The S.C.U.M. (society for cutting up men) Manifesto was written by radical feminist Valerie Solanas in 1967. Solanas lays out the reasons why men shouldn’t exist and gives examples of how women can thrive and procreate without men, “It is now technically feasible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females)
and to produce only females.”. She describes the male species as incapable of empathy, egocentric, and trapped inside himself. She lays out the thing’s men are responsible for, some of the sections interesting to me were religion, government and conformity. Solanas had very radical opinions about men during this time period where men were perceived to be above women, she instead describes women as being superior to men. She also brings up trans people quite a lot, specifically male to female. She is transphobic in this text, and a lot of other radical feminists also held these ideas. I found some of the ideas shared in this text funny because of the way she blatantly blames everything on men and the way she describes men. A main point in the manifesto is that men envy women and want to be women because of how ‘worthless’ they are. Solanas claims that men have no sense of right and wrong and putting them in the government has just created external authority figures that serve no real purpose. In the conformity section of the manifesto she talks about how men who try to be different try to be like women. In the religion section she talks about how men having an ‘inability to relate’ creates a pointless meaning of life, which includes heaven and God. I thought these parts in the text were very interesting. Solanas ends the manifesto by talking about replacing men with machines and killing men. Overall I thought this was a very interesting text from a very interesting time in history.