reverse acronyming

[Thom Harrison]

I remember SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men) from an article by Shepherd
Mead in the sixties or early seventies.  I wish I could remember the title.
 It was a parody about men's rights in which Mead proposed another
organization, something like Men Out to Uphold and Support Each other, or,
MOUSE, with the rallying cry, "Are we men or MOUSEs?"

Anyone else remember it?

Thom



At 12:33 PM 10/31/01 +0800, you wrote:
>At 10:48 AM -0500 10/31/01, Drew Danielson wrote:
>>To glom onto this topic:  how about acronyms that are used as
>>back-formed mnemonic devices, with an relationship in meaning between
>>the 'acronym' and the phrase it 'represents'?
>>
>>The examples on the Bacronym page appear to be arbitrary words not
>>directly related to the concept at hand (unless there is an in-group
>>meaning to the acronymed words that is not apparent to an outsider).
>>
>>I would think that the example that Prof. Johnson presents is one of
>>these.  Others (current among certain discourse communities) might
>>include GOD="good orderly direction"...
>
>Or those "G.O.D." trucks you see on the highway that proclaim
>"Guaranteed Overnight Delivery" while also somehow supporting the
>Deity.  My favorite historical backronym (as I usually spell it) is
>
>SCUM = the Society for Cutting Up Men  [courtesy of Valerie Solanas,
>if memory serves]
>
>A more standard examples is WAVES (supposedly for "Women Accepted for
>Volunteer Emergency Service"), formed as the counterpart to (the
>forwardly acronymic) WACs
>
>larry
>
Thom Harrison
Macon State College