Valerie Solanas

(1936 - 1988)

The same year Valerie Solanas self-published her radical feminist manifesto SCUM—whose acronym is said to stand for the Society for Cutting Up Men—she asked Andy Warhol to produce her play Up Your Ass. Warhol lost the script, and around the same time, a book publisher made vague arrangements about her future work; Solanas became convinced the men were stealing her livelihood. In 1968 she bought a gun and shot Warhol in his studio. Asked for her motive, she responded, “Read my manifesto, and it will tell you who I am.”