The Hate-Filled Legacy of Valerie Solanas

Radical feminism can be traced more or less back to Valerie Solanas, author of theSCUM Manifesto. It was first published in 1967, though Solanas began drafting it in about 1959 or 60. In the Manifesto, Solanas calls on women to rise up against men who she sees as biologically inferior and responsible for all of the world’s problems. However, she doesn’t end there. She refers to the male as “a biological accident” and the Y-chromosome as being an incomplete X-chromosome, making the male an incomplete female. She further calls for men to be exterminated and to assist in eliminating themselves by eliminating each other.
There are those who have stated that this Manifesto is little more than a parody of “patriarchy” or a work of satire. They claim to view it as an anti-patriarchal statement, but state that the calls for the elimination of men should not be taken seriously. However, while the work may contain elements of parody and satire, these devices are used to emphasize the message, not to indicate that the author wasn’t serious. Solanas’ own history would indicate this as she shot pop artist Andy Warhol, art critic Mario Amaya, and attempted to shoot Warhol’s manager Fred Hughes on June 3, 1968, attempting to kill them. In 1977, she claimed that her views had not changed since the Manifesto was published, indicating that she believed what she had written.
Further evidence that the SCUM Manifesto was to be taken seriously is found in the reaction of feminist leaders and organizations to Solanas’ Manifesto and shooting of Andy Warhol. Ti-Grace Atkinson, radical feminist and president of the New York chapter of NOW, called Solanas “the first outstanding champion of women’s rights” and heralded her as “a ‘heroine’ of the women’s movement.” Robin Morgan, former editor of Ms Magazine, included excerpts in her book, Sisterhood is Powerful. Other feminist authors such as Amanda Third and Catherine Lord have credited her with creating radical feminism and have stated that the feminist movement would not have occurred if it hadn’t been for Valerie Solanas. There have also been several books, plays, and movies glorifying Solanas and her actions.
There are also those who would dispute the acronym that SCUM stands for the Society for Cutting Up Men. While this is not spelled out within the document itself, It was stated on the cover of her self-published version in 1967. Later, Solanas would deny that she intended the acronym. Instead she stated that there was no such organization, nor would there ever be. SCUM was a state of mind. It was meant as a reference to empowered women who considered themselves fit to rule.
The legacy of the SCUM Manifesto has continued. It was published as late as 2004 (perhaps since then, though I don’t have a record of it) and has been translated into several languages. Currently there are organizations based on SCUM existing in Sweden (producing materials for high school students) and on the internet (RadfemHub) It has impacted society in many ways which will be outlined below.
In New York in 1967 at about the same time Solanas was publishing the SCUM Manifesto, Shulamith Firestone, Pam Allen, Carol Hanish, and Robin Morgan founded a group called New York Radical Women. This short-lived organization adopted a radical feminist ideology that emphasized the patriarchal oppression of women by men similar to that outlined in the SCUM Manifesto. They claimed that men exercised social dominance over women by creating social roles that divided privilege and power by gender. This group is often credited with the first bra burning at the 1968 Miss America Pageant. However, rather than burn them, they tossed bras and other artifacts of patriarchal oppression into a garbage can.  Firestone would move on to found Redstockings and New York Radical Feminists while Morgan would become more involved in feminist activism and writing. Hanish would help found Redstockings and would later edit a journal called Meeting Ground in which she would publish an essay called The Personal is Political and is sometimes incorrectly credited with coining that phrase, although she undoubtedly helped popularize it.
In 1969, the radical feminist organization Redstockings published its Redstocking Manifesto. The influence of SCUM is unmistakable. It is considerably less violent, but no less hateful. It characterizes “all men” as oppressors of women. It characterizes individual male-female relationships as “class relationship(s)” and provides that all individual male-female conflicts are political, not personal and “can only be solved collectively.” Men are identified as the agents of oppression and the users of physical force to subjugate women. “All power structures throughout history have been male-dominated and male-oriented. Men have controlled all political, economic and cultural institutions and backed up this control with physical force.” In SCUM, Solanas outlines a similar concept:

“Authority and Government: Having no sense of right and wrong … the male feels a need for external guidance and control. So he created authorities — priests, experts, bosses, leaders, etc — and government… he sees to it that all authorities are male.”

Redstockings states: “We call on all men to give up their male privilege and support women’s liberation in the interest of our humanity and their own… In fighting for our liberation we will always take the side of women against their oppressors. We will not ask what is “revolutionary” or “reformist,” only what is good for women.”
This is quite similar to Solanas’ call for men to assist in their own extermination and /or work towards women’s goals:

“SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men’s Auxiliary of SCUM. Men in the Men’s Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who, regardless of their motives, do good, men who are playing pall[sic] with SCUM. A few examples of the men in the Men’s Auxiliary are: men who kill men; biological scientists who are working on constructive programs, as opposed to biological warfare; journalists, writers, editors, publishers and producers who disseminate and promote ideas that will lead to the achievement of SCUM’s goals…”

Redstockings did not take the ideology to the same extreme as Solanas, but the hatred that Solanas felt towards men was obviously present as was Solanas’ influence. The prevailing attitude of the SCUM Manifesto is that men are to blame for everything wrong in the world and that ridding the world of men will automatically result in improvement. The first portion of this was outlined by Carol Hanish in The Personal is Political in 1969. Hanish states:

“The most important is getting rid of self-blame. Can you imagine what would happen if women, blacks, and workers (my definition of worker is anyone who has to work for a living as opposed to those who don’t. All women are workers) would-stop blaming ourselves for our sad situations? …We are only starting to stop blaming ourselves.”

She later adds: “Women, like blacks, workers, must stop blaming ourselves for our “failures.”” Of course if women aren’t to blame for their own condition or their own failures, who is? The Redstocking Manifesto provides the answer: men. “Women’s submission is not the result of brain-washing, stupidity or mental illness but of continual, daily pressure from men. We do not need to change ourselves, but to change men.” The result of this “blame shifting” is that women can deny responsibility for their actions. Any wrong committed by women (or a woman) can be blamed on men or “The Patriarchy.” This “blame shift” has led to disastrous legal consequences for men; most notably in Family Law, domestic violence, rape and sexual assault laws.
But while Redstockings was not as extreme as SCUM (at least publically), some of its organizers were. Robin Morgan would attack marriage as the basis for all sexism “We can’t destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage.” She would also help lead the charge to define all sex as rape “I claim that rape exists any time sexual intercourse occurs when it has not been initiated by the woman, out of her own genuine affection and desire.” Her hatred for men was nearly as intense as that of Solanas “I feel that “man-hating” is an honorable and viable political act, that the oppressed have a right to class-hatred against the class that is oppressing them.”
In her Manifesto, Solanas spends a great deal of time demeaning and demonizing men. She begins:

“The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, it has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples.
The male is completely egocentric, trapped inside himself, incapable of empathizing or identifying with others, or love, friendship, affection of tenderness. He is a completely isolated unit, incapable of rapport with anyone. His responses are entirely visceral, not cerebral; his intelligence is a mere tool in the services of his drives and needs; he is incapable of mental passion, mental interaction; he can’t relate to anything other than his own physical sensations. He is a half-dead, unresponsive lump, incapable of giving or receiving pleasure or happiness; consequently, he is at best an utter bore, an inoffensive blob, since only those capable of absorption in others can be charming. He is trapped in a twilight zone halfway between humans and apes, and is far worse off than the apes because, unlike the apes, he is capable of a large array of negative feelings — hate, jealousy, contempt, disgust, guilt, shame, doubt — and moreover, he is aware of what he is and what he isn’t.”

She then continues:

“Eaten up with guilt, shame, fears and insecurities and obtaining, if he’s lucky, a barely perceptible physical feeling, the male is, nonetheless, obsessed with screwing; he’ll swim through a river of snot, wade nostril-deep through a mile of vomit, if he thinks there’ll be a friendly pussy awaiting him. He’ll screw a woman he despises, any snaggle-toothed hag, and furthermore, pay for the opportunity. Why? Relieving physical tension isn’t the answer, as masturbation suffices for that. It’s not ego satisfaction; that doesn’t explain screwing corpses and babies.”
“Fatherhood and Mental Illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity): Mother wants what’s best for her kids; Daddy only wants what’s best for Daddy, that is peace and quiet, pandering to his delusion of dignity (`respect’), a good reflection on himself (status) and the opportunity to control and manipulate, or, if he’s an `enlightened’ father, to `give guidance’. His daughter, in addition, he wants sexually — he givers her hand in marriage; the other part is for him.”

The demonizing of men, turning them into something sub-human and obsessed with sex would be a recurring theme of radical feminism. The obsession with sex would evolve into “all men are rapists” or “all men use rape to control all women.” The desire to “control and manipulate” would become the “power and control” of the domestic violence industry. The concept of the male as a biological accident sets the stage for concepts of “testosterone poisoning” and “toxic masculinity.” Both are concepts claiming that being male is by its very nature, a disease.

“If men were wise they would seek to become really female, would do intensive biological research that would lead to me, by means of operations on the brain and nervous system, being able t to be transformed in psyche, as well as body, into women.”

This lays the foundation for the Redstocking Manifesto’s claim that women need not change, but men must be changed. The feminist call for masculinity and manhood to be “redefined” stems from this concept as well. The “redefinition” is the changing of men.

“Eliminate men and women will shape up. Women are improvable; men are no[t].”

Here we have the antecedent of “the personal is political,” a statement that relieves women from any personal responsibility for their actions and places the blame on “patriarchy,” the elimination of which will result (by default) in a better world and an improved woman.
Susan Brownmiller was another product of New York Radical Women and New York Radical Feminists, both associated with Redstockings. She would later write Against Our Will: Men, Women, and Rape in which she would proclaim that all men use rape and the fear of rape to keep all women in a state of fear in order to perpetuate male dominance. This position would be the logical next step to Solanas’ assertion that men are sex-crazed animals that “[screw] corpses and babies” and desire their daughters (sexually).
Andrea Dworkin, a radical feminist crusader against pornography, may have also been influenced indirectly by Solanas and SCUM. While living in Europe in the late 60’s, she was introduced to the writings of Shulamith Firestone and Robin Morgan, both members of Redstockings. Dworkin also worked closely with Gloria Steinem and Catharine MacKinnon in her opposition to pornography as a form of sexual discrimination that reinforces male dominance over women and as such promotes violence against women. Steinem had also worked with former Redstocking Robin Morgan to found the Women’s Media Center.
Other radical feminists who appear to be under the influence of Solanas, but are not easily connected are Mary Daly, a radical feminist professor at Boston College who was removed from her position after refusing to admit male students to her advance courses in feminism, may also have been influenced by Solanas and her Manifesto. Daly was once quoted as stating “If life is to survive on this planet, there must be a decontamination of the Earth. I think this will be accompanied by an evolutionary process that will result in a drastic reduction of the population of males.” This was apparently a response to a statement by Sally Miller Gearhart who advocated reducing and maintaining the male population at 10% of the human population. Gearhart helped establish on of the first women’s studies programs in the US while teaching at San Francisco State. There could be little doubt that she was aware of Valerie Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto. Although it is unclear as to when Solanas moved to San Francisco, that is where she was residing when she died in 1988.
The legacy of Valerie Solanas is found in the writings of Morgan, Dworkin, Firestone, Hanish, Brownmiller, Daly, Gearhart, MacKinnon, Steinem et al. But it doesn’t stop there. Many of these women have led the charge on domestic violence and rape law reforms that have done away with basic rights to due process and fair, impartial trials. MacKinnon pioneered sexual harassment law and may have been the one to invent the term. The child abuse hysteria of the 80’s may have been a direct result of the anti-porn crusade of Dworkin, MacKinnon, and Steinem.
The next generation of misandrists is already here. These are women like Sharon Osborne and the other women of “The Talk” who joked on national television when Catherine Becker sexually mutilated her husband after drugging him. They are the gender feminists of Sweden who open state-sponsored schools that portend to teach equality by emphasizing homosexual relationships and nearly excluding heteronormative relationships from the curriculum. They are the Swedish members of SCUM who produce videos depicting the brutal and senseless murder of men, then call upon women to “do their part.” They are Swedish feminists such as  Ireen von Wachenfeldt, chairwomen of the National Organization for Women’s Shelters who have professed adherence to the SCUM Manifesto as have other prominent Swedish government officials such as former Minister of Gender Equality Margareta Winberg, Professor Eva Lungren, and journalist Evin Rubar. Wachenfeldt publically stated “‘All men are animals…All men are emotional parasites… The male of the species is a biological disaster… To call a man an animal is to pay him a compliment.” They are the women of RadFemHub; Danielle Pynnonen, Kat Pinder, Isabelle Moreira, Mary Syrett, Julie LeComte, Lorraine Allen, Laila Namdarkhan, Pam O’Shaughnesey who are authors, teachers, childcare workers, and government officials from around the globe plotting and planning the destruction of the male sex via eugenics, murder, selective abortion, etc. They are Hugo Schwyzer, Michael Kimmel, Tom Matlack, The Conscious Men and many other men who might be considered the Men’s Auxiliary of SCUM as they support and defend the hate movement known as feminism. Solanas has indeed left a legacy. It’s a legacy of misandrous hatred and violence that by its own admission can only result in the destruction of the entire human race, men and women alike.

“Why produce even females? Why should there be future generations? What is their purpose? When aging and death are eliminated, why continue to reproduce? Why should we care what happens when we’re dead? Why should we care that there is no younger generation to succeed us.” – Valerie Solanas, SCUM Manifesto.

Several days ago this site ran an article addressing the unintentionally revealing ravings of a disturbed ideologue who still manages to cling to the pretence of being a brave righter of wrongs and champion of the meek. However, Eve Ensler demonstrated in her comments that her life-long obsession with rape is not driven by some noble humanism or desire for justice. She appears to simply be jealous of the physical strength and outboard plumbing which allows men the possibility of overpowering a smaller individual, and reflected in Ensler’s distorted desires, committing rape.
This wasn’t a new consideration for me, I did wonder if Eve might consider indulging herself with fantasies of raping individuals of lesser physical prowess than herself, children for example. Then I remembered she’s already included those fantasies in her play “the Vagina Monologues”. Whoops, I guess I’m late to the party. The reality that some women sexually abuse children is unsurprising. Women aren’t special human beings, they’re not innately innocent, or pure, or magical, they’re just humans. People quite naturally put themselves into positions of access to what they’re attracted to. If it’s children, then they’ll gravitate into roles affording access to children, and the sex of a potential child abuser has no impact on that.
However, the accepted narrative in our culture is dominated by the perverse ideology well known to readers of this site which places a masculine label on all that is negative. So despite continued reportage of cases like Vanessa George, Angela Allen, Tracy Lyons and Tracey Dawber (pedophilia), Casey Anthony (child murder), Crystal Dawn Mckenzie (murder) Rachel Hicks, Abbie Swogger, Lisa Marinelli (rape) – the approved party line remains focused solely on offenders who happen to be male.
According to Author and director of the UK Charity Kidscape, Michelle Elliot, over 75% of cases of child sexual abuse by adults were committed by women acting alone or without male participation, and this, according to Elliot, “messes up the narrative”. Elliot was blacklisted following her publication of “female sexual abuse of children” in 1994.
Returning to I’m-over-it-Eve and her rape fantasies, how long have ideologues used a belligerent mantra of women’s victimization to shout down more reasoned humanist voices pointing to peer reviewed research undermining the narrative of female victimhood? This goes beyond a childish inability to engage in civil debate, and beyond ideological blindness in which conforming data is selected and nonconforming data rejected. The feminist victim mantra is most understandable in recognition that it’s proponents are projecting their own unacknowledged impulses onto the sexual demographic accused of all wrong-doing in the world.
There is a simple reason why feminist ideologues who endlessly beat on the drum of female victimhood and male aggression rely so heavily on anecdotal evidence and debunked research like the infamous Koss study. Its not just that the peer reviewed data fails to support men=bad, women=good. The accepted narrative of male evil continuously promoted is projection of desire. The ideology commonly called feminism, which wraps itself in a phony blanket of pious humanism is, after all a doctrine built on the foundation of hatred and violence.
This realization is thrown into sharp focus by recent developments, including the reporting several on this site of an ongoing criminal conspiracy to engage in male-targeting eugenics. An article written by Pamel O’Shaughnessy used euphemistic language to suggest mass murder and eugenics as a solution to imagined male defect. This attracted a collection of feminist ideologues whose reactions ranged from the necessity of mass murder to reduce men to a manageable number under a female supremacist governance. For illustrative purpose, I’ve included a few of the weeks-old comments from that blog, left standing in place by the editor.
One cheerful enthusiast for mass murder and female supremacy said :

The *magic number* to bring the males under control is ~30% of the population

Believing themselves above public accountability, and above the law, other commenters also suggest eugenics and infanticide openly.

“Women need to stop raising male children. Women who raise male children are digging the graves of other females. Nobody wants to bite that bullet (except lesbian separatists) but it must be done.”
“it occurs to me that a female ob/gyn that was willing to perform sex-selective abortions on male fetuses would be giving a gift to the next generation”

Some openly lament the knowledge that sane women might refuse to join in a collective campaign of child murder.

“The danger of talking about “radical action” as being only things like killing all male babies at birth is that we know in our hearts that the vast majority of women will NEVER do that. NEVER. EVER.
So we can sit back snug in the belief that we know exactly what it will take to be free AND never have to do anything about it.”

Another commenter rebukes those who’ve preceded her for their apparent moderation and timidity.

“and so what if there is no such thing as radical action, or realistic radical action? are you honestly saying that there is danger in speaking the truth? or do you disagree that radical action is limited to things that are practically unspeakable like infanticide?
if something is true there is no harm in saying it, is there? I mean, the danger in *not* discussing things like a biological solution is…it doesn’t get talked about. we don’t go to the ends of our thoughts. “

These radical, extremist, openly murderous ideologues conducted this discussion in a publicly visible blog, which weeks after being outed by commenters on this site – remains online. The author of this blog, far from being a diagnosed mental patient is a trained lawyer, a published author, and a director of a major political organization.
This private murder club is out in the open because it’s not actually radical. These women believe they are immune from legal consequence. They may be right.
Individuals attending Occupy Wall Street protests have also provided a glimpse into increasingly open expression of murderous and violent fantasies of ideologues.
“Eradicate males” Is what one woman’s sign at an Occupy Wall Street protest rally read. She paraded this message of genocide in public, knowing that the message would be pushed, and that she’d face no consequence.
Another group of self identified feminists advocated for re-distribution of weapons from police to themselves. The picture on their banner was an outline of an assault rifle. For self protection, and not murder, right ladies?
Feminism has always been an escalation of chivalry – the normalized ideal of male disposability. As an ideology, the female favouring doctrine of violence and hate has always relied heavily on male enforcement of female privilege, and male disposability for the convenience and comfort of women, but it has progressed. Ideologues who, amazingly continue to claim they are oppressed, increasingly broadcast an open call for large scale murder. Do members of the public need to hear the gunshots outside their doors to wake up to this?
The continued narrative that feminism is anything except violent, brutish and murderous melts like wax in a blast furnace when it’s examined in the light of evidence. Eve Ensler is a frustrated rapist. Dworkin was a frustrated murderer. Mackinnon was a frustrated dictator. And feminists ideologues who continue to promote their narrative of omnipresent rape and physical abuse are themselves frustrated rapists and violent abusers.
The ongoing political push to reverse the burden of evidence in accusations of rape is wholly unrelated to any desire for justice or reduction of sexual violence. It is the manifestation of the desire of followers of a violent ideology to re-purpose the courts into a tool of sexual violence against the demographic they openly hate.
This depraved perversity was summarized in a recent letter published by Brown University’s newspaper, with apparent pride at the abandonment of decency in favour of a wholly ideological governance. Western civilization had a period of wholly ideological rule once before in history. It’s a period commonly called the dark ages. Are the ideologues pushing for this outcome so craven they seek a repeat of legal systems using dogma, torture and astrology to determine and enforce their doctrinal truth? Apparently so.
This is where stupidity of a wholly new level emerges. Let’s assume, just for a moment that somehow we arrive a few years down the road in a world of ideological feminist governance. Men are chattels, reduced to livestock – or, as ideologues like Pamela O’Shaughnessy would have it, an agricultural product.

“My own personal vision is that women will cure the sickness that ails men [...]
I’m serious about this. If we can do it with corn, men ought to be easy.”

Try to imagine this feminist utopia, men in cages, maybe raised in laboratories, lobotomized so their keepers don’t need to suffer the cries for help as their bodies are used as procreative dispensers. Does that sound like a functional society? Or does it have the character of a nightmare world.
Some men might be left intact for use operating heavy machinery, or protecting natural resources such as oil from theft by other nation states. The dirty, dangerous jobs where workers still die – men will be needed for them too.
Now try to imagine getting from here to that no-too-distant future without massive and society-wide violence. Imagine somehow creating that feminist distopia without decades of ongoing and universal violence.

During the recent flurry of activity around the debate, which will thankfully end in two days, JtO and I have scheduled a vigorous round of activism regarding CafeMom and the pro-misandry, pro-violence, pro-sexual mutilation blogging in that forum.  We will be following through with that beginning on Sunday.
But as times would have it, we have come upon an even more egregious example of bigotry from another feminist blogger. In fact, this one makes Nicole Fabian-Weber quickly pale into insignificance (though we are not done with her).
Some of you have undoubtedly already heard of what is going on at a blog calledRadfem Hub, a Radical Feminist Collective Blog.  Up on that site right now, by a writer calling herself Vliet Tiptree, is nothing less than a fledgling manifesto calling for extermination of half the human race; the male half, that is. Oh, and she has a plan. Areal plan.
I am linking you to the blog post here (read it very carefully), but the short of it is that Tiptree is advocating premeditated and orchestrated violent destruction of men and boys in purely Hitleresque fashion. In her call to action, she seeks “resolution” as compared to the better known term “final solution.”  She, and I must admit with some skill, skirts around specifics that would justify her immediate arrest for conspiracy, but the intent is more than crystal clear.
After taking her readers through accounts of what she cites as justifiable criminal acts by women in the name of suffrage, and invoking the extremes in rationale of ideologues like Sheila Jeffrys, she lays down a significant bombshell. To wit:

Our Emphasis on Fundamental Change.  We have moved beyond palliation (negotiation, mediation, reform, compromise, engagement with the System) to exploring effective means of extirpating male pathology, including being open to biological explanations and treatment of such psychopathy. We are concerned with the overall structure of male oppression. We are open to going wherever the evidence and experience lead us.

And then she closes the diatribe with this particular nugget

As to what that cure may be, my best bet is that what’s wrong with men is that their androgens need genetic modification. I’m serious about this. If we can do it with corn, men ought to be easy.

Apparently her writing had the intended effect. Take a look at this comment that appeared under her post. And you might want to look at the others as well.

Also, another feminist blogger has taken a liking to her virulent message. She goes by Sargasso Sea, and has a blog bearing the interesting name, Radical Resolution.
The comments on her blog are equally riddled with sadistic, pro-violence sentiments. Even more, it is clear from the ideas expressed in her post that she has intentions to network this through the internet with other radicals of similar mentality and to exploit their connections to feminist ideologues already placed within the standing establishment power structure. In short, this is, while quite insane, laid out within a strategic plan.  There is nothing satirical about it.
The time for analysis of this growing problem is over and the time to take serious action on it commences immediately. Therefore, AVfM is now offering a $1,000.00 cash award (or donate it to the charity of your choice)  to whoever can provide us with verifiable information of Vliet Tiptrees real identity, including her name, residential address, place and address of employment, name of spouse if applicable, and images and any other information that may be used to bring her identity and location into public view.
Those seeking to claim the reward will be aware that  Vliet Tiptree’s real world identity and all available personal information will be posted to this site and otherwise distributed on the internet. Additionally, AVfM will print posters that contain real her name, image, online identity, quotes and the factual declaration that she is a threat to her community. We will also work with other MRA’s close enough to her location to distribute those posters directly in her residential neighborhood and at her place of employment if applicable.
If no MRA’s are available in her area, we will travel wherever she is to execute the plan.
In order to support this effort we are asking MRA’s for pledges of financial backing. What that essentially means is if you want to support this effort, just post that here, or email me with the specific dollar amount of your pledge.  We will only call in those pledges if and when we confirm that information received is accurate and valid. I am not comfortable committing funds already donated to this site for general operations, so I will personally incur any expense on this that is not defrayed by specified pledges.
Regardless of the level of backing, AVfM is going through with this effort.
Please email to avoiceformen@yahoo.com or at john@johntheother.com