The Scum Manifesto

An interesting book with a very interesting message. If you are a man who is generally angry at feminists, this would at least give you a good reason to be mad. But still, the message of the book remains intriguing.

The book is entitled The S.C.U.M Manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men). It is written by Valerie Solanas, one of the most controversial and notorious women in American feminist history. She actually became famous after attempting to murder three men in 1968. She actually turned herself in to the police on the same day to make a statement about why she shot those men. She received a sentence of three years, and became a martyr by the time of her release. But she came out only to go on stalking those who escaped death on the day she shot them. She then spent the rest of her life in mental hospitals.

Solanas wrote The SCUM Manifesto on the same year she was charged with attempted murder. By then, she had been a playwright. Her first play, was to be produced by one of the men she wanted to kill. But apparently he never returned her script and only gave her a small role in one of his films as compensation. Later on, when she demanded that he returns the script or pay her for it, he claimed that he lost it and refused to give her any money for it. Solanas apparently did not need the money, because she used to self-published her works at the time. She was protecting her copyrights it seems, but her own way.. How dare he steal her script! One thing you must keep in mind buddy: DON'T MESS WITH AN ANGRY WOMAN.

Anyway.. Solanas' Manifesto was meant to be an attack on the patriarchal culture, promoting the idea of a violent revolution to establish an all-female society. What is most outstanding about the book is that in spite of its extremism and furious style, and aside from the violent message it conveys, it actually makes lots of sense when dealing with social analysis and scientific facts. (It gets most interesting when she describes her theory that a male is actually an incomplete female, which is the total opposite of the Freudian theory.) You wouldn't expect this to be the work of a mad woman! But everybody wanted to believe that this woman was mad.. This was the sixties, don't forget.

Below I shall list some of my favorite quotes from The SCUM Manifesto, and I will also provide a link where you can read the book in full text. Yeah.. That's a free bonus! Fanta's gift for Valentine. Enjoy :)

"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.

It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.

The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can't relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings -- hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt -- and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn't."

"Being an incomplete female, the male spends his life attempting to complete himself, to become female. He attempts to do this by constantly seeking out, fraternizing with and trying to live through an fuse with the female, and by claiming as his own all female characteristics -- emotional strength and independence, forcefulness, dynamism, decisiveness, coolness, objectivity, assertiveness, courage, integrity, vitality, intensity, depth of character, grooviness, etc -- and projecting onto women all male traits -- vanity, frivolity, triviality, weakness, etc. It should be said, though, that the male has one glaring area of superiority over the female -- public relations. (He has done a brilliant job of convincing millions of women that men are women and women are men). The male claim that females find fulfillment through motherhood and sexuality reflects what males think they'd find fulfilling if they were female.

Women, in other words, don't have penis envy; men have pussy envy. When the male accepts his passivity, defines himself as a woman... He then achieves a continuous diffuse sexual feeling from `being a woman'."

"There is no human reason for money or for anyone to work more than two or three hours a week at the very most. All non-creative jobs (practically all jobs now being done) could have been automated long ago, and in a moneyless society everyone can have as much of the best of everything as she wants. But there are non-human, male reasons for wanting to maintain the money system."

"Unable to give love or affection, the male gives money. It makes him feel motherly. The mother gives milk; he gives bread. He is the Breadwinner."

"[Money] Provide the basis for the male's major opportunity to control and manipulate -- fatherhood."

"Mother wants what's best for her kids; Daddy only wants what's best for Daddy, that is peace and quiet, pandering to his delusion of dignity (`respect'), a good reflection on himself (status) and the opportunity to control and manipulate, or, if he's an `enlightened' father, to `give guidance'... Daddy, unlike Mother, can never give in to his kids, as he must, at all costs, preserve his delusion of decisiveness, forcefulness, always-rightness and strength. Never getting one's way leads to lack of self-confidence in one's ability to cope with the world and to a passive acceptance of the status quo. Mother loves her kids, although she sometimes gets angry, but anger blows over quickly and even while it exists, doesn't preclude love and basic acceptance. Emotionally diseased Daddy doesn't love his kids; he approves of them -- if they're `good', that is, if they're nice, `respectful', obedient, subservient to his will, quiet and not given to unseemly displays of temper that would be most upsetting to Daddy's easily disturbed male nervous system -- in other words, if they're passive vegetables. If they're not `good', he doesn't get angry -- not if he's a modern, `civilized' father -- but rather express disapproval, a state that, unlike anger, endures and precludes a basic acceptance, leaving the kid with the feeling of worthlessness and a lifelong obsession wit being approved of; the result is fear of independent thought, as this leads to unconventional, disapproved of opinions and way of life.

For the kid to want Daddy's approval it must respect Daddy, and being garbage, Daddy can make sure that he is respected only by remaining aloof, by distantness, by acting on the precept of `familiarity breeds contempt', which is, of course, true, if one is contemptible. By being distant and aloof, he is able to remain unknown, mysterious, and thereby, to inspire fear (`respect')."

"The affect of fatherhood on males, specifically, is to make them `Men', that is, highly defensive of all impulses to passivity, faggotry, and of desires to be female. Every boy wants to imitate his mother, be her, fuse with her, but Daddy forbids this; he is the mother; he gets to fuse with her. So he tells the boy, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly, to not be a sissy, to act like a `Man'. The boy, scared shitless of and `respecting' his father, complies, and becomes just like Daddy, that model of `Man'-hood.

The effect of fatherhood on females is to make them male -- dependent, passive, domestic, animalistic, insecure, approval and security seekers, cowardly, humble, `respectful' of authorities and men, closed, not fully responsive, half-dead, trivial, dull, conventional, flattened-out and thoroughly contemptible. Daddy's Girl, always tense and fearful, uncool, unanalytical, lacking objectivity, appraises Daddy, and thereafter, other men, against a background of fear (`respect') and is not only unable to see the empty shell behind the facade, but accepts the male definition of himself as superior, as a female, and of herself, as inferior, as a male, which, thanks to Daddy, she really is."


Reducing the female to an animal, to Mama, to a male, is necessary for psychological as well as practical reasons: the male is a mere member of the species, interchangeable with every other male. He has no deep-seated individuality, which stems from what intrigues you, what outside yourself absorbs you, what you're in relation to. Completely self-absorbed, capable of being in relation only to their bodies and physical sensations, males differ from each other only to the degree and in the ways they attempt to defend against their passivity and against their desire to be female.

The female's individuality, which he is acutely aware of, but which he doesn't comprehend and isn't capable of relating to or grasping emotionally, frightens and upsets him and fills him with envy. So he denies it in her and proceeds to define everyone in terms of his or her function or use, assigning to himself, of course, the most important functions -- doctor, president, scientist -- therefore providing himself with an identity, if not individuality, and tries to convince himself and women that the female function is to bear and raise children and to relax, comfort and boost the ego if the male; that her function is such as to make her interchangeable with every other female. In actual fact, the female function is to relate, groove, love and be herself, irreplaceable by anyone else; the male function is to produce sperm."

"In actual fact, the female function is to explore, discover, invent, solve problems crack jokes, make music -- all with love. In other words, create a magic world."


Read full text of The S.C.U.M Manifesto

Men of the World.. Get Lost

In an earlier post I've discussed a book which prophecized the end of the male species. This time, however, I am not discussing the biological failure of males and the need for them to extinct for environmental balance. I'd rather talk about the social side and why societies have deteriorated whenever they were male-dominated.

Far far long ago, societies were all led by the female, that's what anthropology teaches us. A woman was the leader of her tribe, which mainly consisted of her family members and children. This was the early beginning of what later on was to be called "society". A female leader was able to protect her tribe, organize its life, nourish it, and teach it different skills. She would never think about harming anyone from another tribe. She would never think about making men slaves for the women of the tribe. The idea of ownership itself was not there. Resources were out there given by nature for everybody. (Politics would later on define the need for ownership and struggle to be due to the growing number of people as opposed to limited resources, but that's not our issue here.) What I'm talking about is a point in time when women led their society and were successful, but had no greed or control aims.

Now, what happened later was that men would always look at the land of their neighbours, the cattle they had, the crops, the women ..etc. Then they would go and fight with them to get it by force. The idea of ownership then evolved, there came to be the concept of "this is yours and this is mine". In this new world view, and as men were the ones whose job was to steal things to make them their own, including women of other tribes, they decided that they should rule the members of their new communities.

In the old system, a woman definitely knew her children because she was the one who gave birth to them. On the other hand, a man didn't know his possible connection to those children, he would sleep with a woman and move away, nine monthes after she gives birth without understanding that this man played any role in creating them. But in the new system, women had to convince the man that her children are his also, to be able to protect them and provide for them. He now owns everything and he leads the tribe, so the fate of those helpless children lies within his hands. But how can she convince him that those children are his??

A clever woman then came up with the idea of naming her child after his father, and she would go to him and say this is your son, his name is your name, he is yours, you own him. The idea appealed to men of course. This new system now also enables them to own human beings who hold their names and who can help them in their domination plans (fighting, stealing, building new shelters). Men came to see children as an advantage, and would be kind to women who bring them lots of children. They then would own the mother as well, she is the factory of their own kids and noone else can share her. A man has to be sure that he is raising his own blood, so if the mother of his children happens to play around she is kicked out of the tribe and her children would not have his name.

Now what's next?.. accordingly, the idea of pure blood became an obsession and women were confined to their tribes. They will not to go on trips as they used to in the old days. They can't go to explore the land or plant the seeds as they were used to. (By the way, women were the first who discovered the secrets of the soil and planting, they are the ones who invented agriculture.) So, men were given all the jobs that required outside cruising. They would also plant and they would bring the crops home for the women to store them and prepare daily meals. Women stayed home to give birth, feed their babies and their cattle. What an interesting life!

But how successful were men in leading their societies? Well, this system is what we now call the patriarchal society, where men lead and dominate everything, leaving almost no room for anybody else. This full domination came to control women not only physically, but intellectually and psychologically as well.

Patriarchal societies lack lots of human values, like equality, justice, respect for the other, freedom, democracy, beauty, peace, tolerance, and many others. As I've previously discussed in my post "Power, Politics and Gender", men have proved to be control freaks. They would stop at nothing to fill their greed and lust, no matter who they crush in the process. They are drunk with power and they don't care if the whole world would turn into flames as long as they will stay stand on the top of the heap of ruins. They don't believe in evolution and the changes happening around them. They want to freeze everthing around them, as if it is a DVD movie that they can pose on the image of Si Sayed. They want to keep on enjoying all the advantages without ever sharing them with anyone else. They raise their sons to become the same dictators and they raise their daughters to become slaves, so that their cycle of control and oppression will never be broken. They brainwash the women in order to make them believe that they can do nothing better in life than to serve them and their children.

Everywhere you go there are men telling you what you should do. They design the syllabus at schools, they are the priests at church and the sheikhs in mosques, they are the controllers of media, they are the movie producers, they are the song writers, they are the historians, they are blocking every tiny space that would allow you to see the light.

In order for our societies to evolve those men should get lost and allow us some air. They've already done much damage with their blind desire for control. Don't wait for them to throw all of this long history and to break the vicious cycle of their grandfathers out of good wills. THEY WON'T. Like all the dictators, they won't leave their thrones or quit their oppressive ways until they die. The only way to change such a system is a revolution, a revolution that would set things right.

But some naive women are waiting for men to make this revolution for them. Imagine how silly and lazy some women have become!! Have you ever seen a master make a revolution for slaves? When will we wake up? When will take our destiny into our own hands and change this bleak picture? If not for us, let it be our gift to the coming generations who don't deserve to find the world the way we found it. For their sake let's say, "Men of the world, Get Lost!"