Martha Shelley

After moving to Oakland, California in October 1974, she was involved with the Women's Press Collective where she worked with Judy Grahn to produce Crossing the DMZ, In Other Words, Lesbians Speak Out and other books. Her poetry has appeared in Ms. magazine, Sunbury, The Bright Medusa, We Become New and other periodicals. Shelley appeared in the 2010 documentary Stonewall Uprising, an episode of the American Experience series.

Beginning in 1972, Shelley produced the radio show Lesbian Nation on New York's WBAI radio station. The Library of Congress claims Lesbian Nation to be, most likely, the first lesbian radio show.

In 1970, Lavender Menace, later Radicalesbians, organized the Lavender Menace zap of the Second Congress to Unite Women. Shelley played an instrumental role in the zap itself, and some have claimed she assisted in the writing of the Radicalesbians manifesto, "The Woman-Identified Woman", which introduced "women-identified" and "male-identified" terminology to the lesbian feminist discourse community. Later that same year, Shelley wrote "Subversion in the Women's Movement", which was published in both Come Out! and in off our backs, a feminist publication.

She contributed the pieces "Notes of a Radical Lesbian" and "Terror" to the 1970 anthology Sisterhood is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement, edited by Robin Morgan.

In approximately 1969, the first major essay of Shelley's appears in the newsletter Liberation News Service: "Stepin' Fetchit Woman". This same essay later appeared in other publications under alternate titles including "Women of Lesbos" and "Notes of a Radical Lesbian"; it was called "Notes of a Radical Lesbian" in Sisterhood Is Powerful: An Anthology of Writings From The Women's Liberation Movement. Shelley states that she did not choose the title under which it first appeared.

In 1965, she graduated from City College. In November 1967 she went to her first meeting of the New York City chapter of the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB), of which she later became president, despite her feelings of resistance to events like the "Annual Reminder" held by the organization.

Despite being involved with lesbian feminism, Shelley does not describe herself as a lesbian separatist: though she liked the idea of lesbian-only spaces, she has said that the splitting of gay liberation into splinter groups weakened the movement as a whole. She also was allied to many other left-wing causes of the 1960s and 1970s, such as the pro-choice movement, and civil rights groups such as the Black Panthers and Young Lords, and has described herself as a socialist. Shelley was also a strong critic of the prevailing psychiatric views of homosexuality in the 1960s and argued that the stigmatization of homosexuality as a mental illness was a major contributing factor to psychological issues within the gay and lesbian community.

Martha Shelley (born December 27, 1943) is an American activist, writer, and poet best known for her involvement in lesbian feminist activism.

Martha Altman was born on December 27, 1943, in Brooklyn, New York, to parents of Russian-Polish Jewish descent. In 1960, she attended her first women's judo classes in New York City, trying to meet lesbian women. Two years later, at age 19, she moved out of her parents' home to a hotel and went to lesbian bars, where she "was miserable". She did not find herself fitting in to the roles of "butch" or "femme", common lesbian gender roles during this period.