Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Valerie Solanas: Misandric Fixation – Theory & Practice - 1968


The S.C.U.M. Manifesto is a radical feminist manifesto written in 1967 by Valerie Solanas. It argues that men have ruined the world and that women should overthrow society and eliminate the male sex. Solanas began drafting the SCUM Manifesto as early as 1959 or 1960. In 1967, she self-published the first edition by making two thousand mimeographed copies and selling them on the streets of Greenwich Village in New York City.  Solanas charged women one dollar and men two dollars each. By the following spring, about 400 copies had been sold. The first commercial edition of the Manifesto was published by Olympia Press in New York in 1968. It includes a preface by Maurice Girodias and an essay titled "Wonder Waif Meets Super Neuter" by Paul Krassner. According to Sharon Jansen, there are subtle differences between the 1968 Olympia Press edition and Solanas' original mimeographed version. In an interview with The Village Voice, Solanas commented on the Olympia Press edition, complaining that "none of the corrections ... [she] wanted made were included and that many other changes in wording were made—all for the worse—and that there were many 'typographical errors': words and even extended parts of sentences left out, rendering the passages they should've been in incoherent." In 1977, Solanas self-published a "correct" edition which was closer to the original version and included an introduction written by herself. The SCUM Manifesto has been reprinted at least ten times in English and translated into Croatian, Czech, Finnish,  French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Dutch, and Danish. It has also been excerpted in several feminist anthologies, including Sisterhood Is Powerful, a collection of radical feminist writing edited by Robin Morgan. Verso Books published an edition in 2004 with an introduction by feminist philosopher Avital Ronell. Jon Purkis and James Bowen describe the SCUM Manifesto as a "pamphlet which has become one of the longest surviving perennials of anarchist publishing.” Solanas's sister, Judith A. Solanas Martinez, is the reported copyright holder of the SCUM Manifesto by 1997 renewal. [Wikipedia]

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AK Press, publisher of the July 2001 edition describes their issue as “The definitive edition of probably the finest polemic in the world.”
Quotations from S.C.U.M. Manifesto:

"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."
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"Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the y(male) chromosome is an incomplete x(female) chromosome, that is, 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."
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"The sick, irrational men, those who attempt to defend themselves against their disgustingness, when they see SCUM barreling down on them, will cling in terror to Big Mama with her Big Bouncy Boobies, but Boobies won't protect them against SCUM; Big Mama will be clinging to Big Daddy, who will be in the corner shitting in his forceful, dynamic pants. Men who are rational, however, won't kick or struggle or raise a distressing fuss, but will just sit back, relax, enjoy the show and ride the waves to their demise."
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"After the elimination of money there will be no further need to kill men; they will be stripped of the only power they have over psychologically independent females. They will be able to impose themselves only on the doormats, who like to be imposed on. The rest of the women will be busy solving the few remaining unsolved problems before planning their agenda for eternity and Utopia -- completely revamping educational programs so that millions of women can be trained within a few months for high level intellectual work that now requires years of training (this can be done very easily once our educational goal is to educate and not perpetuate an academic and intellectual elite); solving the problems of disease and old age and death and completely redesigning our cities and living quarters. Many women will for a while continue to think they dig men, but as they become accustomed to female society and as they become absorbed in their projects, they will eventually come to see the utter uselessness and banality of the male."

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For more cases of misandric fixation see: What Is Misandric Fixation?

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[1604-4/30/21]
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