TEA, Michelle
Against Memoir. Complaints, Confessions & Criticism

''From the start, I understood the Manifesto to be totally for real and totally not. It was an ideal, a utopic vision too out-there to ever be realized, and its dense, dark humor struck me as exactly correct. It was outlandish. I'd done die-ins with ACT UP and kiss-ins with Queer Nation, I'd waved coat hangers at Christinas trying to block clinic doors, so I had a deep appreciation for the way Valerie used humor as a device to hit the truth like a piñata, again and again, throughout the tome. To see the SCUM Manifesto's humor, to let it crack you up page after page, is not to read it as a joke. It's not.

I'm thinking that going totally fucking insane is a completely rational outcome for an intelligent woman in this society, and I think this idea only becomes more solid the farther back in history you go.

Published by Feminist Press, 2018
Feminism / Essays / Queer Culture