On June 3, 1968, a woman approached two police officers in Times Square, New York City. “Here,” she said, reaching into a bag she carried. She brought out two pistols, one a .32 semi-automatic and one a .22 revolver, and handed them over to the shocked uniformed men. “I shot him,” she confessed. “He had too much control over my life.”
Valerie Solanas had a difficult past with men, apparently. Born in the 1930s, Valerie suffered abuse at the hands of her father. After her parents divorce, Valerie became an incredibly rebellious girl. Her mother had her removed from the household, sending her to live with her grandparents. However, the grandfather was a drunk, and he beat her often. Valerie had suffered enough. At age 15, she left the home and took to the streets. Sometimes during the 1950s, she had a child with a married man, but she gave up the child, a boy, for adoption and never saw him again. At that point, Valerie managed to complete a high school education and enter college. She received a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, graduating with honors. That was followed by some graduate courses at the University of Minnesota and some a Cal Berkeley. It was during her graduate work that Valerie began writing a document that came to be known as the SCUM Manifesto.
Now, you can imagine what the document said. By this time in her life Valerie was a committed feminist. Rumor had it that SCUM stood for the “Society for Cutting Up Men.” The work was a satire against the patriarchy. Valerie’s writings advocated for the elimination of men in the world, stating that the world would be a better place without them. And, even though the writing was satire with a definite tongue-in-cheek tone to it, given Valerie’s background, it’s easy to see that there was a good bit of truth to what she wrote. Men had abused and used her for as long as she could remember. So, the manifesto gave voice to her feelings of helplessness in the face of the abuse she suffered. The work has been translated into many languages and is often included in lists of feminist must-reads.
Valerie also wrote a play about a street-wise, man hating prostitute who ends up killing one of her customers. Apparently, much of the play is autobiographical. She gave it to a friend, an influential artist, who promised he would he would read the manuscript and see what he could do to help her get it produced. After some time, Valerie followed up with the man to see what progress had been made on the script. The man said that, sadly, he had misplaced or lost the manuscript, and he was unable to help her. Valerie became understandably furious. Here was another example, she felt, of men using her and lying to her. She reportedly told a friend that she was going to shoot the artist and then, she felt, the publicity over the shooting would cause the play to be produced.
So, that brings us back to June 3, 1968, and the surrender of Valerie’s guns and herself to the two policemen in Times Square. It turns out that Valerie’s victim was shot outside of his building, two of her bullets ripping through several internal organs. He flatlined before doctors were barely able to revive him. The man would suffer from the effects of the shooting for the rest of his life, dying at age 58. Of course, the year Valerie shot him, 1968, assassinations and attempted assassinations filled the news. Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot in Memphis that April. Bobby Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles only two days after Valerie shot her victim. Therefore it’s easy to forget that on the 3rd, Valerie Solanas shot and almost killed the most famous artist in the world at that time.
Andy Warhol.
The Rest of the Story 