Valerie Solanas is best remembered as the woman who shot and almost killed pop artist Andy Warhol in 1968, rather than for her SCUM Manifesto, in which she wages an all-out assault on men, and it is questionable how many people today would remember the publication, as strikingly original as it is.
Although feminism still survives, the divide between men and women has narrowed and is not as vehement as it was in the 1960s and 1970s and in the meantime, with women taking a more active role in the workforce and becoming more financially independent, many rising to executive positions in major corporations, and despite all the scientific advances that have indeed allowed women to become mothers without the need of sexual intercourse with a male, things have not quite turned out as Solana depicted them in her Manifesto. Money has not become obsolete, though it is replaced by plastic in many transactions, we still reproduce our kind, and all the men have not become part of a Men's Auxiliary, "working diligently to eliminate themselves" (Solanas).
The SCUM Manifesto is a mixture of satire and deep insight, and is Solanas's imaginary revenge for the powerlessness she feels over her life.
The paper will look first at the reasons for the SCUM Manifesto. Why did Solanas write it? Who was it intended for? Did she intend it as satire or was it meant to be taken seriously?. Parts of it indeed seem like satire, while others, in retrospect, bear a lot of truth - the domination of the labor force by men, women's financial reliance on men, the daddy's girl image many women portray, the subordinate role of women in society with the rules set by men, and the ability of women now to bear children without a male's participation in the act of creation (in vitro fertilization, surrogates, cloning).
The paper goes on to look at why Solanas identifies men as egocentric, incapable of affection and forming relationships. It then desc...