ships. It then describes how Solanas proceeds to dissect men and their faults, and blame them for taking love out of the world because of their contempt for women. It examines her plan for how women can take back the world by subverting the monetary system by refusing to buy things, refusing to work and bringing industry to a halt, thereby destroying menÆs fiduciary control over women and freeing them to relax and enjoy life and reproduce just women, since men are not needed any longer, all the while giving reasons why she may be thinking this way. She says that after a while, when death and aging have been conquered by women, then even reproduction of females will no longer be necessary. Then, Solanas utters a call for action for SCUM members, but seeing as she is the only member, her call goes unanswered. Over time, some of her cries for change have actually come to fruition, if too late for her to see and enjoy them.
Valerie Solanas moved to New York City in 1966 at age 30, a woman with a traumatic past, growing up in New Jersey where she was molested by her father (Dederer). She attended college at the University of Maryland, then did a year of graduate school work in psychology at the University of Minnesota. During her college years, she worked as a prostitute. After moving to New York and settling in Greenwich Village, Solanas wrote an ôabsurdist and quite filthyö play called Up Your Ass. Sometime in early 1967, she wrote the book, the S.C.U.M. Manifesto, which would change her life.
The acronym S.C.U.M. stands for æSociety for Cutting Up MenÆ and the manifesto was a call to rid the planet of men entirely (Dederer). It opens with the line,
ôLife 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 automati...