B.tch Book Club

Tis the season to violently overthrow not just the patriarchy, but the entire male sex, no?

I said I was going radical for the holidays, and Valerie Solanas’ SCUM Manifesto delivers. Referring to men as “walking abortions,” Solanas is not afraid to throw acid at our feelings. It’s a short, 44-page, spit-in-your-face, punch-you-in-the-junk read and I can’t wait! Needless to say, this may bristle the hairs for some of you, but whether we see it as just revenge sci-fi porn or a seminal anarcho-feminist treatise for our ever-gelatinous capitalist patriarchal society, it’ll definitely give us something to talk about!

“Outrageous and violent, SCUM Manifesto was widely lambasted when it first appeared in 1968. Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy Warhol, self-published the book just before she became a notorious household name and was confined to a mental institution. But for all its vitriol, it is impossible to dismiss as the mere rantings of a lesbian lunatic. In fact, the work has proved prescient, not only as a radical feminist analysis light years ahead of its time—predicting artificial insemination, ATMs, a feminist uprising against underrepresentation in the arts—but also as a stunning testament to the rage of an abused and destitute woman.”
— Verso books

“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”

“The male claim that females find fulfillment through motherhood and sexuality reflects what males think they'd find fulfilling if they were female.”

“Sex is the refuge of the mindless. And the more
mindless the woman, the more deeply embedded in the male “culture”, in short, the nicer she is, the more sexual she is.”

“No genuine social revolution can be accomplished by the male, as the male on top wants the status quo, and all the male on the bottom wants is to be the male on top.”
— Valerie Solanas

I don't think SCUM Manifesto is old enough to be considered public domain, but it seems to me like Solanas would want it to be freely distributed, no?

So, here it is in photocopied book form:
https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-2426/mode/2up

And pdf:
https://editions-ismael.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/1968-Valerie-Solanas-S.C.U.M.-Manifesto.pdf

And just free floating on the web:
https://www.khoury.northeastern.edu/home/shivers/rants/scum.html

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