scum manifesto and the twig benders valerie solanas

He served only two weeks in jail for this slaughter. He missed, killed her, and later wrote about it, implying it was possible he subconsciously wanted to kill her, because he was gay and resented having a wife. William Burroughs shot and killed his wife while drunk and high, playing a game they called “William Tell,” wherein his wife placed an apple on her head, and he shot it off. In the mainstream media and collective consciousness, Solonas has been written off as a worthless artist, and remembered only for her violent act against Andy Warhol.Īll of this got me thinking about unconscious bias, and what it takes for us to denounce a female artist’s historical worth, versus what it does for a man. Dunham portrayed Solanas as a frumpy, grumpy, clownish homicidal lesbian.

This, of course, is a completely fictional narrative, and for the purposes of this show, Solanas’s epitomal work, The Scum Manifesto, was interpreted as a literal, earnest text. In a recent season of the popular television show, American Horror Story, for instance, Solanas was depicted by Lena Dunham as a demented serial killer who led a cult of murderous feminists to kill heterosexual couples - kids hooking up in cars, happy newlyweds and such - in a bloody, nationwide feminist murder spree. When so many people think Valerie Solanas, they think, “bat-shit crazy, violent, murderous, ridiculous, woman.” He’s not the only one who sees her that way. This name was meant to summon shame in me, like invoking some Goetic demon to bate and restrain my crazed feminism. I could tell from the tone of his comment, he expected me to recoil at the mention of that name - Valerie Solanas - the direst of insults queer female hysterical violent “femi-nazi” insanity personified.

I recently shared an excerpt of this book on social media, and immediately an old friend who I’d long ago lost touch with, a man from the Midwest, began arguing with me, and compared me to Valerie Solanas. 100 Times (A Memoir of Sexism) is a 240-page memoir, written as in-scene vignettes, telling the stories of one hundred experiences of sexist discrimination, sexual harassment, and sexual violence I have personally experienced and witnessed, beginning at age five, through the present day. My fourth book, and first full-length work of nonfiction will be released by Seven Stories Press in June.

Scum manifesto and the twig benders valerie solanas