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

by Breanne Fahs

  Flo argued her case on the basis of several criteria: Valerie did not receive adequate representation, the court’s evaluation was based on hearsay, she had not been advised of her constitutional rights, she did not receive a proper physical or psychiatric examination, no bail was offered, and no date for a preliminary hearing was set. The courts largely ignored Flo’s report and proceeded with Valerie’s transfer without acknowledging any relevance of the procedural aspects of Valerie’s case. It mattered little that she had been mistreated or misrepresented, and they frankly could not understand her insistence on representing herself rather than accepting legal aid.

  The following day, June 12, Elmhurst Hospital filed a full psychological report with the courts—this was prior to Dr. Cooper’s more comprehensive evaluation—declaring Valerie mentally ill. The report from Drs. Sternberg and Mannucci advised that the court should send Valerie to a mental hospital such as Matteawan, as “the patient is extremely psychiatrically disturbed. Her condition is due to a long-standing paranoid psychosis and it is felt that, at this time, she is a definite homicidal threat to the community.”10 Valerie internalized this news by feeling an even deeper commitment to rebel, writing Maurice, “Keeping me in jail or in Elmhurst will not wear me down. I’ve fought too long & too hard already for my work—not just against you since Nov. 1967, but for two years before & I should most certainly not give up now.”11

  On June 13, Valerie appeared before state supreme court justice Thomas Dickens. She was represented by Flo, who called her “one of the most important spokes-women of the feminist movement.” Flo asked for a writ of habeas corpus because Valerie was inappropriately held at Elmhurst, but the judge denied the motion and sent Valerie back to the hospital. At the arraignment, Valerie had two supporters aside from Flo: Ti-Grace Atkinson and Wilda Holt. The New York Times declared the next day, “She has been called a female Genet, but she has not been taken seriously.” Answering questions the next day from behind a locked gate back at Elmhurst, Valerie denounced comparisons between herself and Genet, saying, “Genet just reports, despite what Sartre and De Beauvoir, two overrated windbags, say about the existential implications of his work. I, on the other hand, am a social propagandist.”12 Valerie called herself a “superfeminist” and “revolutionary” and promised that SCUM Manifesto would be submitted as her legal brief at her trial.

  Valerie’s indictment and the ruling of insanity came through on June 27, listing the charges of attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a gun. In contrast to the mood of this event, Mario Amaya would joke later, “Andy and I always used to say that we were the first feminist casualties.”13 (Whether he meant to slam feminism, or just cope with his pain, is unclear. Mario had a reputation for outlandish comments, and once said he felt more upset with Valerie for ruining his white linen suit than for shooting him.)

  THE “LOWLY TOAD”

  Valerie spent most of the following month directing her hostilities toward Maurice Girodias, whom she continued to portray as manipulative, cruel, self-serving, and the epitome of why SCUM should exist. In the midst of vitriolic letters she sent to him, Maurice put up money for Valerie to retain a lawyer—something he did for many of his writers who found themselves in legal trouble. This lawyer, Don Engel, who Valerie wanted nothing to do with, who had represented Terry Southern in his Candy dispute, recalled in a later interview that he would have happily represented Valerie if she had been declared competent to stand trial. Instead, she was ruled insane and Engel never got the chance to defend her in court. Valerie was, by then, “off the rails.”14

  In an interview following the publication of SCUM Manifesto in summer 1968, Maurice told the Village Voice that he both supported the manifesto and felt rage toward women: “I’m happy to be alive and I’m a publisher. I still feel she has a very good point. I have no argument with it. But I feel a similar case can be made about females, only women are worse. I will write one about women someday. Then I’ll shoot one and get published myself.”

  Maurice visited Valerie in prison; he stated that she looked “very happy to be there” and was “extremely confused.” He added, “I’m sure that her manifesto will convince the judges that she’s not legally responsible—unless there’s a woman judge.” During his visit, Maurice asked, “Why didn’t you shoot me? Why Warhol and not me?” She replied, “Oh, I wouldn’t do that to you.”15 Maurice felt that Valerie was “not entirely in her normal mind” and “not in very good shape” and “still doesn’t realize what she’s done.” Angry that Flo, “that woman,” wanted to represent Valerie, he said the hospital “doesn’t want any more freaks. . . . It would be disastrous if she represented Valerie at the trial. . . . Paranoid authors are no great authority.”16

  During her incarceration at the hospital, Valerie grew increasingly angry and paranoid about Maurice, believing that he had self-serving intentions and compulsively lied to her. She told Wilda Holt, “If I trusted G, I’d have something like inverse paranoia.”17 Calling him “The Great Operator, The Great Manipulator” but inviting him for a visit shortly after she arrived at Elmhurst, she accused him of failing to follow through on his commitments to her.18 For example, after he claimed to send her $5.00 that she never received, she wrote, “Why don’t you fuck the authorities and the system for a while instead of your authors?”(June 28, 1968).

  She sent letters demanding stamps (July 9, 1968) and many other letters accusing Maurice of sabotaging the goals of SCUM: “I formulated SCUM & wrote the ‘SCUM Manifesto’ to create a better world. It’s ironic & pathetic that it’s fallen into such hands as yours & Warhol’s. If you want to be aligned with me, cultivate goals beyond being able to say, ‘I have more money than J. Paul Getty’; you must strive to transcend your sniveling self & immerse yourself in the betterment of the community; you must learn to work with people, not against them; you must learn to pretend you’re human, & not a toad, become an expert human impersonator you must have as your sole constant goal the happiness of women, both in the mass and those you’re personally associated with. I’m convinced the rewards you reap from doing so will be enormous” (July 18, 1968). In another letter that same day, Valerie described her goals for SCUM: “There are 2 aspects to SCUM—the destructive and the constructive, destroying the old world through sabotage and beginning to create a swinging, groovy, out-of-sight female world, both aspects to operate simultaneously. Ironically, you’re best suited to contributing to the constructive end—you’re just not the saboteur type: you’re strictly a contract & finance man.”

  Two days later, she admitted that she wanted to devote every bit of her time to SCUM and pleaded with Maurice to join her goals for SCUM: “You don’t have long to go, Big Daddi-o; so what are you going to do about it? Are you going to be a doddering old contract man with lots and lots of money, or are you going to be a groovy, brawling and battling SCUMmer? Are you going to help yourself and help SCUM get rolling, or are you going to continue to fuck everybody—including yourself?”(July 20, 1968).

  Perhaps comically, Valerie also pleaded with Maurice to serve as the head of the men’s auxiliary of SCUM:

  I’ve been thinking lately in purely practical terms about SCUM. You would be the most appropriate person to have as head of the Men’s Auxiliary, being you’re the publisher. Warhol very much wanted the position, but you’d be more desirable than him, since you’re much more articulate, & have a flair for writing which he doesn’t have . . . As head of the auxiliary you would work closely with me, go recruiting with SCUM, travel around with SCUM on the Scumnibus, attend all SCUM events (unless you didn’t want to), make personal appearances and give speeches on behalf of the Men’s Auxiliary, & you could, if you wanted, appear as Top Turd at all Turd sessions.19

  Despite this vitriol, Maurice continued to communicate with Valerie, forwarding her reviews and commentary about SCUM Manifesto from the New York Times, Newsweek, and the East Village Other. He sent copies of her published book, as well as paper, pencils, envelopes, a
nd a money order. He pleaded with Valerie to have more nuance in her views of men and to celebrate her intellectual gifts:

  Even if you refuse to see this [letter], I have always acted as your friend. I cannot condon [sic] your claim that you have ‘a mission’ which gives you the right to kill people. But I agree with your idea that people are impossibly selfish and cruel: only I think that this applies to mankind at large, not to a particular group like males or females. And murder will not cure that state of things. I wish therefore that you stopped considering yourself like a small-time Hitler, and came down to more sensible views. You are an intelligent and gifted person, and I see no reason why you should not, one day, accomplish something real for yourself. So—why don’t you start trying to see the good side of things, the fact that no-one (not even men!) is always all bad, the fact that no-one is after you, or wants to harm you. You believe that the whole world conspires against you: at the same time you complain that people do not pay enough attention to what you say and do. Don’t you see the contradiction in those two feelings? Think about it!20

  Despite clear evidence of her severe paranoia—particularly in her interactions with Andy and Maurice—Valerie also had an uncanny sense of the truth in her dealings with them. On June 6, a mere three days after the shooting, Maurice received a letter from Dell Publishing Company thanking him for submitting Valerie’s work but rejecting SCUM Manifesto, revealing that Maurice had, immediately following the shooting, submitted her work for publication. Further, in an attorney’s letter of October 30, 1968, Maurice directly specified that he did not follow through on paying Valerie the five hundred dollars he owed her on purpose; because they had never specifically signed a contract for SCUM Manifesto, which he published shortly after the shooting, he admitted that he refused to pay her the royalties specified in her earlier contract. Instead, he wrote that he would pay her four and a half cents a copy, a substantially lower amount than her contract had specified back in August 1967.21

  Prior to the shooting, Valerie had written to Maurice, certain that he intended not to pay out her full royalties:

  Lowly Toad, I’m now hip to what both of those contracts mean—I sold the novel outright; the only right I have is the right to the royalties, which I’m sure you’ll find a way of beating me out of. The refusal rights clause means you have the right to buy my next 2 book-length works on the same greasy terms as you bought the novel. In the second unsigned contract the phrase “we will retain 50%—” means that I won’t get anything; it doesn’t imply, as you said that I’d get the other 50%. . . . I will never again, needless to say, ever sign one of your sleazy, greasy contracts.22

  Maurice’s refusal to pay royalties to most of his authors eventually resulted, in 1971, in picketing outside the Olympia Press offices by other authors. Maurice admitted to his lawyers that he took Valerie’s statement that SCUM Manifesto was his, “to have and to hold, forever,” as a representation that Valerie had signed over to him the rights to publish the work.23 Vivian Gornick, who wrote an introduction for SCUM Manifesto and knew Maurice personally, agreed that he ripped off Valerie: “There is no question that he screwed her—none, none, none. He bought her off. He paid her no royalties and was making a lot of money from the SCUM Manifesto.”24

  In practical ways, Valerie perceived Maurice as purposefully hiding information about the preface and commentary sections of future editions of the manifesto, and she accused him of failing to notify her of his plans for the manifesto or Up Your Ass (which he had apparently obtained a copy of shortly after the shooting). Valerie’s friend Geoffrey LeGear wrote to Maurice, “Why did you not have the guts, she asks, to let the Manifesto stand or fall on its own? Why were you so cowardly as to try to explain it away before it could speak for itself?” Valerie was enraged that Maurice had not sent her any mail from readers and that he had held back information about sales and reviews and other reactions to her work. She took particular issue with the comparison between SCUM Manifesto and Swift’s Modest Proposal, and Geoffrey explained that “there is no similarity between them whatsoever—the whole point about ‘A Modest Proposal’ is irony; the whole point about Valerie is that there is no irony.” Valerie also hated the notion that Maurice had compared her to Hitler and SCUM Manifesto to Mein Kampf. As Geoffrey wrote, “Hitler originated nothing (nationalism and racism are as old as history), but Valerie wants the end of nations and racism by ending the male sex which is responsible for them—really quite beyond Hitler’s range, don’t you think?”25

  Further, Valerie took issue with the biography of her that Maurice had constructed in the preface to SCUM Manifesto, objecting to his discussing her “‘loveless childhood’ (in a certain way she had a groovy childhood); her ‘sexual immaturity’ (in a certain way Valerie has passed beyond sex); her ‘feeling of isolation’ (in a certain way Valerie had too many people around her).” She wondered if Maurice wanted to hurt her, by “superficial speculation on her supposed personal history,” noting that one only writes that way about a person once he or she had died and that Maurice knew little of her personal history because he had had no real personal relationship with her.

  After Maurice published the first edition of SCUM Manifesto in August 1968, Valerie demanded that in the next edition he include a new preface signed by him but dictated by Valerie: “It’s to be called ‘Confessions of a Toad.’ The ‘SCUM (not S.C.U.M.) Manifesto’ part of the new book must be proofread by me. If you don’t fulfill these conditions, you’ve definitely had it with me in every way. I’d rather live my life in the bughouse than write one line for you under the present conditions. . . . I told you the shooting of Auntie Wahoo was a marking point, that all your offenses prior to then were shot away, but that everything you do afterwards counts. You’ve earned quite a few demerits since then; you almost reached the point of no return.”26

  Valerie’s feelings of betrayal had reached a breaking point. Geoffrey explained to Maurice:

  Valerie feels, or apparently feels, that you have so mistreated, misunderstood, and misjudged her that you have destroyed her. She feels that there is no hope left for herself or her work, that she will never have a chance to speak for herself, to justify herself and her ideas. She feels totally degraded and can see no way out, at least no way that will allow her to preserve her integrity. Not to get attention (a cruel thrust if it is not true), but to end her degradation is her motive in wanting to kill herself. . . . When it comes to her, where do you find yourself? Right with the establishment you always supposed yourself to be fighting.27

  In addition, Geoffrey defended Valerie not only before the shooting but also well after it, insisting to both Maurice and Andy that Valerie’s ideas in SCUM Manifesto had the force of truth behind them. Geoffrey, who worried constantly about the chance that Valerie would commit suicide out of despondency caused by Maurice’s treatment of SCUM Manifesto, wrote to him:

  Let me ask you two questions. First, is not the world a mess, and are not the males in charge? And can you conceive, honestly, of the world ever being any different? Second, do men need women more, or do women need men more? And could you conceive, honestly, of a reason to go on living if there were no more women in the world? . . . Valerie may have the truth, the truth that didn’t exist. Wouldn’t it be strange if time justified Valerie? And if time did, wouldn’t it be a shame not to have been on the right side when it counted, at the beginning?28

  Valerie sensed that Maurice was unsympathetic toward the revolutionary gender dynamics presented in SCUM Manifesto; this was confirmed when she saw what he had written in the introduction: “This little book is my contribution to the study of violence.”29 Using the many letters he received from her during this period, he also described Valerie in sexist terms, telling a French radio station: “She was naïve. She was very smart. She could not come to terms with these contradictory forces: her outrageous feminism and the fact that she did not look quite like a woman but neither like a man. . . . It’s hard to figure out how she did not reach t
hat crisis earlier. I would not have married her, of course, but I really did like her. I found her very funny.”30

  Still, friends of Maurice’s claimed that Valerie’s threats affected him deeply and he became increasingly paranoid that she would shoot him in retaliation for his not complying with her demands. One friend, Iris Owens, said, “I don’t think that people regarded him to have stepped out on a ledge in having been associated with her. That only came after she showed herself capable of murder.”31 A year later, after repeatedly asking Valerie to stop contacting him, he wrote to her, “I am not interested in your other works, past, present, or future. I hope that this clarifies my position once and for all, and I must ask you to dismiss me from your thoughts, and not to write me again.”32

  As did Andy, Maurice expressed a curious affection for Valerie, despite her constant threats and his well-documented fear of her. Responding to her constant name-calling—“Lowly Toad,”—Maurice described Valerie in rather warm terms: “Even though she keeps calling me Toad, there is in that name a background of friendship and tenderness. We got along really well, while fighting and hating each other like you would not believe.”33 Valerie hurled at him the ultimate rebuke: “I know you live for my letters. What else is in your grim, puny life?”34 She advised that he seek “SCUM therapy”: “The goal of this therapy is to rid you of certain hang-ups which are severely interfering with my rights & interests. The methods are my own & are derived from & consistent with SCUM doctrine. I’ve tested my methods out on other males & have achieved remarkable results.”35 Eerily prescient as always, Valerie foreshadowed Viagra: “One of the goals of the therapy will be to enable you to get a hard on as often as you want, any time you want, & to sustain it as long as you want. Achieving this sub-goal (among others) is a necessary step in achieving the final goals. . . . Achieving a perpetual hard on (PH) involves first being aware of certain truths, & 2nd undertaking a certain attitude that I’ve worked out.”36 She has, she goes on to say, cured several men of impotence. In regard to Valerie’s relationship with Andy, Maurice took a paternalistic outlook, describing Valerie’s hate mail to Andy as intimate and an expression of comfort; she had “something of the quality of a very rebellious and difficult child, writing the much resented and much needed father for money.”37