The SCUM Manifesto is a radical feminist

Radical feminism

Radical feminism is a current theoretical perspective within feminism that focuses on the theory of patriarchy as a system of power that organizes society into a complex of relationships based on an assumption that "male supremacy" oppresses women...

 manifesto

Manifesto

A manifesto is a public declaration of principles and intentions, often political in nature. Manifestos relating to religious belief are generally referred to as creeds. Manifestos may also be life stance-related.-Etymology:...

 written in 1967 by Valerie Solanas

Valerie Solanas

Valerie Jean Solanas was an American radical feminist writer, best known for her attempted murder of Andy Warhol in 1968. She wrote the SCUM Manifesto, which called for male gendercide and the creation of an all-female society.-Early life:Solanas was born in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to Louis...

 and calling for the elimination of the male sex.

Description

The SCUM Manifesto is a radical feminist text written in 1967 by Valerie Solanas, who began drafting it possibly as early as 1959 or 1960. In 1977, she told Howard Smith

Howard Smith (director)

Howard Smith is an Oscar winning film director, producer, journalist, screenwriter, actor, and radio broadcaster.-Early career:Howard Smith started his career as a photographer...

 and Brian Van der Horst that her views had not changed since the manifesto's publication. According to Robert Marmorstein, "[t]he central theme of SCUM is that men have fouled up the world, are no longer necessary (even biologically), and should be completely destroyed, preferably by criminal means such as sabotage and murder .... [t]he quicker, the better."

According to Village Voice

The Village Voice

The Village Voice is a free weekly newspaper and news and features website in New York City that features investigative articles, analysis of current affairs and culture, arts and music coverage, and events listings for New York City...

 reviewer B. Ruby Rich

B. Ruby Rich

B. Ruby Rich is an American scholar, critic of independent, Latin American, documentary and gay films, and a professor of Film & Digital Media and Social Documentation also known as "SocDoc" at UC Santa Cruz. She has also taught documentary film and queer studies during spring semesters at UC...

, "SCUM was an uncompromising global vision", in the Manifesto criticizing men for many faults including war and not curing disease; many but not all points were "quite accurate"; some kinds of women were also criticized, subject to women's changing when men are not around; and sex (as in sexuality) was criticized as "exploitative". According to Sharon L. Jansen, "[Solanas] want[ed] ... to create a world exclusively for women" and considered men "biological[ly] inferior". According to feminist critic Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer

Germaine Greer is an Australian writer, academic, journalist and scholar of early modern English literature, widely regarded as one of the most significant feminist voices of the later 20th century....

, Solanas argued that "men and women [were "divide[d]"] from humanity" and that, "[to] allow ... women to move back to humanity[,] ... they exterminate men." According to Rich, Solanas, perhaps in a Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

ian tradition of satire, "believed that men ... should be retrained or eliminated." According to Prof. Ginette Castro, Solanas "recommended the gradual elimination of all males". According to reviewer Claire Dederer, "[t]he Manifesto is a call to rid the planet of men." Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan

Betty Friedan was an American writer, activist, and feminist.A leading figure in the Women's Movement in the United States, her 1963 book The Feminine Mystique is often credited with sparking the "second wave" of American feminism in the twentieth century...

 said, "the elimination of men [w]as proposed by that SCUM Manifesto!" According to Prof. Debra Diane Davis, men were to help eliminate each other, including by "rational murder." According to Deborah Siegel, it "argued for men's collective annihilation." According to Jansen, it called for reproduction only of females, and not even of females once the problems of aging and death were solved so that a next generation would no longer be needed. According to Laura Winkiel, Solanas "imagin[ed] ... a world run by women", "the rhetoric [of the Manifesto] polemically urges the complete overthrow of heterosexual capitalism", and the Manifesto "imagines a ... violent coup" with an "imagined group of vanguard feminist revolutionaries [who] proclaim their takeover of the world" including "SCUM females .... tak[ing] ... over the means of production" in a "fantas[y] ... of political violence", including as to men a "genocidal political practice", "eliminat[ion] ... [of] the male sex" except for "men in the Men's Auxiliary of SCUM", as "Solanas imagines that women openly declare war on ... men", a declaration that "parodies masculine politics". According to Jansen, the plan for creating a women's world was largely nonviolent, being based on women's nonparticipation in the current economy and having nothing to do with any men, thereby overwhelming police and military forces, and, if solidarity among women was insufficient, under the plan some women could take jobs and "'unwork'", causing systemic collapse. According to Rich, Solanas favored science and technology and wanted computers distributed. According to Jansen, the plan was prescient on the role of technological media and anticipated that "'the elimination of money ... [would eliminate the] need to kill men'". According to Castro, the Manifesto was "certainly" "the feminist charter on violence", "legitimiz[ing] ... hysteria as a terrorist force", but its proposal "that men should quite simply be eliminated" was "[not] meant to be taken seriously".

According to Siegel, the Manifesto "articulated bald female rage". According to Jansen, the Manifesto is "shocking" and breathtaking. According to Rich, Solanas was a "one-woman scorched-earth squad". According to Siegel, the stance was "extreme" and "reflected a more general disaffection with nonviolent protest in America overall." According to Rich, the Manifesto brought out women's "despair and anger" and advanced feminism and, according to Winkiel, U.S. radical feminism emerged because of this "declaration of war against capitalism and patriarchy".

According to Greer, Solanas said "that men covet all that women are, seeking degradation and effeminization at their hands." According to Jansen, Solanas posited men as animals who will be stalked and killed as prey, the killers using weapons as "phallic symbols turned against men".

Alice Echols

Alice Echols

Alice Echols is a cultural critic and historian. A specialist of the 1960s, Echols is Professor of English, Gender Studies and History at the University of Southern California.-Education:Echols received her Bachelor's degree from Macalester College in 1973...

 has argued that Solanas had "unabashed misandry", and people associated with Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

 (whom she shot) and various media saw it as "man-hating". Jon Purkis and James Bowen described the SCUM manifesto as "[a] pamphlet which has become one of the longest surviving perennials of anarchist publishing".

As parody and satire

Patricia Juliana Smith, a professor of English as Hofstra University

Hofstra University

Hofstra University is a private, nonsectarian institution of higher learning located in the Village of Hempstead, New York, United States, about east of New York City: less than an hour away by train or car...

, argues that the "SCUM manifesto parodies the performance of patriarchal social order it refuses." Smith further suggests that the manifesto is "an illicit performance, a mockery of the 'serious' speech acts of patriarchy." The SCUM women mock the way in which certain men run the world and legitimize their power, Smith contends. Similarly, sociologist Ginette Castro states:

If we examine the text more closely, we see that its analysis of patriarchal reality is a parody [...] The content itself is unquestionably a parody of the Freudian theory of femininity, where the word woman is replaced by man [...] All the cliches of Freudian psychoanalytical theory are here: the biological accident, the incomplete sex, "penis envy" which has become "pussy envy," and so forth [...] Here we have a case of absurdity being used to as a literary device to expose an absurdity, that is, the absurd theory which has been used to give "scientific" legitimacy to patriarchy [...] What about her proposal that men should quite simply be eliminated, as a way of clearing the dead weight of misogyny and masculinity? This is the inevitable conclusion of the feminist pamphlet, in the same way that Jonathan Swift's proposal that Irish children (as useless mouths) should be fed to the swine was the logical conclusion of his bitter satirical pamphlet protesting famine in Ireland. Neither of the two proposals is meant to be taken seriously, and each belongs to the realm of political fiction, or even science fiction, written in a desperate effort to arouse public consciousness.

James Penner reads the manifesto as a satirical text. He states that "[l]ike other feminist satires, the 'Scum Manifesto' attempts to politicize women by attacking particular masculine myths that are embedded in American popular culture." He adds that "[a]s a work of satire, the 'SCUM Manifesto' is rhetorically effective in that it deconstructs the reader's received notions of masculinity and femininity." English professor Carl Singleton notes the "outrageous nature" of the manifesto and Solanas' increasing mental instability, which, he argues, led many people to trivialize the text. Singleton adds that "Others saw the document as a form of political satire in the style of Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift

Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...

's 'A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in...

.'" Similarly, Sharon L. Jansen compared it to Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal

A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick, commonly referred to as A Modest Proposal, is a Juvenalian satirical essay written and published anonymously by Jonathan Swift in...

, describing "its craft ... [as having] satiric brilliance" and calling Solanas "cool and mordantly funny".. The bulletin of the Project of Transnational Studies echoes the comparison to Jonathan Swift stating that "[a] more common strategy is to read SCUM as an instance of political fiction or parody in the vein of Jonathan Swift." Writing forSpin

Spin (magazine)

Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

in September 1996, Charles Aaron calls the SCUM manifesto a "riotous, pre-feminist satire". Film director Mary Harron

Mary Harron

Mary Harron is a Canadian filmmaker and screenwriter best known for her films I Shot Andy Warhol, American Psycho and The Notorious Bettie Page.-Overview:...

 called the manifesto a "brilliant satire" and described its tone as "very funny". According to Rich of the Village Voice, the work possibly was "satire" and could be read as "literal or symbolic". Winkiel said, "[t]he humor and anger of satire invites women to produce this feminist script by taking on the roles of the politically performative SCUM females"; in other words, the satire invites women to act as the Manifesto calls.

Solanas's first publisher Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias

Maurice Girodias was the founder of the Olympia Press. At one time he was the owner of his father's Obelisk Press, and spent most of his productive years in Paris.-Early life:...

 thought of it as "a joke", and described the manifesto, according to J. Hoberman

J. Hoberman

James Lewis Hoberman , also known as J. Hoberman, is an American film critic. He is currently the senior film critic for The Village Voice, a post he has held since 1988.-Education:...

, as "a Swiftian satire on the depraved behavior, genetic inferiority, and ultimate disposability of the male gender". Solanas, however, disagreed with Girodias on several points. In 1968, speaking to Marmorstein, she characterized herself on the SCUM thing as dead serious. Alexandra DeMonte, however, argues that Solanas later claimed that her manifesto was simply a satire.

SCUM as literary device

In 1977, Solanas told Smith and Van der Horst, "[the society] .... [i]s just a literary device. There's no organization called SCUM—there never was, and there never will be." Claire Dederer said, "Solanas ... described [the term] SCUM as a kind of 'literary device.'" Solanas said to Smith and Van der Horst, [she] thought of it as a state of mind .... [in that] women who think a certain way are in SCUM .... [and] [m]en who think a certain way are in the men's auxiliary of SCUM.

SCUM as acronym or not

Though it has come to be said that "SCUM" stands for "Society For Cutting Up Men" (said in places such as on the cover of one edition and inside another, in The New York Times, and elsewhere), this phrase actually occurs nowhere in the text. However, the phrase is on the cover of the 1967 self-published edition, after the title, in "'Presentation of ... SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) ....'" The word "SCUM" is used in the text in reference to a certain type of women, not to men. It refers to empowered women, "SCUM -- dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, violent, selfish, independent, proud, thrill-seeking, free-wheeling, arrogant females, who consider themselves fit to rule the universe, who have free-wheeled to the limits of this `society' and are ready to wheel on to something far beyond what it has to offer". According to Avitel Ronell, that "SCUM" was intended as an acronym was a "belated add-on", which Solanas later rejected.

Dana Heller argues that "there is no evidence that Solanas intended SCUM to stand as an acronym for 'Society for Cutting Up Men'." Susan Ware et al. state that it was Solanas' publisher Girodias who claimed that SCUM was an acronym for "Society for Cutting Up Men", something Solanas never seems to have intended. Gary Dexter contends that Solanas called it the SCUM Manifesto without periods after the letters of SCUM. Dexter adds: "The spelling out of her coded title by Girodias was one more act of patriarchal intervention, an attempt to possess."

Publication history

When Solanas sold mimeographed copies of the original 1967 edition, she charged women one dollar and men two dollars each. Two thousand copies were made of the 1967 edition; about 400 were sold by the following spring.

The SCUM Manifesto has been reprinted at least ten times in English and it has also been excerpted in several feminist anthologies and translated into Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. Sisterhood Is Powerful

Sisterhood is Powerful

Sisterhood Is Powerful , published in 1970, was one of the first widely available anthologies of early Second Wave radical feminist writings...

, a collection of radical feminist writing edited by Robin Morgan

Robin Morgan

Robin Morgan is a former child actor turned American radical feminist activist, writer, poet, and editor of Sisterhood is Powerful and Ms. Magazine....

, included excerpts of the SCUM Manifesto.

According to Jansen, there are subtle differences between the 1968 Olympia Press edition and Solanas' original mimeographed version. In 1977, Solanas self-published a "correct" edition which was closer to the original version and included an introduction written by herself. Solanas's sister, Judith A. Solanas Martinez, is the reported copyright holder to the SCUM Manifesto by 1997 renewal.

Women and shooting

Among the effects of the Manifesto, Solanas shot Warhol and cited her Manifesto so people could understand why and then revolutionary Roxanne Dunbar

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz is an American academic, educator, feminist activist, and writer.Born in San Antonio, Texas, Dunbar-Ortiz is of partial American Indian background. She spent most of her youth growing up in the rural community of Piedmont, Oklahoma...

 moved to the U.S. "convinced that a women's revolution had begun", forming Cell 16

Cell 16

Cell 16 was a militant feminist organization known for its program of celibacy, separation from men and self-defense training...

 with a program based on the Manifesto. According to Winkiel, although Solanas was "outraged" at the women's movement's "appropriat[ion]" of the Manifesto, "the shooting [of Warhol] represented the feminist movement's righteous rage against patriarchy" and Dunbar and Ti-Grace Atkinson

Ti-Grace Atkinson

Ti-Grace Atkinson is an American feminist author.Atkinson was born into a prominent Louisiana family. The "Ti" in her name reflects the Cajun or French language petite, for little....

 considered the Manifesto as having initiated a "revolutionary movement", Atkinson (according to Rich) calling Solanas the "'first outstanding champion of women's rights'" and probably (according to Greer) having been "radicalized" by the language of the Manifesto to leave the National Organization for Women

National Organization for Women

The National Organization for Women is the largest feminist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1966 and has a membership of 500,000 contributing members. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S...

 (NOW), and (according to Winkiel) women organized in support of Solanas. Solanas was viewed as too mentally ill and too bound up with Andy Warhol, according to Greer, "for her message to come across unperverted." According to Prof. Davis, the Manifesto was a "forerunner" as a "call to arms among pragmatic American feminists" and was "enjoy[ing] ... wide contemporary appeal". According to Winkiel, the Manifesto "was ... influential in the spread of 'womansculture' and lesbian separatism" and is also "credited with beginning the antipornography movement." Friedan opposed the Manifesto as bad for the feminist movement and NOW.

SCUM organization

Solanas organized "a public forum on SCUM .... [at which] [a]bout 40 people[,] .... [m]ostly men ... [she characterized as] 'creeps' [and] '[m]asochists, showed up; SCUM had no members beside her. According to Greer, "little evidence [existed] that S.C.U.M. ever functioned" other than as Solanas.

Film and television

Scum Manifesto is also the title of a 1976 short film directed by Carole Roussopoulos and Delphine Seyrig

Delphine Seyrig

Delphine Claire Beltiane Seyrig was a stage and film actress and a film director.-Early life:...

. In the film, Seyrig reads several passages from a french translation of Solanas's manifesto.

Warhol later satirized the whole event in a subsequent movie, Women in Revolt

Women in Revolt

Women In Revolt is a 1971 satire film produced by Andy Warhol and directed by American filmmaker Paul Morrissey.The stars of the film are Jackie Curtis, Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn, three transgendered superstars of Andy Warhol's Factory scene. Jackie and Candy had previously appeared in Flesh...

, calling a group similar to Solanas's S.C.U.M., "P.I.G." (Politically Involved Girlies).

Solanas's creative work and relationship with Andy Warhol is depicted in the 1996 film, I Shot Andy Warhol, a significant portion of which relates to the SCUM Manifesto, and Solanas's disputes on notions of authorship with Warhol. The Venture Bros.

The Venture Bros.

The Venture Bros. is an American animated television series that premiered on Cartoon Network's Adult Swim on February 16, 2003. The series mixes action and comedy together while it chronicles the adventures of the Venture family: well-meaning but incompetent teenagers Hank and Dean Venture; their...

television animation episode "Viva Los Muertos!" featured a character named Velma who directly quotes the S.C.U.M. Manifesto throughout the episode.

Literature

The title story of the Michael Blumlein

Michael Blumlein

Michael Blumlein, M.D. is a fiction writer and a physician. Most of his writing is in or near the genres of science fiction, fantasy, and horror. His novels include The Healer, The Movement of Mountains and X, Y. He has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award and the Bram Stoker Award...

 short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 collection, The Brains of Rats, employs the Manifesto to illustrate the male protagonist's hatred of himself and his gender.

In 2006, Swedish feminist and author Sara Stridsberg

Sara Stridsberg

Sara Stridsberg is a Swedish author and translator. Her first fiction novel, Happy Sally was about Sally Bauer, the first Scandinavian to swim the English Channel....

 published a semi-fictional biography of Valerie Solanas, in which the Manifesto is referred to on several occasions. Parts of the Manifesto are also cited in the book.

Music

Solanas is quoted on the sleeve notes of the Manic Street Preachers

Manic Street Preachers

Manic Street Preachers are a Welsh alternative rock band, formed in 1986. They are James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire, Richey Edwards and Sean Moore. The band are part of the Cardiff music scene, and were at their most prominent during the 1990s...

 debut album Generation Terrorists

Generation Terrorists

- Personnel :Manic Street Preachers*James Dean Bradfield – lead vocals, guitar*Richey Edwards – guitar*Sean Moore – drums, percussion, backing vocals*Nicky Wire – bass, piano on Little Baby NothingAdditional personnel...

. Their song "Of Walking Abortion" on the album The Holy Bible

The Holy Bible (album)

The Holy Bible is the third studio album by Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. It was released on 29 August 1994 by Epic Records and was the last of the band's albums released before the disappearance of lyricist and guitarist Richey Edwards , on 1 February 1995.Edwards was...

is named after a quote from the manifesto. Liverpool punk band Big in Japan composed the song "Society for Cutting Up Men" directly inspired by the manifesto. The British band S.C.U.M.

S.C.U.M (band)

S.C.U.M are a South East London based post-punk/art rock group. Its members are Thomas Cohen , Bradley Baker , Samuel Kilcoyne , Huw Webb and Melissa Rigby . The band previously included Ruaridh Connellan and Joseph Williams...

 is named after the manifesto. On Matmos

Matmos

Matmos is an experimental electronic music duo originally from San Francisco but now residing in Baltimore signed to the Matador Records label. M. C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel are the core members, but they frequently include other artists on their records and in their performances, including...

' 2006 album The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast

The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast

The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast is the sixth full-length album by Matmos. The concept of the album is that each song is dedicated to a person who has influenced the duo, which is reflected in the songs themselves; "Rag for William S...

, one of the tracks is "Tract for Valerie Solanas" and featured excerpts of the S.C.U.M. Manifesto.