I'm reading this, as a man of course, and cheering on Solanas' bad-ass, hilarious, blunt-force-trauma, withering, genocidal rant against men. If I might make a crude equation, my irrational response might correlate to a Jew cheering on Hitler at the Nuremberg rallies. (Yes, it is a crude equation -- I'm not in danger -- but you get my drift).

Heller (2008), p.165 (and see pp. 15–16), citing as excerpting SCUM Manifesto Kolmar, Wendy, & Frances Bartkowski, eds., Feminist Theory: A Reader (Mountain View, Calif.: Mayfield, 2000), & Albert, Judith Clavir, & Stewart Edward Albert, eds., The Sixties Papers: Documents of a Rebellious Decade (1984).

She called it the SCUM Manifesto, with the acronym not spelled out, and with no full stops after the letters of SCUM. This was the title used for all subsequent editions. In fact, even in earlier versions of the book, 'Society for Cutting Up Men' had not been mentioned anywhere in the text (...) SCUM was the voice of those women, like Valerie, an enraged, impoverished loner-lesbian, outside any group or any society, who were the rejected, the dregs, the refuse, the outcast. The scum, in fact. The spelling out of her coded title by Girodias was one more act of patriarchal intervention, an attempt to possess." [103] Hoberman, J. (2003). The Magic Hour: Film at Fin de Siècle. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. ISBN 1-56639-996-3.

the ["acronymiz[ing]"] gloss on SCUM permitted the title to pass into other languages with annihilating precision: Manifest der Gesellschaft zur Vernichtung der Männer (1969), Manifesto de la Organización para el Extermino del Hombre (1977), Manifesto per l'eliminzione dei masch (1994), and whatever it says to the same effect in Czech (1998)", [97] in The New York Times, [98] and elsewhere, [99] [100] See also Siegel (2007), p.2: "Valerie Solanas, author of the man-hating tract known as the S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto, shot Andy Warhol.... [¶] To women of the Baby Boomer generation, th[is and other]... opening salvos of a revolution are moments of canonical—and personal—feminist history." & Siegel (2007), pp.71–72: "Solanas's supporters argued that the shooting of a prominent male avant-garde figure was a bold political statement offered in the name of women's liberation". Violet, Ultra (1990). Famous for 15 Minutes: My Years with Andy Warhol. New York: Avon Books. ISBN 978-0-380-70843-7. Winkiel argues that revolutionary Roxanne Dunbar moved to the U.S. "convinced that a women's revolution had begun", [13] [110] forming Cell 16 with a program based on the Manifesto. [111] According to Winkiel, although Solanas was "outraged" at the women's movement's "appropriat[ion]" of the Manifesto, [112] "the shooting [of Warhol] represented the feminist movement's righteous rage against patriarchy". [78] Heller, Dana (2008). "Shooting Solanas: radical feminist history and the technology of failure". In Hesford, Victoria; Diedrich, Lisa (eds.). Feminist Time against Nation Time: Gender, Politics, and the Nation-State in an Age of Permanent War. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. pp.151–168. ISBN 978-0-7391-1123-9.

Conditions Governing Access

Rosenberg, Tiina (December 2010). "Still Angry after All These Years, or Valerie Solanas under Your Skin" (PDF). Theatre Journal. 62 (4): 529–534. doi: 10.1353/tj.2010.a413923. Laura Winkiel argues that Solanas' shooting of Andy Warhol and Mario Amaya was directly tied to the Manifesto. [106] [k] [l] After shooting Warhol, Solanas told a reporter, "Read my manifesto and it will tell you what I am." [107] Heller, however, states that Solanas "intended no connection between the manifesto and the shooting". [101] Harding suggests that "there is no clear indication in Solanas' ambiguous statement to reporters that the contents of the manifesto would explain the specifics of her actions, at least not in the sense of providing a script for them." [108] Harding views the SCUM Manifesto as an "extension, not the source, of performative acts, even a violent one act like the shooting of Warhol." [109] Solanas reported that her father regularly sexually abused her. [8] Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother remarried shortly afterwards. [9] Solanas disliked her stepfather and began rebelling against her mother, becoming a truant. As a child, she wrote insults for children to use on one another, for the cost of a dime. She beat up a girl in high school who was bothering a younger boy, and also hit a nun. [4] In 1967, Solanas self-published her best-known work, the SCUM Manifesto, a scathing critique of patriarchal culture. The manifesto's opening words are:

According to Village Voice reviewer B. Ruby Rich, "SCUM was an uncompromising global vision" that criticized men for many faults including war and not curing disease; [13] many but not all points were "quite accurate"; [13] some kinds of women were also criticized, subject to women's changing when men are not around; [44] and sex (as in sexuality) was criticized as "exploitative". [45] According to Janet Lyon, the Manifesto "pitt[ed]... 'liberated' women... against 'brainwashed' women". [46] The bulk of the Manifesto consists of a list of critiques of the male sex. They are divided into the following sections: [35]

Due to the aforementioned grievances, the Manifesto concludes that the elimination of the male sex is a moral imperative. [36] It argues that women must replace the "money-work system" with a system of complete automation, as this will lead to the collapse of the government and the loss of men's power over women. [37] Beauvallet, Ève. "Prise de Houellebecq autour d'un manifeste". Libération (in French) . Retrieved 2023-05-15.

See also Hoberman (2003), p.49: "Valerie Solanas really was a nobody until she shot Andy Warhol. But once The SCUM Manifesto was underlined in blood, Solanas hardly had to wait for admirers.... Solanas was claimed as an 'important spokeswoman' by the radical wing of NOW...."

Collection organization

Solanas rose to fame when she shot Andy Warhol in 1968. But before she resorted to such drastic measures, she created the S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men) Manifesto. She founded S.C.U.M. in 1967 in pursuit of "eliminating the male sex." Scholars debate whether Solanas' manifesto was satire or not, but it definitely got a powerful message across: women are not to be trifled with.