To start us off, the SCUM in the title is an acronym for “Society for cutting up men”. With such a cheery title, I’m sure it’s a surprise to everyone that this text was written by a woman. This text encompassed in one sentence is quite possibly the worst possible take on everything, done all at once. Most of it is spoken off the fly, the author has almost no knowledge about what they seem to be so passionate about, and things are said that are contradictory to common knowledge, common sense, and themselves.
The SCUM manifesto is a Feminist, Fascist, Anarchist, Communist manifesto. Yes. All of those things crammed into one unimaginably convoluted manifesto, alongside some typos. This is the sort of thing that strikes me as something written on a computer in a basement by someone who hates their father for trying to get them to try out for the cheer-leading squad, because I forgot to mention that there’s quite a few daddy issues sprinkled in there as well. It is written with a tooth-gnashingly bitter disposition toward men, I cannot imagine how long one has to go without physical intimacy to end up this delusion ridden. The beginning speaks of the feasibility of the eradication of men, as well as some personal opinions about the qualities of men (Which are contradicted not even a page later).
It goes into the elements of masculine society, and society as a whole. It then mentions an ideology that is unilaterally latched on to by edgy teenagers with computer access: Anarchism. Money is pointless, people should only have to work two to three hours a week at MOST, and while men are obsessed with work and working is a masculine trait, if women stopped working and started complaining and rioting and stealing, half of the workforce would disappear creating an unsustainable situation for men. You can see where these basic, common knowledge discrepancies start to arise.
While I could go into detail as to some of the asinine concepts mentioned in this text, I won’t. They’re the sort of thing you’d read in an eighth grader’s diary, the sort of thing that would get read in front of the class only to result in bellowing laughter. I believe a more important takeaway is a comparison to some similar works, taken much, much more seriously and to legitimate consequence. Most antisemitic literature follows the same formula that this one does. The only difference is, that instead of men, it’s Jews. All of your describable problems are their fault, so the only way that you can ever come to surpass these problems is by listening to me and doing incredibly drastic things in order to eliminate these problems. Whether this is a form of delusion (As it likely was in this case), or an advanced tactic of trickery and societal manipulation, varies depending on the case. These were incredibly similar veins of promises that Hitler offered to people during the Holocaust, except instead of wanting Germany for the Aryans, this person wants not to work, wants their dad to either talk to them more, or not at all, and other elements of standoffish adolescent life.
All in all, this is probably the most amusing text I have read for this class. To describe it as asinine would not do the extent that the author went to to include every possible denotation of profanity, as if to spite the person who for some reason took the time to read this. It cannot be taken seriously by someone who is not overwhelmed by emotional turmoil or circumstance at the very least, and seems like something written in mockery and jest, or by someone who hasn’t left their basement in thirty years and still shares sympathy with their seventeen year old self.