Valerie Solanas and her SCUM

(terpconnect.umd.edu)

I was digging through some old books today and came across SCUM Manifesto by Valerie Solanas. (SCUM = Society. For. Cutting. Up. Men.)

(homecomcast.net)
Lili Taylor as Valerie Solanas in I Shot Andy Warhol

If you have ever seen the film, I Shot Andy Warhol you know it is the story of how Valerie Solanas shot him. Andy survived.

I remember having purchased the 47 page book by Solanas years ago but never finished it in spite of how short it is. As I began to turn the pages I remembered why I never finished it. It is quite sad to read the words of a woman who is so angry and so sad.

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

It is now technically possible to reproduce without the aid of males (or, for that matter, females) and to produce only females. We must begin immediately to do so. Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the Y (male) gene is an incomplete X (female) gene, that is, has a incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples."

--------------------------Valerie Solanas (SCUM Manifesto)

What I don't understand is that there are many who consider Solanas to be a feminist. I read some reviews of this book on amazon.com and there were a few that think she is a hero. It is difficult to accept that there are people who agree with Valerie's extremes. Valerie was mentally ill and came up with continuous conspiracies throughout her life.

Valerie was born in 1936. She was molested by her father at a young age and beaten by her grandfather. She was on her own at 15. She completed high school and college but after that kinda wandered around and made a living prostituting herself. She had issues with drugs as well. Valerie wrote a play called "Up Your Ass" that she pitched to Andy Warhol. He liked it but never used it and the script got lost in the mix of all the other scripts that are sent to him. She was outraged.

She eventually signed a contract with a publisher to write a novel based on her SCUM Manifesto. After she signed the contract she became confused and paranoid and thought that the publisher was going to steal her work and sell it to Warhol and she would never be paid or acknowledged. She ended up shooting Warhol but he survived. Warhol for whatever reasons chose not to testify in court and therefore Solanas received a light sentence of 3 years in prison. But afterwords she continued to harass Warhol and was in and out of mental hospitals. She eventually died of emphysema and pneumonia in 1988 in a welfare house. 

Valerie's belief was that men needed to be killed off and destroyed so that only women would exist. She says the money system needed to be done away with. That women should stop working and if masses of women stop working and only loot for what they want. She explains in some detail how this could be accomplished. She writes in a way that seems articulate however her ideas are absurd. I almost laughed out loud at one section that reads...

"SCUM will conduct Turn Sessions, at which every male present will give a speech beginning with the sentence: 'I am a turd, a lowly, abject turd,' then proceed to list all the ways in which he is."

Here are some more viewpoints of Solanas...

"Every man knows deep down that he's a worthless piece of shit."

"Love is not dependency or sex, but friendship, and, therefore, love can't exist between two males, between a male and a female, or between two males, between a male and a female, or between two females, one or bot of whom is a mindless, insecure, pandering male; like conversation, love ca exist only between two secure, Free wheeling, independent, groovy female females, since friendship is based on respect, not contempt. 

Even among groovy females deep friendships seldom occur in adulthood, as almost all of them are either tied up or bogged down in hacking their way through the jungle in trying to keep their heads above the amorphous mass."

"SCUM will kill all men who are not in the Men's Auxiliary of SCUM. Men in the Men's Auxiliary are those men who are working diligently to eliminate themselves, men who, regardless of their motives, do good, men who are playing ball with SCUM."

Although I felt quite sad reading Valerie's words, I attempted to not let it frustrate me too much. I realize this woman was not only mentally ill but had a turbulent upbringing.

What disturbed me was as I read reviews of her book on amazon.com I saw that there were some who claimed to agree with her views. It just reminded me that there are so many women who consider themselves to be feminists but do not recognize that...in the words of Bell Hooks, men are our "comrades in struggle."

It is because of love men that I am a feminist. I think it is important for all the angry women out there to understand that we need to work with men in order to get anything done. And we all have men in our lives that we care for whether they be a father, grandfather, son, partner, friend, etc. If we want to exist with men, work with men, love men, be loved by men, we need to understand that hating men, or considering them the enemy can lead to sexism towards them. If we are frustrated with patriarchy fine. But it is important to move forward and fight in positive and encouraging ways.