S.C.U.M. Society for Cutting Up Men Manifesto. - 1968

New York: The Olympia Press,, 1968. Overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex First edition, first printing in book form. Solanas wrote this radical feminist text between 1965 and 1967, originally self-publishing mimeographed copies to distribute in New York (selling them for $1 to women, $2 to men), the text of which differs slightly to this edition and lacks the commentaries by Maurice Girodias and Paul Krassner added here. The manifesto opens: "Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex". The controversial text, which has been interpreted both straightforwardly and as a parody of patriarchal philosophical tracts, has become notorious. It is now seen as a key piece of the 1960s feminist canon, as radical feminist activists of the time found within it "something no one else was articulating: a wild and uncompromising insistence that female subordination was utterly primal. What it voiced was new and profoundly compelling: incandescent, unladylike rage, which, once unleashed, fundamentally reshaped the women's movement" (Hamilton). In 1968 Solanas was sentenced to a three-year prison term for shooting Andy Warhol, an event referenced on the rear cover of this work. Solanas's life was the basis for the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol. Octavo. Original pictorial wrappers, spine lettered in black, covers lettered in white, edges densely sprinkled blue. Front cover image of Solanas by Fred W. McDarrah. Spine slightly faded, crease to front cover otherwise a very good copy indeed. Breanne Fahs, Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote Scum (and Shot Andy Warhol), 2014; Marybeth Hamilton, "Remembering 1968: The S.C.U.M. Manifesto for the Society for Cutting up Men", History Workshop Journal, July 2018.