Valerie Solanas

Valerie Solanas

The law takes a dim view of attempted murder.

This sweetie comes in as the number one bunny boiler here. She grew up with horrific abuse, though for some odd reason remained close to her father. Despite being a lesbian, she was a hooker, an occupation which doesn’t always bring out the best in people. However, you have to take her word with a pretty big grain of salt given her mental problems. Even so, she had it together enough in her early days to get a degree (in psychology, of course).
Her history with Andy Warhol is a bit convoluted, but things went downhill after he lost the manuscript of her play called Up Your Ass. (That’s not a piece likely to win a Tony award, though the manuscript was rediscovered much later and someone actually put it on.) Since she happened to be a paranoid schizophrenic, naturally she drew the wrong conclusions about the lost manuscript. Then she shot Andy Warhol, severely injuring him—a hell of a way to get her fifteen minutes of fame.
She got a three year prison sentence for attempted murder, illegal gun charges, and assault. She got one year off as time served for her pre-trial stay in the loony bin. After her release, she continued to stalk Warhol.
Kooky quote:

Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.

This is the opening sentence of a well-named rant called the SCUM Manifesto (SCUM is an abbreviation for “Society for Cutting Up Men”, full text here). After that line, it only gets worse. So she wanted a Communist revolution, Skynet to become self-aware, and death to all men. Yes, she meant it, and she said so.
Wiping out half the world’s population seems just a wee bit extremist, of course. Still, despite being a paranoid schizophrenic and a violent criminal, her lovely rant is included in several feminist anthologies.