Hating men will free you? Valerie Solanas in Paris or the discursive politics of misandry. Issue 3 (August 2021)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Védie, Léa
• Other Names: Lépinard Éléonore guest-editor.; Quéré Lucile guest-editor.
• Is Part Of: European journal of women's studies. Volume 28:Issue 3(2021)
• Page Start: 305
• Page End: 319
• Publication Date: 2021-08
• Subjects: Feminist theory -- hatred -- misandry -- Mouvement de Libération des Femmes -- respectability politics -- Valerie Solanas; Women's studies -- Europe -- Periodicals; Women -- Europe -- Social conditions -- Periodicals; Feminist theory -- Europe -- Periodicals; 305.4
• DOI: 10.1177/13505068211028896
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1350-5068

Abstract

In the wake of contemporary controversies in France over feminist misandry, this article reflects on claimed hatred of men as a feminist discursive resource. I use the reception of Valerie Solanas' SCUM Manifesto by some radical French feminists of the 1970s as a privileged case study, along with historian Colette Pipon's study on misandry within French second-wave feminist movements and Judith Butler's works on stigma reversal. I contend that in a seemingly paradoxical way, misandry is both an anti-feminist stigma and a feminist discursive strategy: the inhibiting effects of such injurious term on feminist politics – the aggressive, castrating and hateful feminist you should at all cost avoid to become – can be managed, if not neutralized, by means of feminist misandry. From that point, I argue that claimed hatred of men can open fruitful political venues in challenging the stifling effects of respectability politics.