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Valerie Solanas (1936-1988) |
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Valerie Solanas (1936-1988) |
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| Biography |
| 1936- On April 9th, Valerie Jean Solanas is born to Louis and Dorothy Bondo Solanas in Ventor, New Jersey |
| 1940s- Valerie’s parents divorce. She moves with her mother to Washington, D.C. |
| 1949- Valerie’s mother marries Red Moran; shortly after, Valerie is sent away to Catholic school |
| 1951- at age 15 Valerie becomes pregnant by a sailor |
| 1954- Solanas graduates from High School. She goes
on to attend the University of Maryland, studying
psychology. She supports herself by working in the psych lab and later through prostitution and panhandling. |
| 1967- Valerie ends up in Greenwich Village, NYC.
-She writes a play entitled, “Up Your Ass;” she seeks out Andy Warhol to produce it. -Solanas writes the SCUM Manifesto and sells mimeographed copies on the streets of NYC, this is where she meets publisher Maurice Giordias of the Olympia Press |
| 1968- Valerie announces that she wants to kill her publisher,
Girodias, and an underground newspaper
publisher gives her money to buy a gun -On June 3rd, Valerie shoots Andy Warhol, and several others in his “Factory” -June 28th, she is indicted on charges of attempted murder, assault and illegal possession of a gun |
| 1973- Valerie is in and out of psychiatric centers |
| 1988- On April 26th, at the age of 52, Valerie Solanas dies of emphysema and pneumonia in San Francisco |
| On the SCUM Manifesto |
| Solanas on the Society for Cutting Up Men (SCUM)- “It’s hypothetical. No, hypothetical is the wrong word. It’s just a literary device. There’s no organization called SCUM... (it’s) a state of mind. In other words, women who think a certain way are in SCUM. Men who think a certain way are in the men’s auxiliary of SCUM.” |
| Tilly and Gurin :
“The author chooses to express herself through the channel of an outrageous conscious parody intended as exorcism. It is the well-known device of resorting to madness in order to expose the truth.” |
| Alice Echols:
“Solanas’s SCUM Manifesto which she wrote in 1967, was one of the earliest, wittiest, and most eccentric expressions of second-wave feminism. Solanas’s unabashed misandry–especially her belief in men’s biological inferiority–her endorsement of relationships between ‘independent women,’ and her dismissal of sex as ‘the refuge of the mindless’ contravened the sort of radical feminism which prevailed in most women’s groups across the country” |
| Sources: |
| Castro, G. (1990). American Feminism; A Contemporary
History. New York: New York University Press.
Echols, A. (1989). Daring to Be Bad; Radical Feminism in America 1967-1975. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Schneir, M. (1994). Feminism in Our Time; The Essential Writings, World War II to the Present. New York: Vintage Books. Tilly, L., Gurin, P. (1990). Women, Politics and Change. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. |
| Web Sites |
| http://www.ai.mit.edu/people/shivers/rants/scum.html
(full text of the SCUM Manifesto)
http://www.bcn.net/~jpiazzo/valbio.htm http://members.aol.com/squeeaky/scum.html http://www.clpgh.org/warhol/archives/archives05.html |
 
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