Biography

Valerie Solanas, born in 1936, had a childhood of abuse. While taking Biology at the University of Maryland in 1957, she studied human chromosomes (there are 23 pairs). She noticed the male sex chromosomes are XY, and the female are XX. Since the Y chromosome is like the X, but with a part missing, males are more susceptible to deficiencies like baldness, hemophilia, and colorblindness. Solanas determined males are just plain genetically inferior. She would write her SCUM Manifesto, in which she blamed men for everything that is wrong in the world, including war. Since the Vietnam war was raging in the 1960s, she got some followers. She panhandled in New York City around 1966-1968, living in a $25 a week room. A voracious writer, she felt she had been ripped off by publisher named Maurice, when she sold him the rights to her work "Scum Manifesto." She also felt Andy Warhol ripped her off, because he took her script for a play she'd written, but he never produced it. On June 3, 1968, Solanas shot Andy Warhol, earning herself a place in history. Andy recovered; Solanas spent 3 years in an Institute for the Criminally Insane. After being released in 1971, Solanas would never achieve such fame again. The rest of her life, she had some followers, but lived comparatively low profile. She died in relative obscurity in San Francisco in 1988.