Mon 7 Jul - AWOL meeting & discussion on Valerie Solanas & the SCUM Manifesto

[nfnm...@riseup.net]

Next AWOL meeting is next Monday, 7th July at Next to Nowhere social
centre (entrance next-door to News From Nowhere bookshop, 96 Bold St -
ring white bell). 7pm for women-only organising meeting, 8pm for feminist
discussion (feminist-friendly men welcome for the discussions)

July's discussion topic is Valerie Solanas & the SCUM Manifesto

Valerie Solanas was notorious for two reasons: 1) shooting Andy Warhol in
1968 (he was seriously injured but survived), and 2) writing the SCUM
Manifesto (SCUM stands for "Society for Cutting Up Men"), which she
self-published in 1967, and which begins:

"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 ... "
You can read all of it here:
http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/shivers/rants/scum.html

Here's a potted version of the recently published new biography (which I'm
currently part-way through reading): Valerie Solanas was born in 1936. She
was a survivor of childhood sexual abuse. She had and had to give up 2
children by the time she was 15. She went to university, where she studied
psychology and was out as a lesbian. She did well at university but
abandoned her post-graduate degree and went travelling, ending up in New
York where she discovered the burgeoning queer & counter-cultural scene
where she hoped she might feel at home and really start to make her way as
a writer. She was always broke, often homeless, she begged and sold sex to
get by. She was totally consumed with efforts to get recognition for her
work - all her time and energy seem to have been channeled into trying to
get the Manifesto published and her play, Up Your Ass!, produced. She was
difficult, intense, very driven - though actually many people described
her as gentle and not at all aggressive in person. But throughout her life
she had a tendency to ultimately alienate and push away many friends. She
fell in with Andy Warhol and his entourage, where she was at best
tolerated or treated as an oddity, and hated by some. Warhol showed some
interest in her but later fobbed her off, and lost the copy of her play
that she'd given to him. She signed a contract with a publisher but came
to believe that it gave him total rights to her work. She became convinced
that Warhol and the publisher were conspiring to control her, and it was
in this paranoid, obsessed state that she went to Warhol's office and shot
him, and another man who was there. She also pointed the gun at the head
of another man, but it jammed, and she left. Some hours later she gave
herself up for arrest to a police officer in Time Square. The massive
media attention surrounding the shooting was only eclipsed by the
assassination of Robert Kennedy two days later. The question of
supporting Valerie divided the feminist movement in New York, some
distancing themselves from her words and actions, and others giving her a
lot of practical, personal and legal support, or protesting outside the
courthouse, or reading and distributing the Manifesto. (The Manifesto was
published that year). Valerie was always a scathing critic of men and
sexism, but wasn't part of the womens movement - as with pretty much
everything she was a loner and an outsider. But she had a massive impact
on the women's movement at the time, and was the catalyst for a split
between radical and liberal feminists. Following the shooting she spent
several years in prison and in psychiatric hospitals. She died in 1988, in
a welfare hostel, of pneumonia and emphysema - her body lay undiscovered
for several days.

Online account of her life:
http://www.womynkind.org/valbio.htm

There is a film about her, I Shot Andy Warhol - directed by Mary Harron &
starring Lili Taylor - which is really good (but ends after the shooting).

Why talk about her? It's not necessary to agree with or like what she says
in the Manifesto to appreciate its impact. It came out in the early years
of the women's liberation movement and pre-dates pretty much all other
well-known second wave feminist books apart from the Feminist Mystique.
Solanas' freely-expressed rage and contempt for men and sexism is like
absolutely nothing else before it - springing solely out of her life
experience and observations, her intellect, passion, wit, confidence and
sense of injustice. She was indubitably "crazy", she was a chaotic,
difficult person, and she was clever, focused and talented - we can take
her seriously as a writer and thinker instead of a figure of ridicule or
caricature of a feminist bogeywoman.

Another reason is to do with our previous discussion on women's anger -
how it's frowned on, dismissed, and suppressed. Particularly our feminist
anger - it's so hard to hold on to the reality that anger is a very
appropriate feeling in response to knowing about or experiencing the
oppressive, violent and abusive behaviour of men which goes on everywhere,
all the time, when all the attention is on how mean and unreasonable it is
for feminists to voice even the tiniest of criticisms of men.

Relatedly, we could think about the reality that women/feminists don't
actually commit much violence against men. Might think about comparing and
contrasting Solanas with Elliot Rodger, the young man who recently shot
several people after posting a 142-page misogynist manifesto online. He's
one in a long line of 20th and 21st century male spree-killers. There's
not many Valerie Solanas's, thankfully she didn't kill the people she
shot, and the shooting wasn't part of some grand SCUM plan. Both she and
Rodger got into states of mind and situations where they felt able to
carry out deliberate, very public, attention-grabbing acts of violence.
How and why they each got to that point is very different.

Big question is of course, how do we interpret the SCUM Manifesto? Did she
mean it? Do we take it satirically or literally? Some of the links below
discuss this. There probably isn't a definitive answer. Solanas was
passionate about distributing the manifesto, she held meetings about it,
and kind of did seem to be looking for like minds to form a group. She
probably didn't envisage actually plotting to physically eliminate men,
but she probably would have liked to have had collaborators in acts of
subversion, sabotage and creative provocation.

Here's one thing she said about it (from the bio link above):
"In the interview she discussed the Society for Cutting Up Men: 'It's
hypothetical. No, hypothetical is the wrong word. It's just a literary
device. There's no organization called SCUM. . . . Smith: 'It's just you.'
Solanas: 'It's not even me . . . I mean, I thought of it as a state of
mind. In other words, women who think a certain way are in SCUM. Men who
think a certain way are in the men's auxiliary of SCUM.'"

Interviews with Breanne Fahs, author of the recently published biography,
discussing Valerie's life & work:
- http://www.interviewmagazine.com/culture/breanne-fahs-valerie-solanas/
-http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/a-sad-and-remarkable-life-breanne-fahs-talks-about-valerie-solanas/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0
-
http://www.out.com/entertainment/art-books/2014/03/28/valerie-solanas-woman-wrote-scum-shot-andy-warhol

Here's a couple of short essays commenting on the SCUM Manifesto:
-
http://www.randomhouse.ca/hazlitt/feature/valerie-solanas%E2%80%99s-scum-manifesto-great-literature
-
http://www.studentpulse.com/articles/589/the-shock-value-of-the-scum-manifesto

Definitely read this next link, it's great! "The new misandry" by Joanna
Russ, saying everything that needs to be said about feminism and
man-hating, all the way back in 1972:
"For some reason misandry (a fancy word for man-hating) is a very loaded
topic. People even talk as if hating men meant murdering all of them right
away -- as if there were no difference between feelings and acts. ...
Surely very few of us are seriously afraid that battalions of ardent
feminist misandrists will come marching out of the sunrise to castrate
every man between here and California -- though the jokes that are told
seem to indicate we think so. ... Feminists who want feminism to be
respectable are afraid the "radicals" will go "too far." That is,
manhating gives the show away -- we aren't merely liberals; our complaints
are drastic; we're demanding, not asking; we're breaking the mold in the
most thorough way possible; we really mean it. (That is why "Man-hating"
is used as a red herring -- it's such a loaded charge.) Movement women who
come down hard in public on misandry are afraid of male backlash. They
want men's (and women's) cooperation, they want acceptance, they want
popularity.... Let us get several things clear: hurting people makes them
angry, anger turns to hate when the anger is chronic and accompanied by
helplessness, and although you can bully or shame people into not showing
their anger, the only way to stop the anger is to stop the hurt. The cure
for hate is power -- not power to hurt the hurter, but power to make the
hurter stop."
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/03/the_new_misandr.php

And here's the article where I found that link: "Where's Valerie Solanas
When You Need Her? What It Really Means To Man-Hate In 2013"
http://www.xojane.co.uk/issues/the-new-new-misandry-what-it-means-to-man-hate-in-2013

Finally, this essay by Breanne Fahs, the author of the biography, is about
the responses of university students to reading the SCUM Manifesto
(including: thinking it excessive, man-hating, feeling angry about it,
seeing it as satire, identifying with Solanas' feelings & experiences):
http://www.radicalpedagogy.org/radicalpedagogy1/Up_from_SCUM__Radical_Feminist_Pedagogies_and_Consciousness-Raising_in_the_Classroom.html