead, be a man, be a consultant! Why don't you write a tract in the footsteps of Rawls, disentagling the conceptual links between justice and liberalism? Or write a love story, a simple love story. A little empathy, becoming for each woman. Why don't you calm down? Don't be so aggressive. A hobby would be good for you. Or a boyfriend.