Valerie Jean Solanas (April 9, 1936 – April 25, 1988) was an American radical feminist known for the SCUM Manifesto, which she self-published in 1967, and for her attempt to murder artist Andy Warhol in 1968. Solanas had a turbulent childhood, reportedly suffering sexual abuse from both her father and grandfather, and experiencing a volatile relationship with her mother and stepfather. She came out as a lesbian in the 1950s. After graduating with a degree in psychology from the University of Maryland, College Park, Solanas relocated to Berkeley. There she began writing the SCUM Manifesto, which urged women to "overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex." In New York City, Solanas asked Warhol to produce her play Up Your Ass, but he claimed to have lost her script, and hired her to perform in his film, I, a Man, by way of compensation. At this time, a Parisian publisher of censored works, Maurice Girodias, offered Solanas a contract, which she interpreted as a conspiracy between him and Warhol to steal her future writings. On June 3, 1968, Solanas went to The Factory, shot Warhol and art critic Mario Amaya, and attempted to shoot Warhol's manager, Fred Hughes. She then turned herself in to the police. Solanas was charged with attempted murder, assault, and illegal possession of a firearm. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and pleaded guilty to "reckless assault with intent to harm," serving a three-year prison sentence, including treatment in a psychiatric hospital. After her release, she continued to promote the SCUM Manifesto. She died in 1988 of pneumonia in San Francisco. Solanas' views have been described as "unabashed misandry" by Alice Echols. Early life Valerie Solanas was born in 1936 in Ventnor City, New Jersey, to Louis Solanas and Dorothy Marie Biondo. Her father was a bartender and her mother a dental assistant. She had a younger sister, Judith Arlene Solanas Martinez. Her father was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to parents who immigrated from Spain. Her mother was an Italian-American of Genoan and Sicilian descent born in Philadelphia. Solanas reported that her father regularly sexually abused her. Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother remarried shortly afterwards. Solanas disliked her stepfather and began rebelling against her mother, becoming a truant. As a child, she wrote insults for children to use on one another, for the