Valerie Solanus

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Valerie Solanus was the writer-prostitute-lesbian-gun-wielding assailant famous for writing the Scum Manifesto and for shooting pop artist Andy Warhol. In The Prisoner of Sex, Norman Mailer called the Scum Manifesto the "magnetic north of the feminist movement". S.C.U.M. stands for the Society for Cutting Up Men.

Solanus's reputation is in dispute and reveals much about the claimants. She is called brilliant, yet confused genes and chromosomes in her Manifesto. She is regarded as a martyr, yet called up Andy Warhol for a year after her release from prison to harrass him. Feminist Robin Morgan demonstrated for Solanus's release from prison. Robin Morgan later went on to edit Ms. Magazine in the 1990s. Solanus reportedly considered Warhol a vampire and spray-painted her bullets silver. She tried to wrap them in foil, but it made her gun jam. It jammed anyway, which is why she was unable to shoot the third man.

Sisterhood Is Powerful edited by Robin Morgan included excerpts of the Scum Manifesto. It left out five points with which modern feminists would disagree--but it did say that the good was female and the bad was male:

• male/bad: emotional
• male/bad: animal-like
• female/good: objectivity
• female/good: technology, especially automation and biotechnology intended to make men unnecessary for reproduction.
• male/bad: censorship

Warhol's friend Lou Reed never forgave Solanus for the attack and recorded a derisive song about her.

By Valerie Solanus

• Scum Manifesto London, Olympia Press, introduction by Vivian Gornick, 1971, ISBN 0700410309

Phoenix Press (UK), March 1991 ISBN 0948984031

Verso; London, New York; introduction by Avital Ronell, 2004, ISBN

• "Up Your Ass" (play)

Other Sources

• The Prisoner of Sex by Norman Mailer ISBN 0917657594
• I Shot Andy Warhol (1996) from IMDB
• SCUM MANIFESTO-by Valerie Solanas (fulltext)