To Valerie Solanas and Marilyn Monroe in Recognition of Their Desperation

Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist known for her attempted assassination of artist Andy Warhol in 1968. Solanas appeared in Warhol's film I, a Man (1967) and self-published the SCUM Manifesto, a possibly satirical pamphlet calling for the extinction of men. She believed Warhol was conspiring with her publisher, Maurice Girodias, to prevent her work from being published. On June 3, 1968, Solanas shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya at the Factory, Warhol's studio in Manhattan. She was charged with attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a firearm, and subsequently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and sentenced to three years in prison. After her release, she was arrested again for aggravated assault in 1971 after threatening editors Barney Rosset and Fred Jordan of Grove Press. She was then institutionalized several times. Solanas continued to promote the SCUM Manifesto and was an editor for the biweekly feminist magazine Majority Report before drifting into obscurity. She became destitute and died of pneumonia in 1988.