Talk:SCUM Manifesto

quoting sentence/s within sentence and initial case; and periods ending quotes

When a sentence contains a quotation of a sentence's beginning, the practice and I think a convention that I've seen in various publications, generally scholarly in various fields, if the first letter is capitalized only because it begins the sentence (and not also, say, a proper noun), the first capital is replaced with a bracketed lower-case letter. I'll leave the recent capitalizing edit as it is, in case it's easier for readers in this instance, but I think it can lead to confusion if the first word is, say, "You", as that would carry a religious connotation that effectively would change the meaning of a sentence from the original and making that into an exception might create an inconsistency in an article. The different case of a sentence containing a quotation of both a full sentence followed by the beginning of another sentence also follows the same convention but only for the first sentence, but that can look odd, so I sometimes solve that by preceding the quotation with a colon. Overall, I favor continuing the bracketing with lower-casing but on this style point I think each editor can be left to their own style. Feel free to edit or discuss at MOS:QUOTE or the essay WP:QUOTE. Nick Levinson (talk) 03:59, 6 March 2016 (UTC)

The more recent edit decapitalizing without brackets and also moving periods (full stops) is also something I'll leave as is but its edit summary relies on MoS and MoS does not exactly support either action. MoS is more complicated on both points. Regarding full stops, it appears to be a preference by some editors to place it always outside of the closing quotation mark, but neither MoS nor many sources require it. If we're quoting a full sentence and the source ended it with a period, we can end it with a period, too, and putting the period outside of the closing quotation mark leads to a misimpression that the source had more in the sentence at the end and that we omitted it. However, in some cases, the period should be outside of the quotation mark. Nick Levinson (talk) 05:37, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

TV item from spunkybean.com and reliability

A recent edit deleted content about a television episode. I checked the source and, at a glance, it seems to support the content. If the source is reliable, the content and the section heading should be restored. If it is not reliable, nothing should be done. The source is within spunkybean.com and I tried to determine its reliability or lack thereof. It describes itself as possibly a blog or an endorser for FTC purposes but seems to have several writers and maybe it's edited and maybe it does some fact-checking, so I don't know if it's sufficient as an RS. It's not in the RS noticeboard. The site's About Us page is essentially blank and archive.org doesn't have anything significantly different from 2015 or 2016; I didn't look for About Us page versions older than that. If someone else can decide, please do. Thanks. Nick Levinson (talk) 23:53, 18 June 2016 (UTC)

Whoo, was I a moron with that one. A little more scrolling would have saved me. Nick Levinson (talk) 00:07, 19 June 2016 (UTC) (Syntax corrected: 00:15, 19 June 2016 (UTC))

Contradiction?

The phrase "Society for Cutting Up Men" is on the cover of the 1967 self-published edition, after the title, in "'Presentation of ... SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) ....'" This edition precedes all commercial editions. Additionally, in the August 10, 1967 issue of The Village Voice, a letter to the editor appears that was signed by a Valerie Solanas (of SCUM, West 23rd Street) that responds to a previous letter signed by a Ruth Herschberger (published in the August 3, 1967 issue) that asks why women do not rebel against men. Solanas's response reads: "I would like to inform her and other proud, independent, females like her of the existence of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men), a recently conceived organization which will be getting into high gear (and I mean high) within a few weeks.

However, though "SCUM" originally stood for "Society For Cutting Up Men", as evidenced inside one edition, this phrase actually occurs nowhere in the text. Heller argued that "there is no reliable evidence that Solanas intended SCUM to stand as an acronym for 'Society for Cutting Up Men'." ^{(footnotes removed, bold emphasis mine)}

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't understand how the facts listed in the first paragraph do not constitute reliable evidence that SCUM was indeed intended by Solanas to stand as an acronym for "Society for Cutting Up Men". Can anybody explain that to me? --Florian Blaschke (talk) 20:54, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

When reliable sources disagree, Wikipedia reports the disagreement. Readers judge for themselves, as you did. Nick Levinson (talk) 21:20, 24 September 2016 (UTC)

deleted recent addition of YouTube reading

I deleted a link to a reading on YouTube of the Manifesto. The image on YouTube visible when the reading begins appears to include a screenshot of an online text that has an editorial note by someone saying it's a manifesto so surely Solanas would not have minded it being given away for free, and so the said someone typed it up years ago and posted it on the Web. The said someone did not claim to have been a friend of Solanas who might have been given permission by her. (I'm not putting the URL for the page or the editorial note here because they're on the same page, as of when accessed last May 8th, and supplying that URL would be an unlawful facilitation of copyright infringement, in my opinion. I'll probably keep the URL briefly in case of an inquiry.) That does not sound like copyright permission to me, especially since she herself sold copies of it to the general public. A video reading is probably a derivative work, so the copyright on the original probably applies to that, too. I emailed the reader on YouTube a few days ago, asking if that person has copyright permission, but I've since read that editorial note and I decided not to further await a reply before deleting. I'm not used to using YouTube but I gather the video is over two hours long and I'm not sitting through that to find a copyright statement (I watched only a moment at the beginning). On the YouTube page, the poster says it's under the standard YouTube license, but that's in the YouTube terms of service and that does not substitute for getting copyright permission to do the reading (which is a performance), only what can be done with the resulting performance. A commentary is legally presumably okay (I don't know what's in the commentary) but, regardless of the commentary or its length, reading a substantial portion of the Manifesto, even if incomplete, would be a performance that would need the permission of the Manifesto copyright holder. Nick Levinson (talk) 02:19, 14 May 2017 (UTC)

Transphobia?

Honestly shocked at the lack of analysis regarding trans rights and this "manifesto". The people defending it to the death as "satire" ignore the fact it relies heavily on "sex essentialism" in many ways (i.e calling the "Y" chromosome an abomination!). Regardless of the books intent its reliance on bio essentialism as a ploy would be considered deeply offensive today. Where the hell are the sources talking about this? Is it just assumed this book is semi-satire at this point and not worth dealing with on a higher level? SO confused...--Trans-Neptunian object (talk) 19:59, 7 October 2020 (UTC)

@Trans-Neptunian object: The part about the Y-chromosome is specifically a parody of Freud's theory of the female as an "incomplete" male. In this case, she inverts the theory by calling men "incomplete" females. Of course Solanas knew that a Y chromosome is not actually an "incomplete" X chromosome. She's just making fun of Freud's ridiculous pseudo-scientific misogyny. My guess is that you haven't actually read the book as it's clearly not meant to be taken literally. For what it's worth, the book urges both men and women to reject their assigned gender roles, and it says that men who have "de-man"ed themselves are "relatively inoffensive" and will not be killed by SCUM. I don't see any real transphobia in the book, personally. I think she's just sloppy about using the word "men" when she really means "patriarchy". You also have to remember that it was written in 1967, which was before the gender/sex distinction was common, before Stonewall, before Gender Trouble, and before trans visibility. Before 1990, sex essentialism was the default assumption that most writing about gender operated under (with some notable exceptions like Simone de Beauvoir, Andrea Dworkin, etc.). Kaldari (talk) 00:24, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

In the manifesto Solanas suggests hormone replacement therapy as a cure for maleness. Hardly transphobic. 2.30.180.216 (talk) 19:53, 5 December 2023 (UTC)

Elliot Rodger

Why is there no mention of Elliot Rodger, who wrote a similar piece called "My Twisted World" , but with the genders reversed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2600:100F:B002:6FAA:E4C4:659E:761D:B62E (talk) 20:28, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

I am a critic of political lesbianism - ERs manifesto was idiosyncratic and by default of zero relevance to this. Political lesbianism failed to catch on, just like his views. --Trans-Neptunian object (talk) 22:44, 3 June 2022 (UTC)

Why do people claim the book topic was anarcha-feminism?

Can someone tell me why the topic of the book is considered as anarcha-feminism if the book calls to eradicate all men which would be a call to genocide. That's not how anarcha-feminism works. I can understand that some people would argue it's satire but then it would be better to use satire instead of anarcha-feminism, especially because it would a broader more factual term like radical feminism Simon0304 (talk) 17:39, 26 August 2023 (UTC)