All My Friends Are Fictional’s Reviews > Burn It Down!: Feminist Manifestos for the Revolution > Status Update

“Being queer is not about a right to privacy; it is about the freedom to be public, to just be who we are. It means everyday fighting oppression; homophobia, racism, misogyny, the bigotry of religious hypocrites and our own self-hatred.
[…]
We come out of the closet, face the rejection of society, face firing squads, just to love each other! Every time we fuck, we win.”

“You as an alive and functioning queer are a revolutionary. There is nothing on this planet that validates, protects or encourages your existence. It is a miracle you are standing here reading these words. You should by all rights be dead. Don’t be fooled, straight people own the world and the only reason you have been spared is you’re smart, lucky or a fighter.”

“Joreen’s Bitch Manifesto, for example, argues for the embrace of the word bitch:
Bitches are aggressive, assertive, domineering, overbearing, strong-minded, spiteful, hostile, direct, blunt, candid, obnoxious, thick-skinned, hard-headed, vicious, dogmatic, competent, competitive, pushy, loud-mouthed, independent, stubborn, demanding, manipulative, egoistic, driven, achieving, […] and turbulent.”

“As Penny Weiss writes: manifestos allow us to hear from the professional and the educated, the more privileged and the politically experienced, and also from the battered, the prostituted, and the illiterate, and from the poor, the peasant, the indigenous, and the “untouchable,” often while attending the same meeting. […] As Solanas argues, we need a “fuck-up force.””

„Real manifestos rely on the style itself to communicate the urgency of the ideas and to performatively engage an audience; in other words, in both style and content, manifestos embody resistance. At its peak of performance, its form creates its meaning. The manifesto brings forth something new, ushers it into being through sheer willpower and gutsy language. It makes things while shattering the old way[…].“

„Mary Ann Caws described manifestos as necessarily mad: “At its most endearing, a manifesto has madness about it. It is peculiar and angry, quirky, or downright crazed. […]” Real manifestos rely on the style itself to communicate the urgency of the ideas and to performatively engage an audience; in other words, in both style and content, manifestos embody resistance.“

„Manifestos rely on words to “do the work of bombs,” to use the phrase of scholar Kyra Pearson. They explode and implode. The modern manifesto loathes authority altogether and radically asserts its own sense of authority with regard to whether the author has “earned” such authority.
[..]
Manifestos as a genre sought something new, [..] even if it meant destroying and smashing the existing social order.“

„Reading manifestos can feel like being on fire. We light up aflame and then are left raw and exposed. Manifestos operate as an infectious, contagious kind of document, one that purposefully ignites readers or listeners with its messages, making little room for disagreement […]. The manifesto author tells us how to think, assumes we agree with them, and imagines no possibility for refusal or resistance.“

Manifestos have constituted a notable part of Left History in this way, making room for something new through hot-headed, urgent, sweeping, radical, revolutionary thinking that marked major breaks with traditionalism and incremental, slow, steady change. Instead, manifestos inject forceful, dramatic claims that could feel strictly performative […] if not for the unabashed sincerity of the author’s worldview.