The Scum Manifesto

According to Wikipedia, The SCUM Manifesto is "is an anarchistic, anti-establishment tract written in 1968 by Valerie Solanas that calls for the gendercide of men, and strongly criticizes several contemporary aspects of American society, including the middle class, money and power.

Solanas proposes that women should strike back against men. And not just strike back - but commit "gendercide". The acronym SCUM actually stands for Society for Cutting Up Men. The title itself could be scary to a large portion of American citizens.

But all man slaughter (pun intended) aside, a large portion of SCUM is dedicated to the failings that, in the author's eyes, are areas in which men have failed. The categories go from "war" to "the prevention of friendship (love)". I want to turn our attention to "Authority and Government". Solanas says:
"Having no sense of right and wrong, no conscience, which can only stem from having an ability to empathize with others... having no faith in his non-existent self, being unnecessarily competitive, and by nature, unable to co-operate, the male feels a need for external guidance and control. So he created authorities -- priests, experts, bosses, leaders, etc -- and government. Wanting the female (Mama) to guide him, but unable to accept this fact (he is, after all, a MAN), wanting to play Woman, to usurp her function as Guider and Protector, he sees to it that all authorities are male.

There's no reason why a society consisting of rational beings capable of empathizing with each other, complete and having no natural reason to compete, should have a government, laws or leaders."

The rest of SCUM refers to the man trying and wanting to be feminine, and that does not deviate in this section. In case you didn't get it, this applies to all of us! Government and authority has and continues to be a male dominated area in America. I forget the exact statistic, but there continues to be a lack of female interest and involvement directly in government. Think about it - how many men are in Congress and Senate that aren't women? But, I digress to the main point.

If we took this seriously and killed all the men it would be true that there would not be much of the American government as it is today left. But this article proposes that we don't even need a government. Apparently, Solanas thinks that there is no reason for us to have a government. I mean, if there are only women left, who according to the author are all rational beings, we can just all work out a bartering system (because apparently money is also man's fault and so therefore Solanas wants to get rid of money)! Nobody would hurt anybody and people would be much happier!

Ummm...YEAH RIGHT. As a college student, I know that human beings (specifically some of those on my campus) are not rational. Things just don't work like that. Oh yeah, and if there are no men...how are we procreating?

So I guess as my first blog post, just enjoy reading this.

Oh by the way, the author actually is crazy. She did kill Andy Warhol, after all.