Valerie Solanas: The Defiant Life of the Woman Who Wrote SCUM

by Breanne Fahs

  A: Vermont. . . .

  Q: .25 calabre [sic]. Did you have this on you too?

  A: Yeah. I had it in my pocketbook.

  Q: And was this loaded also?

  A: Yeah.

  Q: And where did you get that?

  A: In Reno.

  Q: Did you have any other weapons on you at the time?

  A: I had that ice pick in the bag.

  Q: Why did you have that for?

  A: I don’t know. I thought maybe the gun would jam. . . .

  Q: Why did you want to shoot him?

  A: That’s something it’s very involved and I don’t want to get into that right now. . . .

  Q: Did you shoot anyone else?

  A: Well, I accidentally shot Amaya.

  Q: How did you happen to shoot him?

  A: He just got in the way. . . .

  Q: What did you do then after you shot him?

  A: I left.

  Q: Where did you leave to?

  A: I just went downstairs. I wandered around.

  Q: And then where did you go?

  A: And then I got on a subway and I got off at 42nd Street and then I walked about a block and I ran into him (indicating Ptl. Schmilax). . . .

  Q: These two boxes of cartridges, did you have those with you?

  A: No. They were in a bag which was left at the studio.

  Q: And were these items also left in the bag?

  A: Right.

  Q: I’m indicating a Social Security card and a PSICHI National Honorary Psychology card and a University of Md. Identification card.194

  People at the Factory suspected that Valerie shot Andy because she felt bitter about his not producing Up Your Ass; they also recalled that she had at one time accused Andy of dubbing over her voice in the film I, a Man. Valerie sensed that Andy only wanted to exploit her and she had indeed called to accuse him of stealing, and losing, the copy of her play that he had received from her.195 Recall that decades later, Andy’s copy of Up Your Ass, a copy Valerie cared deeply about, was found at the bottom of a silver trunk belonging to Billy Name, “tossed in with Billy’s lighting equipment and other gear.” As Judith, Valerie’s sister, said, “So you see Warhol did steal Valerie’s play, just like she feared.”196

  Others have offered psychological analyses for why Valerie shot Andy. In the Village Voice, Amy Taubin wrote: “Lacking the attributes that might have made her an asset to the Warhol scene—she wasn’t pretty, rich, well-connected, or willing to serve—she was quickly rejected. In a sense, Solanas shot Warhol because it was her only way of getting his attention.”197 In some ways, Margo agreed, as she believed Valerie did not shoot Andy in order to get away with it. Valerie turned herself in where she could get the most publicity, in Times Square. “She shot him because she was powerless and she wanted to become famous.”198

  Valerie’s own insights about the shootings speak to her frustrations with Andy, her general rage at the mistreatment she faced with Olympia Press and Maurice Girodias, and her broader gender critiques. A decade after the shooting, she told her then-boyfriend, Louis Zwiren, that the only factual reporting about the shootings appeared in True Crime.199 Judith astutely observed, “Valerie did not want to kill Andy Warhol, the individual, but Warhol the man, the one with the power, the control, the fame, the money, the prestige. Everything came together in one horrendous moment when paranoid delusion fused with intolerable reality. . . . I don’t think she planned it. . . . Girodias was the real target, but for Valerie everything was her theories. Violence was just something that happened.”200

  Some (particularly the press) even blamed Andy himself for bringing on the shooting, with one Time piece exclaiming, “Like some Nathanael West hero, the pop-art king was the blond guru of a nightmare world, photographing depravity and calling it truth. He surrounded himself with freakily named people—Viva, Ultra Violet, International Velvet, Ingrid Superstar—playing games of lust, perversion, drug addiction, and brutality before his crotchety cameras. Last week one of his grotesque bit players made the game quite real. . . . Val was as bad as her word.”201 Even Andy had a remarkably nonchalant way of explaining the shooting: “I couldn’t figure out why, of all the people Valerie must have known, I had to be the one to get shot. I guess it was just being in the wrong place at the right time. That’s what assassination is all about. I realized that it was just timing and that nothing terrible had ever happened to any of us before now. Crazy people had always fascinated me because they were so creative—they were incapable of doing things normally. Usually they would never hurt anybody, they were just disturbed themselves; but how would I ever know again which was which?”202

  Valerie faced a hearing on June 5 and refused the service of two lawyers whom Maurice had hired for her, preferring to speak on her own behalf. During the trial, she was asked whether she had shot Andy because he would not film one of her scripts. Valerie replied again that “it was for the opposite reason. He had a legal claim on my work.” Criminal court judge David Getzoff ordered the remark stricken from the record, admonishing Valerie, “You must realize this is a serious charge.” She retorted, “That’s why it’s going to remain in my competent hands.”203 Valerie regretted next to nothing, only later admitting that her single regret about shooting Andy was that she could not get her play back.204

  An acquaintance later told reporters, “If anyone ever told Valerie she was a bad shot, she’d kick his head in!”205 In a 1977 interview with Howard Smith, Valerie reflected on the shootings: “I go by an absolute moral standard.” “You believe you go by an absolute standard?” Smith repeated. “That’s right.” “That doesn’t mean it necessarily is . . . Valerie, you have often been unfair. I’m sure you are not a saint.” “Yes I am. I don’t rip people off. Compared to you I absolutely am. Most certainly. Oh yes. You can put that in print.” “Valerie, do you want to get into a discussion now about shooting people?” “I consider that a moral act. And I consider it immoral that I missed. I should have done target practice.”206

  PROVOCATION

  The Contentious Birth of Radical Feminism

  1968–1973

  There are so many roots to the tree of anger/that sometimes the branches shatter/before they bear.

  —Audre Lorde, Who Said It Was Simple

  “DARLING, SHE’S FURIOUS. YOU HAVE TO SPELL HER name correctly,” cautioned Florynce Kennedy, speaking to the press. “It’s Solanas. S-O-L-A-N-A-S. Not Solanis. She’s tired of you writers misspelling her name.”1 Perhaps more than any of her many other identities, Valerie Solanas identified as a provocateur. Known for her fierce anger and humor, she pushed, prodded, and provoked her way through the history of the women’s movement, even posthumously. Whether her actions had revolutionary potential—or whether they signified personal torment and despair—provoked intense debate following her shooting of Andy Warhol.

  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, leader of the radical feminist group Cell 16, once astutely said of Valerie, “Perhaps destroyers like her can never transform their energy but only inspire others.”2 Or, as librarian Donny Smith believed:

  She scared other women, and not just with her ideas. She looked like a dyke and often identified herself as one, loudly. She refused to hold a regular job, and her panhandling and prostitution made it all too obvious how dependent a woman was on the male-dominated economy for “nurture and feed.” She could be hostile, arrogant, and condescending, and was full of panics, anxieties, and paranoias. She had no patience for politicking. She considered her manifesto the last word on feminism and any further discussion was either plagiarism or “bullshit.” She was in no way qualified to be a revolutionary or a feminist leader.3

  Still, Valerie found her way, albeit unwillingly, into the center of the emerging feminist movement, helping to transform it and break it apart.

  A CLIMATE FOR WOMEN’S RAGE GROWS

  While the hand’s rocking the cradle it won’t be rocking the boat.

  —Valerie Solanas, Up Your Ass

 
While Valerie never officially aligned with any organizations in the swelling collective anger arising from the late 1960s women’s movement, her ideas and actions played a role in the trajectory of this collective challenge to patriarchy. Prior to the Warhol shootings and the publication of SCUM Manifesto, a climate for women’s rage had started growing across the United States, particularly in New York City. The government tailored women’s rights according to their marital status, refused to recognize women as independent from men, and defined nearly all aspects of social life in paternalistic terms—women needed protection, engaged in caretaking, and held traditional social and sexual values to affirm their femininity. Women were getting increasingly fed up with this—particularly as they noticed how many more privileges and rights men had secured—giving new momentum to a collective, growing sense of women’s rage.

  The epicenter of anger was the issue of abortion, as the government blocked basic measures to protect women’s health and safety during unwanted pregnancy. Radical feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson described this vividly:

  Drip, drip, drip. It was all over, all over, just all over. Women couldn’t sit in first class on the plane without a man with them. Trivial, but constant. Women couldn’t open their own bank accounts without a male signature. I was the first elected president for New York NOW and I had the telephone for NOW in my home. You could always tell an abortion call before they said a thing. The voice was humiliated and tentative—awful, awful, awful, just a disaster. People were calling all day every day about their abortion experiences. It was their humiliation, that these women had to call a stranger and they always had complications. They were always further along than they could admit even to themselves. They never had any money. The people doing the abortions were, for the most part, crazy. Many of the women got raped on the tables. It was really heavy, sick, sick, sick, heavy stuff. I mean, you have to understand how women were hated. Just remembering now, it’s hard.4

  The National Organization for Women, founded in 1966 by twenty-eight women who had attended the Third National Conference for the Commission on the Status of Women, sprang up in response to the growing concerns about women’s institutionalized powerlessness. Seeking to establish a base of like-minded women committed to equality, NOW recruited a number of women to its ranks, including Ti-Grace Atkinson and Betty Friedan, both of whom NOW eventually appointed as leaders (Betty as president of NOW, Ti-Grace as chapter president). Both within and outside of NOW, women started to organize around the issue of abortion, reaching across class and race lines and joining together to fight back. Ti-Grace reveled in the diverse interest women showed for NOW: “They were terrific. We looked different. We dressed differently. We lived in different parts of New York. The intensity of interest in feminism was primary and we were ready to go for broke. None of us cared what it took. We wanted out. We wanted this.” From Shirley Chisholm to Pauli Murray, NOW included a wide swath of women interested in fighting patriarchy. Shulamith “Shulie” Firestone, a writer and painter, and Anne Koedt, a commercial artist, joined Ti-Grace and numerous others to form a game plan of how to address the issue of abortion. As Ti-Grace had said, “I have long understood that the only way to reach people on feminism is to go for that aspect that is their jugular.”5

  NOW initially wanted to sponsor an abortion reform law (one that would later become the basis for current debates about abortion) specifying the rights of the mother versus the rights of the fetus. Ti-Grace remembered pleading with others, “Don’t do that. You’re basing it around the fetus and you’re leaving that wide open. It can be manipulated. You’ve got to take all of the laws off the books and say it’s simply a medical procedure. It’s between a woman and her doctor. Otherwise, you’re in serious trouble.” The “reform” feminists like most of those in NOW tried to assure the “repeal” feminists like Ti-Grace, Cindy Cisler, and others that the right to privacy represented a sound basis for abortion and they could get more radical later. Ti-Grace knew better: “It doesn’t work that way. This was our shot and we had to get it right then. You have to get rights based on the right grounds. . . . That’s the difference between liberal and radical feminists. What is the difference between people who are satisfied with the mainstream and people that aren’t? Part of it is how they see themselves. I believe women are a class, and I wanted a revolution.”

  Throughout 1968, NOW members continued to block efforts to radicalize the abortion debate, standing firm in their view that the right to privacy argument would best advance feminist principles while giving women the freedom to seek abortion. Growing frustrations within NOW about this issue began to splinter the group. “Everybody in NOW said they wanted a revolution,” said Ti-Grace. “Everybody wanted a revolution. I didn’t know anybody who didn’t want a revolution and I couldn’t understand why every time it came to an action, we would have big fights even though we all said we wanted the same thing.” Eventually, NOW determined that they would petition for abortion based on the right to privacy rather than the more radical approach to decriminalize abortion altogether.

  Radical feminists within NOW decided that, in order to undermine sexist ideologies about women, marriage should be the next target. Ti-Grace recalled, “They weren’t going to go after that. They’d say, ‘Oh, yeah,’ and sort of agree with you on the surface, but when you talked about doing something about it, there was no way.” The late 1960s inundated women with propaganda and brainwashing about the importance of marriage, the necessity of finding and keeping a man. Ti-Grace joked about her own perceptions: “I realized at seventeen that, gee, I’m going downhill. The wedding is the high point of your life. That seemed rather depressing and odd to me. I do remember being overwhelmed in the late ’60s by the perception that instead of being a treasured part of the universe, I was a piece of shit and was just going to be used and abandoned.” (And, indeed, there were no categories for acts like “marital rape” until 1976, as the State saw women as men’s property.)

  In addition to problems within NOW, radical women felt marginalized by men in both the new and old Left, who rarely challenged notions that women should provide sexual and domestic labor to men. As Dana Densmore, member of radical feminist group Cell 16, said, “People that were really counterculture did not have any investment in changing gender roles. The women that were involved were getting an incredible education in the tension between what we were looking for, what we were putting our lives on the line for, and how badly we were being treated by those very organizations and the men of those organizations.” Men on the left, especially socialists, felt threatened by the idea of women holding them accountable. “Just our refusal to go along with prescribed categories was so threatening,” Dana recalled, “and the reaction so violent (I don’t just mean physical violence), that we received constant threats. The implication is that, ‘We will fight back, as if our testicles were on the line.’”6 Dana felt that women’s lives were at stake, that their radical feminist politics were no joking matter—a conflict that later inspired the radical feminist journal No More Fun and Games, published from 1968 to 1973.

  In particular, sexual politics rose up as a hotly contested issue, as women tried to communicate, as Ti-Grace said, that “someone can be all for sex, and still not find being objectified sexy.” The climate around women fighting back, fighting the Right, fighting within the Left, and fighting each other became the dominant narrative of late 1960s feminism.

  THE CRYSTALLIZATION OF RAGE

  In almost any woman you can unearth an incredible fury. It is often not even conscious, a threshold thing. But it’s there, and it’s an anger that can be a powerful radicalizing force.

  —Bernadine Dohrn7

  NOW kept having internal fights over goals and tactics, and, as Ti-Grace said, “Valerie was one of these fights. There was so much violence. You kept hearing things about how many women got killed. Battering was starting to come up and it was being talked about. Women were just the victims every place, and if you didn’t want to be a vic
tim, but you saw all of this, it was just overwhelming. Real rage.” Ti-Grace first heard about the SCUM Manifesto only one day prior to Valerie’s shooting Andy Warhol. Ti-Grace received a call at her home from a Village Voice writer named Rosetta Reitz, a radical feminist and eventual founder of a jazz label, who had allowed Valerie to live with her (Ti-Grace rightly noted, “Valerie always needed a place to live”), asking if she had heard about this document—SCUM Manifesto—and mentioning that it would interest the feminist movement. Rosetta said that she feared Valerie’s instability, as Valerie had been violent toward her, and said she did not want to live with her anymore. Still, she thought SCUM Manifesto had compelling qualities that would speak to the growing women’s movement.

  The following day, Ti-Grace saw the news coverage of the shooting and noted that the shooter had told the press, “He had too much control over my life.” Valerie had unwittingly found some new allies. “Well, the first thing I thought was that Warhol is not exactly the exemplar you choose for male supremacy,” Ti-Grace admitted. “He was asexual, so I knew it wasn’t some personal relationship. This was right after the big New York Times piece on feminism (and a lot on me) so everybody was aware that there was this anger building around them. The Times presented the shooting as if Valerie was somehow connected with feminism. All I saw was: she had shot Warhol. I knew there was exploitation and it matched because finally some woman had done something that was appropriate to the feelings we were having. She was fighting back. That’s what it felt like.”

  Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz felt similarly moved by hearing the news of Valerie’s expression of rage. Having spent time working with Martin Luther King, Jr. and various Black Panthers, she felt increasingly distant from peaceful strategies of social change. Sitting in a café in Mexico City, she had read the headline “Super-Woman Power Advocate Shoots Andy Warhol” and decided to leave Mexico immediately, eager to be a part of “that delicious moment, that exciting, formative time.”8 When she thought about Valerie’s shooting Andy and standing up to patriarchy, she began fantasizing about Valerie as a symbol of women’s rage. “I would go to the United States to launch this revolution with this superwoman ideology and also find Valerie. Because I had come out of four years of graduate study in history, I thought Boston was symbolically and historically a perfect place. I started calling everyone I knew. We would organize to defend Valerie and we would take the whole ‘Free Huey’ movement as a model to create this ‘Free Valerie’ movement. Everyone was always copying everyone so it’s hard to get a new idea. I was tired of playing the ‘Who’s more oppressed’ games in the South and wanted a change.”9 Roxanne became concerned with who would represent Valerie legally, knowing how pivotal legal representation can be in times of social crisis.