I am currently comparing various copies I can find on libgen etc. Notably the differences in introductions between the different published editions- with more recent ones being significantly more sympathetic than the older ones, despite those newer introductions being published 20 years ago, not like today.
I want to read this book and I am a little concerned that I might unironically radicalise myself. Maybe it would be good to read it in installments alongside some of the community so we can discuss the validity of the thoughts within it and perhaps come to some consensus interpretation of what this manifesto means, how it applies in our current world, alongside our broader political positions, and what conclusions we might draw that don't necessarily lead to the same (apparent) genocidal desire that the author came to.
With the rising influence of loud voices calling for overt violence against and ownership of women's bodies, voices that carry to every corner of the internet connected English speaking world (and perhaps further) along with the rising boil of machismo and fascism as viable political ideologies and campaigning strategies.. well.. I think we have reason to be concerned.
I am trans and it took a long time for me to start to feel safe enough to put down my boxcutter. Now I'm concerned that I have grown complacent and I'm worried about not only my own safety but that of my community and all women in it.
I want to know what Valerie Solanas was thinking, how she connected her experience of victimhood to her ideology, how her thoughts led her to such extreme conclusions and why she just let it go and surrendered peacefully after plugging Warhol but failing to kill anyone.
I dunno. What do you guys think?
My thinking is that, maybe with some thoughtful consideration and the participation of some even-tempered posters, we could consume this material in a way that DOESN'T leave the more volatile of us primed to do something funny yet ultimately pointless.
As foul as the prominent bastards poisoning the minds of young men against us for easy money on the internet are, I wouldn't want any of you to martyr yourselves when there's a hundred more like them ready to step in and fill the vacuum.
I suppose I'm not THAT worried though. I just think this book has floated around in the back of my head since I first heard about it and read excerpts as a teenager. My recent reading suggests that it is also super prescient on a number of other issues.
I'm probably not the best person to actually organise a reading group type of thing but I could try if nobody else wanted to "run" the thing, but if there is interest in reading this together.
^ tell me that isn't a fucken vibe.
i don't think there's ever been a hexbear reading group and i can't find one. i haven't read it in 20 years or so, myself.
it certainly adopts a bioessentialist voice and argument that is very easy to interpret in a modern framework as trans-exclusionary, so at best it would need to be handled delicately. it's certainly possible that's what solanas intended. i had my own thoughts the last time i read it, frankly i don't know what i would think of it reading it again.
it certainly adopts a bioessentialist voice and argument
Does this sort of thing ever lead anywhere good?
not really, no, at the very best, arguments with a bioessentialist foundation can be presented interspersed with other unrelated and good material, but most often it taints the whole thing, and even at best, you kinda have to scan every independent point for the brainworms
the s.c.u.m. manifesto was written in 1967, nearly 60 years of gender liberation discourse has occurred since then, so i contend this is a very real "death of the author" situation. i can't say with any certainty what she intended, and honestly i'm reluctant to get too much into it. it's not important from a theoretical standpoint, because i don't think that's what it was ever meant to be.
I just fail to see what possible use a bioessentialist work could be. If someone starts from the premise that you can determine a person's intelligence by measuring their skull, for example, it's a safe bet that nothing worthwhile is going to follow.
Because an output can be derived from different inputs ("a broken clock is right twice a day"). A lot of the manifesto is psychological & sociological, so you can look at her observations of male psychology and sociology and see if a dialectical materialist understanding of sex oppression results in the same conclusion. Of course, I don't think psychological examinations of oppressors are the most useful way to analyze power dynamics, so...
The manifesto is mostly just a bombastic vent. It's got chutzpah, which may fire you up, but that's about it...
The manifesto is mostly just a bombastic vent. It's got chutzpah, which may fire you up, but that's about it...
Yeah I sort of get the impression it could, suitably reinterpreted and viewed as an object mostly of ideological-historical curiousity, fit a subset of the hexbear community's sensibilities as food for thought while read with a protective layer of community and critique.
Though reading some of the excellent comments in here I think it'd be critical to have someone who's already read it able to provide suitable warnings or whatever before kicking off a reading group style thing.
Buuuut if we've never actually done a reading group here maybe it's a silly place to start.
Just gonna CW this whole thing. I'm not educated enough to articulate this as delicately and precisely as the topic deserves. Specifically I'm talking about hardcore misogyny and, one COULD argue, a very mild defense of the original TERF thinkers. I don't defend them though, simply acknowledge that their fears grew from an environment of systemic misogyny / patriarchy that most of us probably are thankfuckfully not able to truly grasp.
Because a lot of patriarchy has roots in caveman-tier "women are property used for breeding more property and sons."
I understand that eg IVF is a topic covered in the manifesto, which I could see appearing as a "thin end of the wedge" towards some sort of technological effort to eliminate the necessity of wombs and shit for reproduction. In a world mostly constructed by and dominated by men, I could imagine a genuine concern that without women being an essential part of species survival, that the patriarchy could decide to.. y'know. the thing.
Like how many billionaire techbros are already exposed as having basically breeding ranches and shit? It's at least 3 off the top of my admittedly unreliable head. There has been at least one IVF clinic director who snuck his uh, reproductive material, into their system and sired a ludicrous number of children. I get that this isn't a strong defense of bioessentialist thinking because there isn't really a good defense of it as you noted. But I can accept that this sort of thinking might drive the philosophy of a radical two or three generations of feminism ago.
In any case it would absolutely have to be read and understood as a product of its time and of likely a very imperfect author. My understanding is that she was a deeply traumatised person. Also remember it would be decades before women could freely open bank accounts and own property at the time it was written. Speaking for myself I really can't imagine being born cis female and not losing my fucking mind. Imagine through some accident of epigenetic or physical trauma becoming a woman with "no value" in a world where you have agency only in so far as the men in your life permit it.
This is also where a lot of OG TERF thinking came from (obviously, since that's such a large part of the cultural journey we've taken to come to a place where we can see bioessentialism as flawed and dangerous.)
tbh non-bioessentialist SCUM already exists - it's called social.xenofem.me lmao
it was one of the posts i saw over on social.xenofem.me and ain't it the truth?
Yeah I am prepared to brace for implied transphobia at the very least.
Note that I would not want this proposed reading group to exclude men/male identifying people. I believe feminism is or should be emancipatory for everyone.
Mods pls relocate this thread to the correct community if I goofed.
Idk about feminism or anything but i think a woman stabbing me to death would fix most my problems tnh
Note that I would not want this proposed reading group to exclude men/male identifying people.
Neither would SCUM!
SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men's Auxiliary of SCUM. Men in the Men's Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who, regardless of their motives, do good, men who are playing ball with SCUM.
(to aid men in this endeavor SCUM will conduct Turd Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: "I am a turd, a lowly, abject turd," then proceed to list all the ways in which he is.
There's a strong trans reading of the SCUM Manifesto at the start of 'On Liking Women' by Andrea Long Chu.
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-30/essays/on-liking-women/
You bet! This essay is a really good trans-sapphic historiography too.
