You’ve probably seen the acronym. Maybe on a vintage t-shirt or a gritty punk rock poster from the late sixties. Most people assume the Society for Cutting Up Men was some kind of organized underground militia. A secret cell of radicals training in a basement somewhere in Greenwich Village.
It wasn't.
Honestly, the "Society" part of the name was basically a joke—or at least a bit of a stretch. There was no membership roll. No dues. No monthly meetings at the local community center. It was a one-woman show, and that woman was Valerie Solanas. She was a writer, a drifter, and someone who felt completely chewed up by the mid-century American machine. When she wrote the SCUM Manifesto in 1967, she wasn't actually forming a group. She was venting a level of frustration that most people couldn't even fathom.
The Reality of Valerie Solanas and Her "Society"
Valerie Solanas lived on the absolute margins. We’re talking about a woman who spent a lot of time homeless, selling her own writing on the streets of New York just to grab a meal. She was incredibly sharp—she had a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland—but her life was a series of traumatic events that left her deeply cynical about the world.
She wrote the manifesto as a scathing, satirical, and hyper-violent critique of patriarchal culture. The title was catchy. It was provocative. It was meant to shock. But for Solanas, the Society for Cutting Up Men was a rhetorical device. In her mind, the "society" consisted of any woman who was "dominant, secure, self-confident, nasty, and arrogant." She wanted to flip the script on a world that told women to be quiet and subservient.
It’s easy to look back and see it as just a piece of performance art, but Solanas was serious about her rage. She didn't just write about violence; she acted on it. On June 3, 1968, she walked into The Factory and shot Andy Warhol. That single moment took a fringe feminist text and turned it into a national headline. Suddenly, everyone wanted to know what this "society" actually was.
Why the manifesto stuck around
Why do we still talk about it? Why is it still taught in university gender studies courses?
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Because it’s visceral.
The prose isn't polite. It doesn't ask for permission. Solanas argues that men have ruined the world through war, capitalism, and emotional stuntedness. She suggests that the only way to fix things is to "overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex."
It’s extreme. It’s wild. But it also hits on themes that still resonate today, like the crushing weight of capitalism and the way gender roles can feel like a cage. Even if you think her "solutions" are insane—and most people do—you can’t deny the raw power of her anger.
Misconceptions About the Society for Cutting Up Men
One of the biggest myths is that there were thousands of "SCUM" members waiting for a signal. In reality, the most famous "member" besides Solanas was arguably Maurice Girodias, the publisher of Olympia Press. He wasn't a member; he was just a guy who saw a way to make money off a controversial manuscript. He actually signed Solanas to a contract that she later believed was a conspiracy to steal her work. That paranoia is part of what led to the Warhol shooting.
Another big mistake? Thinking it was a serious blueprint for a utopia.
A lot of scholars, like Avital Ronell, have argued that the SCUM Manifesto is actually a piece of "terrorist" satire. It uses the language of the time—the manifesto format—and pushes it to such an absurd limit that it becomes a mirror. It asks the reader: "If you find this violence horrifying, why don't you find the daily violence against women just as bad?"
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The Warhol Connection
The shooting changed everything. Before that, Solanas was just another eccentric figure in the New York art scene. Afterward, she was a symbol. Some radical feminists, like Ti-Grace Atkinson of the National Organization for Women (NOW), actually stepped up to support her. They saw her as a "heroine" of the feminist movement, though this caused a massive rift within NOW itself.
Betty Friedan, the author of The Feminine Mystique, was horrified. She wanted the movement to be seen as respectable and mainstream. Solanas was the opposite of respectable. She was the nightmare the media used to discredit the entire fight for women's rights.
The Legacy of a One-Woman Revolution
It’s weirdly fascinating how the Society for Cutting Up Men has transitioned from a radical threat to a pop-culture reference. You’ll see it in American Horror Story: Cult, where Lena Dunham played Solanas. You’ll see it referenced in punk songs and zines. It’s become a shorthand for "extreme female rage."
But we have to be careful not to scrub away the reality. Solanas was a deeply troubled person who spent much of her later life in and out of psychiatric hospitals. She died in 1988 in a welfare hotel in San Francisco, largely forgotten by the public at the time.
The "society" never grew. It never organized. It never "cut up" anyone in the way the title suggested, other than the tragic shooting of Warhol and the injury of Mario Amaya. What remains is a text. A very loud, very angry, very influential text.
Is it still relevant?
In a way, yeah. We live in an era where "eat the rich" and "men are trash" are common social media refrains. Solanas was doing the 1960s version of that, just with a much higher level of intensity and a lot less irony. She was responding to a world where she felt she had no agency. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose, and that’s the energy that drips off every page of her manifesto.
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The SCUM Manifesto teaches us about the fringes of social movements. It shows what happens when people feel completely excluded from the conversation. They don't just go away. They get louder. They get more radical. Sometimes, they pick up a gun.
How to Understand the SCUM Phenomenon Today
If you’re trying to wrap your head around this whole thing, don't look for a group. Look for the context.
- Read the text as a period piece. It was written at the height of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights movement. Radicalism was the air people breathed.
- Acknowledge the mental health aspect. You can’t talk about Solanas without acknowledging her struggles with paranoid schizophrenia. It doesn't invalidate her critique, but it provides necessary context for her actions.
- Look at the art. The Warhol shooting didn't just hurt a man; it changed the trajectory of Pop Art. Warhol became much more reclusive and obsessed with death afterward.
- Separate the myth from the person. The "SCUM" legend is often much larger than the actual life of Valerie Solanas.
The Society for Cutting Up Men remains one of the most provocative footnotes in American history. It’s a story about art, trauma, gender, and the thin line between satire and reality. It’s uncomfortable. It’s messy. And that’s exactly why it hasn't been forgotten.
Actionable Insights for the Curious
If you want to dig deeper into this specific slice of counter-culture history, start by reading the SCUM Manifesto itself. It’s short. You can finish it in an hour. Don't go in expecting a logical political platform. Go in expecting a scream.
Next, look up the documentary Valerie Solanas and the SCUM Manifesto. It gives a much better sense of the New York scene she was navigating. You should also check out the biography Valerie Solanas by Breanne Fahs. It’s the most comprehensive look at her life and dispels a lot of the internet rumors.
Finally, compare her writing to other manifestos of the era, like the Black Panther Party Platform. You'll start to see a pattern of how marginalized groups in the late sixties used extreme language to demand a seat at the table—or to threaten to flip the table over entirely. This isn't just about one woman's anger; it's about a specific moment in time when the world felt like it was breaking apart. Understanding that helps make sense of why a "society" that didn't exist still has so much power today.