Valerie Solanas: The feminist who not only shot Andy Warhol

June 03, 2019 at 14:40 a.m.


Valerie Solanas: the feminist who not only shot Andy Warhol


Valerie solanas he suffered sexual abuse from his father since childhood. In 1988, the woman who shot the artist Andy Warhol the 3 of June of 1968, died in the solitude like great part of its life, but that also took to him to be one of the writers and most important spokespersons of feminism.

With a tough adolescence in which she had two children, one of them due to the abuse of her father Louis Solanas, the writer escaped from her home in New Jersey, United States. He lived in the streets and prostituted himself, until his life changed radically when he met Warhol, who promised to produce his work Up your ass, a critique of everyday sexism, through the eyes of a prostitute who hates men.

The plastic artist did not keep his promise and Solanas did not forgive him for feeling cheated. That June 3, and after harassing him on the phone, the lesbian writer went to The Factory, where he met Warhol in the elevator. They went up to the offices together, where He took out a revolver and fired three shots at him while talking on the phone. The last bullet went through his right side and came out his left.
The author of SCUM manifesto, one of the most intransigent and controversial feminist treatises in history, was admitted to a psychiatric hospital in New York with a sentence of three years of imprisonment. Warhol survived and did not want to testify in the trial against his assailant.

A manifesto with background

The life of Solanas was marked by Warhol's attempted murder and even questioned about the compassion that the writer has received compared to other male writers and artists who have also committed violent acts.

Eg writer Chavisa Woods He compared Solanas to William Burroughs, who shot and killed his wife while playing with an apple and a rifle. Woods also referred the cases of Pablo Neruda, Charles Bukowski and Louis Althusser, all of them recognized and revered figures who have committed acts of violence against women. However, it does not obscure its historical legacy.

SCUM, marked the history of feminism, the manifesto Society for Cutting Up Men, which would literally translate as society to cut men to pieces, promoted the genetic superiority of women and defended the extinction of men except of homosexuals.

Solanas was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia after a custody sentence of three years, during which time her womb was removed against her will. After years of isolation and loneliness, the feminist died on April 25 1988 in San Francisco, 52 years, in a charity.