I read the SCUM Manifesto in my mid30s when I started to say I was a radical lesbian feminist. It was the early 1980s Her refusal to play the female games, her challenge to men and male power, was inspirational for me, for breaking the shackles binding my mind to patriarchy. Her words were shocking and blew through my mind like a howling gale clearing out a lot of patriarchal crap. I had a similar reaction to reading Joanna Russ’ The Female Man when one of the characters was chatting to an obnoxious man in a social setting when the author then states she picked up her gun and shot him. I couldn’t work out if the character was imagining it or actually did the deed. And it didn’t matter. The effect was the same on me. It was like I felt when I first allowed myself to say I was a lesbian thanks to Adrienne Rich’s ideas in Compulsory Heterosexuality and the concept of An exhilarating rush of being swept into a different reality, thinking the unthinkable, surprised by how a different existence had always been within me, an expanding universe of Be-ing with my sisters always in the Background subverting male power, These latter precious words learned from Mary Daly much later to describe the unnameable, to celebrate her call to women to SIN BIG. Valerie Solanas certainly knew how to do that.
I accidentally posted before finishing. Just needed to acknowledge how Adrienne Rich’s idea of compulsory heterosexuality gave me permission to ‘choose’ a Lesbian existence. Not an ‘identity’ that current critics of gender identitarianism and ‘born this way’ determinist lesbians misconstrue to judge me as really bisexual and reassure me somewhat patronizingly that I shouldn’t worry about, it’sOK to not be a real lesbian, thereby trying to rob me of my political decision to live a lesbian existence committed to my lesbian sisters. And not the choice of liberal individualism either. Rather a release into an altered state of be-ing, a collective spirit of Be-ing, a verb describing a dynamic feminist Cause of connected and indwelling power.
I have a forthcoming episode on the power of SCUM as a revolutionary manifesto. Read it aged 15 and it was powerfully affecting. Definitely picking up the biography
Did u ever hear Linda Burke in Brighton lesbian backroom bars talking abt her thesis on Parthonogenis? I wonder how she's doing. & Sandy Best , serious lesbian militancy. Those were the days. We all the Scum Manifesto...in our back-pockets. I had Jill Johnston's Gullible Travels. It went outa print. I loaned out my copy in 79 & never got it back. There was a real revolution to be had. But ppl in the end gave up on it..Thatcher freaked out a lot of revolutionaries in the end...& they got proper jobs & mortgages for security. No more squats. No more fighting the suck corrupt patriarchal system...out to own our minds Not I..I'm still out there..running loose.
.refusing to play the fucking game !! Refusing labels. Refusing addiction to money. Property. Relationships. All ownership. Just my own stuff I will own. Men want our guts to face the abyss & ourselves & change . .our originality , our ideas , energy our magic . .to make the real leap into the unknown.. total absolute autonomy...independence individually..outsider courage for aloneness & for happiness..outside the whole shitshow . called Civilization.
Thanks for reminding me of Lynda Birke and her feminist critiques of science and feminism. I wish I’d lived in Brighton at the time. But here in Australia I’d heard of her and engaged with her ideas. And I wasn’t the only feminist who had. We have our own lesbian feminist expounder of parthenogenesis in a lesbian future in Chris Sitka, a dear friend of mine. I will reread some of Lynda Birke’s papers in light of today’s biologism in feminist realism’s arguments used to counter the misappropriation of feminist gender theory. It’s time to tussle further with nature/nurture and patriarchal doublespeak.
I absolutely remember reading this by you back around 2014. I remember it. Love your writing. And I forgot it was you and forgot to put it back together after rediscovering you on Substack. And I'm sure this manifesto has been on my to do list for 10 years but I forgot about it.
To those of us who entered feminism in the 2010s, your name is just as important as the names of pioneer feminists from last century are, maybe more so because closer to me.
I was riveted from the first line when I first read this as a young lesbian. A friend told me about her and so I went and bought the book and was hooked from the start. Nothing about this book is "nice". And boy, did I need permission to not be "nice". For me, the extremity of her words matched the extremity of the outrages women face on a daily basis. The rage she expressed was my rage, too, although I never shot a superstar and wasn't put in prison or a mental hospital. Thanks for this.
How thrilling that there is a worthy biography! My fiancee and I sometimes refer to men as walking abortions in her honor. "Did you see what the walking abortions did today???"
Solanas was the John Brown of feminism? “Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and MINGLE MY BLOOD FURTHER WITH THE BLOOD OF MY CHILDREN, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments—I submit; so LET IT BE DONE." JB at his trial facing execution for murder.
I read the SCUM Manifesto in my mid30s when I started to say I was a radical lesbian feminist. It was the early 1980s Her refusal to play the female games, her challenge to men and male power, was inspirational for me, for breaking the shackles binding my mind to patriarchy. Her words were shocking and blew through my mind like a howling gale clearing out a lot of patriarchal crap. I had a similar reaction to reading Joanna Russ’ The Female Man when one of the characters was chatting to an obnoxious man in a social setting when the author then states she picked up her gun and shot him. I couldn’t work out if the character was imagining it or actually did the deed. And it didn’t matter. The effect was the same on me. It was like I felt when I first allowed myself to say I was a lesbian thanks to Adrienne Rich’s ideas in Compulsory Heterosexuality and the concept of An exhilarating rush of being swept into a different reality, thinking the unthinkable, surprised by how a different existence had always been within me, an expanding universe of Be-ing with my sisters always in the Background subverting male power, These latter precious words learned from Mary Daly much later to describe the unnameable, to celebrate her call to women to SIN BIG. Valerie Solanas certainly knew how to do that.
I accidentally posted before finishing. Just needed to acknowledge how Adrienne Rich’s idea of compulsory heterosexuality gave me permission to ‘choose’ a Lesbian existence. Not an ‘identity’ that current critics of gender identitarianism and ‘born this way’ determinist lesbians misconstrue to judge me as really bisexual and reassure me somewhat patronizingly that I shouldn’t worry about, it’sOK to not be a real lesbian, thereby trying to rob me of my political decision to live a lesbian existence committed to my lesbian sisters. And not the choice of liberal individualism either. Rather a release into an altered state of be-ing, a collective spirit of Be-ing, a verb describing a dynamic feminist Cause of connected and indwelling power.
I have a forthcoming episode on the power of SCUM as a revolutionary manifesto. Read it aged 15 and it was powerfully affecting. Definitely picking up the biography
I recently re-read S.C.U.M. It's a good read.
Did u ever hear Linda Burke in Brighton lesbian backroom bars talking abt her thesis on Parthonogenis? I wonder how she's doing. & Sandy Best , serious lesbian militancy. Those were the days. We all the Scum Manifesto...in our back-pockets. I had Jill Johnston's Gullible Travels. It went outa print. I loaned out my copy in 79 & never got it back. There was a real revolution to be had. But ppl in the end gave up on it..Thatcher freaked out a lot of revolutionaries in the end...& they got proper jobs & mortgages for security. No more squats. No more fighting the suck corrupt patriarchal system...out to own our minds Not I..I'm still out there..running loose.
.refusing to play the fucking game !! Refusing labels. Refusing addiction to money. Property. Relationships. All ownership. Just my own stuff I will own. Men want our guts to face the abyss & ourselves & change . .our originality , our ideas , energy our magic . .to make the real leap into the unknown.. total absolute autonomy...independence individually..outsider courage for aloneness & for happiness..outside the whole shitshow . called Civilization.
Thanks for reminding me of Lynda Birke and her feminist critiques of science and feminism. I wish I’d lived in Brighton at the time. But here in Australia I’d heard of her and engaged with her ideas. And I wasn’t the only feminist who had. We have our own lesbian feminist expounder of parthenogenesis in a lesbian future in Chris Sitka, a dear friend of mine. I will reread some of Lynda Birke’s papers in light of today’s biologism in feminist realism’s arguments used to counter the misappropriation of feminist gender theory. It’s time to tussle further with nature/nurture and patriarchal doublespeak.
Hey you r so welcome Vivianne
Certainly confirms to me that you are an extremist Julie. Thanks for the enlightening clarification.
Hidden inside every "nice" woman is a Valerie Solanas just waiting to come out.
A bit like saying hidden inside every "nice" man is a Ted Bundy.
No. Not in the least bit similar.
Does this make me a ‘dinosaur’. Probably. But one who won’t be shamed by changing political fashions in ideas of sexuality and feminisms.
I absolutely remember reading this by you back around 2014. I remember it. Love your writing. And I forgot it was you and forgot to put it back together after rediscovering you on Substack. And I'm sure this manifesto has been on my to do list for 10 years but I forgot about it.
To those of us who entered feminism in the 2010s, your name is just as important as the names of pioneer feminists from last century are, maybe more so because closer to me.
I was riveted from the first line when I first read this as a young lesbian. A friend told me about her and so I went and bought the book and was hooked from the start. Nothing about this book is "nice". And boy, did I need permission to not be "nice". For me, the extremity of her words matched the extremity of the outrages women face on a daily basis. The rage she expressed was my rage, too, although I never shot a superstar and wasn't put in prison or a mental hospital. Thanks for this.
How thrilling that there is a worthy biography! My fiancee and I sometimes refer to men as walking abortions in her honor. "Did you see what the walking abortions did today???"
Solanas was the John Brown of feminism? “Now if it is deemed necessary that I should forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice and MINGLE MY BLOOD FURTHER WITH THE BLOOD OF MY CHILDREN, and with the blood of millions in this slave country whose rights are disregarded by wicked, cruel, and unjust enactments—I submit; so LET IT BE DONE." JB at his trial facing execution for murder.