BACK IN 1968, a young, radical, lesbian feminist called Valerie Solanas pulled a .32 automatic pistol from a brown paper bag and shot Andy Warhol. She also wounded the art critic Mario Amaya and fired at Warhol’s business manager, Fred Hughes, but missed. The gun then jammed. The single bullet that tore up Warhol’s insides meant that he had to wear a surgical corset for the rest of his life.

Solanas said she did this because she believed Warhol was in cahoots with Girodias, the sleazy publisher of Olympia Press, to steal her work. It seems unlikely, but it hardly matters, since Solanas was later declared schizophrenic, so who’s to know what to believe?

That single act, however, guaranteed her fame; and, more importantly, ensured her scurrilous and brilliantly deranged SCUM Manifesto is still talked about. The manifesto (Society for Cutting Up Men – you can either believe that or not, the choice is yours) calls for the destruction of “the money system”, complete automation (so that no one has to do boring jobs) and the extermination of men.

It’s a thrilling mish-mash of sub-Freudian ideas about men being incomplete women, left-wing gibberish, sexual eugenics and 1960s New Agey nonsense, sprinkled with the dated slang of the time. Solanas is keen on females “grooving” with each other, talks about “chicks” and reckons “faggots” could use “their shimmering, flaming example” to “de-man” the men who think they are real men but deep down want to be women (it does get a bit convoluted). This was in the days when even the left were politically incorrect in their speech and nobody underwent sensitivity training. Anyway, poor Andy was obviously the wrong kind of faggot and that’s why he took the bullet.

SCUM is a great read, whether you think it’s a jolly piece of violent, feminist nonsense that bears no relation to the real world or a brilliant satire of the patriarchy.

According to the blurb in Amazon, “the work has indisputable prescience, not only as a radical feminist analysis light-years ahead of its timepredicting artificial insemination, ATMs, a feminist uprising against under-representation in the arts but also as a stunning testament to the rage of an abused and destitute woman”. (The new edition has an introduction by Avital Ronell; it is exactly what one would expect from a leftist who wrote the book on stupidity.) Indeed, SCUM is a great read, whether you think it’s a jolly piece of violent, feminist nonsense that bears no relation to the real world or a brilliant satire of the patriarchy. Let me just say that the patriarchy is a great institution; I became a full member as soon as I was born, don’t pay any fees and get to oppress women everywhere. It also means that I am right in every argument, even if my wife hasn’t understood this yet.

Does mad Valerie’s ranting against men have anything to say to us now, decades later? I think it does. The mentality it reveals is one common to a certain group of people. It’s basically a belief in a massive conspiracy theory, which is that everything wrong with the world and your life is the fault of somebody or something else. And the same culprits are always to blame: capitalism and men.

It’s like a great communal stable, in which you can smugly signal your goodness to the others by choosing your hobby horse and riding it like a warrior: racism, sexism, class war, poverty, etc; and any of the more fashionable ones: homophobia, Islamophobia, inequality. All the better if you can tweet away while doing so. You also get to go on any hobby-horse so you’ll never be bored.

Normally you don’t have to actually do anything; just turning up and riding your phony pony is enough. That’s where Mad Valerie went wrong. She took a leap into praxis and the results were not good. She turned out to be not just rad and mad but also dangerous to know.

Life is nothing if not messy and ironic. Not only was Warhol the wrong sort of faggot, but he was a Democrat too. In 1972 for McGovern’s campaign he designed a sickly poster of a repellent Nixon, much to the latter’s displeasure. He ended up being audited by the IRS until he died.

What’s even more ironic is that when Solanas stepped in front of Warhol, Amaya and Hughes that day in the Factory she had two guns. The second was a .22 calibre pistol. And she still didn’t manage to kill anyone. Typical woman.

– Michael Blackburn.