Making a statement?

Yesterday was the 24th anniversary of the death of Valerie Solanas. Had I not been forced to attend a work gathering I would have posted yesterday but alas, when duty calls...

Valerie Solanas. Radical feminist, University graduate in Psychology, beggar and prostitute but probably most famous for having attempted to murder Andy Warhol by shooting him in the stomach. Her manifesto, entitled 'SCUM' allegedly stands for 'Society For Cutting Up Men' and claims that the male gender is a biological accident. Just because of the insanity of it, one of my favourite quotes from the book goes as follows:

"Retaining the male has not even the dubious purpose of reproduction. The male is a biological accident: the y(male) chromosome is an incomplete x(female) chromosome, that is, has an incomplete set of chromosomes. In other words, the male is an incomplete female, a walking abortion, aborted at the gene stage. To be male is to be deficient, emotionally limited; maleness is a deficiency disease and males are emotional cripples."

Though amidst all the crazy, she does actually make some interesting points which, to an extent, I can relate to:

"A true community consists of individuals - not mere species members, not couples - respecting each other's individuality and privacy, at the same time interacting with each other mentally and emotionally - free spirits in free relation to each other and co-operating with each other to achieve common ends. Traditionalists say the basic unit of "society" is the family; "hippies" say the tribe; no-one says the individual."

Not that I care for, or even like, Andy Warhol or his art, it was interesting to read how the shooting (which very nearly killed him) devastated the remaining 20 years of his life. Despite Solanas having fallen into obscurity after doing time in jail (though she still called/stalked him from there), Warhol spent the rest of his years living in perpetual fear and paranoia that Solanas would attack him again.

After changing her name to Onz Loh, Solanas died at age 52 - alone and forgotten. Her mother burnt her all of belongings posthumously, potentially including an updated version of the manifesto Solanas was said to have re-written.

The movie 'I Shot Andy Warhol' is a weird but interesting movie to watch.