by Breanne Fahs
Joanne Steele, distributor of Majority Report, viewed Valerie as more disturbed, saying that she represented a dangerous part of the movement and seemed unstable. Joanne was particularly alarmed by Valerie’s lack of caring interactions with others, particularly in that she often acted like an abused child who fluctuated between domination and passivity (but was never in between). When bossed around, Valerie became mouselike, withdrawn, and even needy. Still, Joanne admired how Valerie understood women’s oppression and how she could not take it anymore. For Joanne, SCUM Manifesto exemplified that women should not “take shit,” that they should be strong so that they could separate themselves from and lose their vulnerability to men: “The Manifesto had an important message for women to hear. Nothing else was as virulent. She was the first to say you can hate your oppressor.”32
For Valerie, working at Majority Report bolstered her new sense of self-reliance; she had struggled for nearly a decade with hospitalizations, publishing battles, and lack of regular employment. She began work in 1976 on a new book, Valerie Solanas, and showed a renewed interest in circulating SCUM Manifesto and its ideas.
Around this time—sometime in late 1976 or early 1977, Valerie checked out of the New York Public Library the 1971 Olympia Press edition of SCUM Manifesto and wrote all over it with various complaints. On the front cover, she wrote, “Read all about fleas in my next book to be titled Valerie Solanas”; circling Vivian Gornick’s name, she penned, “One of the many fleas riding on my back. Valerie Solanas.” “This is not the title,” she declared, in reference to Maurice’s use of the abbreviation form S.C.U.M. (she preferred SCUM to S.C.U.M., later calling Maurice’s decision to use the latter “extraordinarily tasteless”). On the back cover she wrote, “lie” and on the jacket she called Maurice and Vivian “fleas.” She accused the volume of being “full of sabotaging typos” and wrote, “LIES! FRAUD!” on the copyright page.33 Clearly, her interest in the absolute integrity of her work and words played a major role in her action of defacing a library book and in her obsession with having a correct edition of SCUM Manifesto released to the public. From this point on, Valerie refers to her version of SCUM as “CORRECT,” in all capitals, as a way to emphasize this important distinction from the Olmpia Press edition.
In 1976, after eighteen months working for Majority Report, Valerie decided to leave the editorial team and pursue writing her new book full time. As an editor, Valerie could not publish anything in Majority Report because of the newsletter’s policy discouraging dual roles, but if she left, she would be able to use the publication as a springboard to advertise SCUM Manifesto and debate with others about feminist ideas. Majority Report became an ideal site for Valerie to publish her latest musings and squabbles with feminists who had misrepresented her and to engage, however unwittingly, with the women’s liberation movement.
Following her departure from Majority Report, Valerie began a series of letters and commentaries that continued for a full year. Her “wars” staged on the pages of Majority Report started in 1976 when the radical group C.L.I.T. (Collective Lesbian International Terrorists)—which included Susan Cavin, Marsha Segerberg, and Maricla Moyano—wrote two collections called “the C.L.I.T. papers.” These texts drew from SCUM Manifesto to detail a philosophy that advocated female separatism and the revolutionary overthrow of patriarchy. In November 27, 1976, a group of men claiming to be from the men’s auxiliary of SCUM wrote a response to excerpts from the C.L.I.T. papers that had been published in Majority Report (and later in Dyke, a Quarterly); they found it shameful for the C.L.I.T. papers to have a “mindless association of SCUM ideas with separatism from men, an idea which was not in the SCUM Manifesto.” These men—Lee Hazlitt and Stan Rudolf—stated that Valerie had had a response to the “incongruous and shameless mingling of SCUM ideas with a mishmash of asininities”: “It’s brilliant and original—brilliant ideas from SCUM Manifesto and an original stream of errors.”34
In a later response to the C.L.I.T. papers, Al Reinheimer argued that its members did not advocate violence of any kind and were “possibly nervous about the many unattributed paraphrased (and some not paraphrased) lines from SCUM Manifesto, which lines where interspersed throughout their sea of gibberish and contradictions, adopted as part of their philosophy that the belief that ideas can be stolen is wrong, male, a convenient philosophy for those on the receiving end.” He later added, “‘How,’ they asked, ‘can you steal an idea?’ I will tell them how—by representing someone else’s ideas as your own, by signing your name (whether real or a pseudonym) to someone else’s work” (vol. 6 [January 8–21, 1977]).
Two issues later, a writer, Carolyn Escherarris, aptly noted that much of the early 1970s radical women’s movement work stole, copied, mimicked, or veered eerily close to SCUM Manifesto:
There’s a scumminess to the general atmosphere. Just as the totally non-violent C.L.I.T.’s signed some of their papers killa man and man masher, so there are other very tame little groups calling themselves Killer Dykes, and there’s a Drastic Dyke Collective in North Carolina. Then there was Roxanne Dunbar . . . who was quoted as saying: ‘When our group first came together in some of our early programmatic sessions it was proposed that the group assassinate some man to make our presence known.’ The woman interviewing her commented that that sounds like a lesson from Valerie Solanas. Dunbar evaded the remark by saying that, although Solanas is brilliant, ‘she didn’t really have much to tell’ Dunbar and her crowd and ‘really wasn’t interested in learning politically [from them].’ Dana Densmore, another FLM member, is fond of using phrases like ‘frontal attack’ and ‘It’s all over now.’ And the scumminess extends to titles: Up Against the Wall, Mother . . . a book whose title contradicts its content; Bitch, a would-be humor sheet; Shameless Pussy Press; the British feminist newspaper, Shrew and the American feminist newspaper, Up from Under . . . And I can hardly mention Joreen’s BITCH Manifesto, which must be an example of something” (vol. 6 [February 15–18, 1977]).35
The piece accused other feminist writings of stealing Valerie’s ideas, failing to have wit, insight, or originality, and being “surrounded by a babble about ancient matriarchies, witches, and other nonsense—talk of women having only girls, female take-overs, gynocracies.” In particular, Carolyn argued that SCUM Manifesto “radicalized Ti-Grace out of NOW,” “gingered up the ladies’ slogans,” “gave birth to WITCH [Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell]” and “reads like a prophecy of radical feminist thought for the past 8 years”(vol. 6 [February 15–18, 1977]). If Valerie was indeed “Carolyn,” she had unleashed her signature mix of humor and go-for-the-jugular attack in her letters to the editors in Majority Report.
In April 1977, Valerie published, as herself, a lengthy letter in response to these pieces, beginning by differentiating her beliefs from those of Redstockings—a radical feminist group founded in 1969 by Ellen Willis and Shulamith Firestone—and saying that her influence on the women’s liberation movement was far more limited than these pieces made it seem. Valerie acknowledged that she had contributed to the movement in four ways: “Two letters discussing my influence only on C.L.I.T. Papers, a very brief letter that indirectly quoted a remark I made in 1968 that de Beauvoir was an overrated windbag, and a letter by me in which I implied agreement with, but did not repeat, Carolyn’s statements, except to expand on the trashing of Jo Freeman.” Valerie goes on to critique the use of “liberation” names for women’s pseudonyms, claiming that the people who used her ideas would not attach their real names to their work:
It’s also significant that Joreen writes her uninfluenced junk (e.g., her book, The Politics of Women’s Liberation and magazine articles) under the name of Jo Freeman, teaches political science at the State University of N.Y. at New Paltz under the name of Jo Freeman, was interviewed for articles about women’s lib under the name Jo Freeman. When she wrote Bitch Manifesto and whimpered in MS [Ms. magazine] about getting trashed she liberated herself into Joreen. The C.L.I.T.’s
, whose pseudonym (liberation?) Carolyn said was significant and who say they don’t want to be stars and that their politics demand anonymity, publish their uninfluenced stuff under their own names. By the way, the pre-liberation of the too puny for words Betsy Warrior, who was liberated in 1968, is Betsy Mahoney (her married name).
Later in her letter, Valerie added, “Writers can’t evade responsibility for their works by writing anonymously” (vol. 6 [April 2–15, 1977]). She believed that the C.L.I.T.s tried to stay anonymous so that if its works were deemed less than brilliant, its members could hide behind their anonymity, while if they became celebrated for brilliance, they could “out” their real identities.
Valerie’s attacks disgruntled many leading women in the movement, particularly Jo Freeman (aka Joreen). Several issues later, when Jo Freeman responded by claiming that she took her manifesto from the Communist Manifesto and not from SCUM Manifesto, Valerie retorted, “By this logic a title consisting of any noun at all in front of the word Manifesto would qualify the title as a take-off on the CM. Then why the word bitch? Why not spaghetti?” She griped that the Bitch Manifesto mimics SCUM Manifesto too often and that its only real contribution lies in its copying of SCUM Manifesto’s ideas: “Yes, kiddies, there’s only one truth, only one correct line—and it’s mine.” Continuing her attack on Joreen, Valerie chided her for admitting that she had not read SCUM Manifesto, which “reveals Joreen’s extremely nervous suspicion that her ‘arguments’ won’t prevent her remaining exposed as the tenth-rate hack she is” (vol. 6 [April 30–May 13, 1977]).36
Shortly after this exchange in Majority Report, Valerie took action against Jo Freeman by calling Jo’s university and launching a formal complaint to the dean. Her accusation was that Jo had plagiarized her. Jo remarked later, “Valerie wouldn’t give her name but said that I had plagiarized her. Now, on one level, nothing came of this, but for someone to call up the dean of your school and tell them that a faculty member is plagiarizing is a pretty serious accusation, and if the department doesn’t like you, it’ll get you even if there is no substance to it. You must know that. It’s how politics go. . . . That’s why she provoked hostility. She acted beyond the bounds of reasonableness.” Jo went on, “She may have co-opted the label but she wasn’t a feminist. She was just crazy. All she did was give us a bad name. I think she should just be forgotten, like a bad meal that didn’t go down well.”37
In another line of attack in Majority Report, Valerie’s arguments against the C.L.I.T.s took many forms. She critiqued their characterization of historical matriarchy and that whites were the only ones to oppress blacks and argued against the group’s characterization of those who rejected the female role when it said that “women who reject the traditional female role are confused and invariably wind up either in jail, the bughouse, or on three martinis a day.” Valerie retorted that “real radical feminists are the ones that ran for the hills” and pointed to “a contradiction: they say they don’t believe anything any man says about anything, but respectfully quote many men at length.” Harnessing her trademark humor and trashing of all things women’s liberation, Valerie ended the letter:
C.L.I.T. Papers isn’t the only totally worthless work produced by the Women’s Bowel Movement (which constitutes a very large percentage, but not all of the women’s movement). A few of the better known ones are: Amazon Odyssey by Ti-Grace Atkinson, Dialectic of Sex by Shulamith Firestone, The First Sex by Elizabeth Gould Davis, and Women and Madness by Phyllis Chesler. I’ll do them in my book and also give an explanation for how such garbage came to be so widely respected within the women’s movement. I’ll also have a few words to say about Simone de Beauvoir. . . . Flush away one turd and the Bowel Movement’s diminished by one. Bye. Bye. (vol. 6 [March 19–April 1, 1977])
As one would expect, feminists—particularly radical feminists—did not take well to such critiques and outright trashing, though Valerie had no problem having a linguistic boxing match with anyone who questioned her logic. (She even sent death threats to lesbian feminist writer and critic Jill Johnston, for misspelling her name in Lesbian Nation.) Brooke Williams wrote in Majority Report that Valerie always stood outside the movement and did not “play nice” with the emerging factions of the women’s movement: “Although SCUM Manifesto was influential, Valerie Solanas was never in the movement, either creating or building. She was an outsider, at most an admired one, and her action against Warhol was an individual action” (vol. 6 [March 19–April 1, 1977]). Valerie replied to Brooke’s claims, “Nobody ever said I invented feminism. And everybody—myself included—already knows by now all about how the SDS [Students for a Democratic Society] and SNCC [Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee] women sulked and whimpered and pouted because they got tired of sucking the SNCC and SDS men’s asses” (vol. 6 [April 2–15, 1977]). Valerie believed that her ideas arrived long before other women’s liberation works: “SCUM Manifesto was first published in Oct. 1967, and the outline for it appeared in a Feb., 1967 Village Voice. Brooke, was the WLM [women’s liberation movement] also the stimulus for my anti-male play, Up Your Ass, registered with the copyright office in May, 1965?” (vol. 6 [April 30–May 13, 1977]).
Brooke portrayed Valerie as jealous and opportunistic in her efforts to discredit radical feminists; Valerie had been “saying she created radical feminist theory, and that the radicals were merely working off SCUM Manifesto, thereby denying them credit.” This was followed by a surprising admission that Valerie may indeed have catalyzed radical feminism:
Having reread SCUM Manifesto in light of this controversy, I must admit Solanas has a point. SCUM Manifesto has provided the basis of the theory of a part of the women’s movement. This part can be described broadly as the evolving cultural feminist wing, in which lesbian separatist groups like CLIT play a part. . . . The rest of the manhating aura of SCUM Manifesto is supplied by Solanas’ simple expedient, brilliant for satire but not so useful for political analysis, of turning male chauvinist ideologies upside down or backwards into their mirror opposite. . . . But while she neatly turns them around, she does not challenge their basic world views—of the human condition as neurotic, not oppressed (note in this context her support of the idea that women are brainwashed) for example. (vol. 6 [April 30–May 13, 1977])
In a rare moment in which she clarified her intentions in SCUM Manifesto, Valerie retorted in a later letter that she did not intend to simply turn around the logic of male chauvinism but to argue truth about men. “SCUM Manifesto’s right, and I’ll prove it in my next book.” Drawing on Freudian concepts of motherhood and fatherhood and Phillip Wylie’s ideas of “Momism,” Valerie outlined her specific claims about fatherhood: “SCUM Manifesto says the unloving, disapproving distant Father leads to a lack of independence in both girls and boys”; if women try to leave men, men will “curl up and die (especially in bed)” (vol. 7 [June 25–July 8, 1977]).
In another letter, her reaction to claims that she used Majority Report to sell her upcoming book had a more garbled edge: “Why should I, author of SCUM Manifesto, shooter of Andy Warhol, be limited to MR [Majority Report]? I’m tempted to ask if the money men’s public confession to paying off to have me declared insane that’s required for their getting my next book to publish will be sufficient promotion, but I’m an objective nut and can see why Brooke would doubt that the money men will rat themselves out just to get what will be history’s by far best seller.”
On the question of why she did not pursue legal action against those who plagiarized her work, Valerie declared, “I’m sure Brooke believes that, because I never sued my publisher, he doesn’t owe me any money or that, because I didn’t institute a libel suit against Esquire, their statements about me that I said in an MR letter were false must be really true, or that, because I didn’t institute 2000 libel suits in ’68 and ’69 there really wasn’t massive bullshit printed about me, as I said there was, or even any bullshit at all.” Later, when discussing her trashing of Redstockings, Simone de Bea
uvoir, and radical feminism, she wrote sarcastically, “See Feminist Revolution, my notes on which I have filed under C for comic books.” Later she wrote, “You’ll see that by ‘radical feminists’ they mean Redstockings (and most especially Kathie Sarachild Amatniek, Shulamith Firestone, and Anne Koedt) plus the ubiquitous Ti Grace [sic], noted flea, who, although not a member of Redstockings, was very chummy with that crowd.”
After reviewing claims by Kathie, Shulie, Anne, and Ti-Grace that Simone de Beauvoir and Redstockings contributed to the enactment of a host of important social reforms, including granting of abortion rights and passage of the Equal Rights Amendment by Congress, and helped advance theory, organizing tactics, slogans, and the awakening of women to involvement in actions all over the world, Valerie inventoried her own contributions: “My claim is very humble indeed. I claim merely to have influenced a pack of assholes—the silly slogans, totally worthless writings, and fucked-up lifestyle of empty, semi-conscious women with zero talent, women incapable of a single original valid idea, women who believe that, if they’re not Valerie Solanas, they’re nothing.” She corrected letters written to her by advocating, as she did in SCUM Manifesto, the “unwork” force, property destruction, and a clear articulation of the twenty-two institutions she wants to destroy: war; “niceness,” politeness, and dignity; money, marriage, prostitution, work, and the prevention of an automated society; fatherhood and mental illness (fear, cowardice, timidity, humility, insecurity, passivity); animalism (domesticity and motherhood) and suppression of individuality; prevention of privacy; isolation, suburbs, and prevention of community; conformity; authority and government; philosophy, religion, and morality based on sex; prejudice (racial, ethnic, religious, etc.); competition, prestige, status, formal education, ignorance, and social classes; prevention of conversation; prevention of friendship (love); “Great Art” and “Culture”; sexuality; boringness; secrecy, censorship, suppression of knowledge and ideas and exposes; distrust; ugliness; hate and violence; disease and death. After listing these priorities, Valerie aptly characterized her work by saying SCUM Manifesto was designed to teach women why they should purposefully “fuck up.”