Edited on June 4, 2015 to note the evolution of Martha Altman Shelley’s pseudonym.
“From the beautiful boys at Cherry Grove to the aging queens in the uptown bars, the taxi-driving dykes to the lesbian fashion models, the hookers (male and female) on 42nd Street, the leather lovers…and the very ordinary very un-lurid gays…we are the sort of people everyone was taught to despise — and now we are shaking off the chains of self-hatred and marching on your citadels of repression.”
— Martha Shelley, “Gay is Good,” first issue of the Gay Liberation Front's Gay Flames pamphlet, 1970
On this date in 1970, a handful of lesbians made a big splash during the Second Congress to Unite Women by confronting the exclusion of lesbian voices by women’s movement mainstays like the National Organization for Women (NOW). Martha Altman Shelley (b. 1943) was among the activists who crashed the conference in “Lavender Menace” t-shirts, co-opting Betty Friedan’s homophobic phrase deriding lesbians in the women’s movement. Mixing an important protest with a little humor and a bit of performance, the “zap” succeeded in bringing attention to the issue of homophobia and shining a light on the need for intersectional feminism.
Martha Altman Shelley’s activism was already firmly established through her work with the early Homophile organization the Daughters of Bilitis when the Stonewall riot thrust the gay rights movement out of the shadows. Born Martha Altman, she began using the pseudonym Martha Shelley at the request of the New York Daughters of Bilitis leadership out of concern for FBI surveillance typically experienced by members of activist groups. Shelley was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, an organization forged in the ashes of the Christopher Street riots soon after Stonewall and was a participant in the Annual Reminder protests on Independence Mall in Philadelphia, which were held between 1965-1969 on July 4th.
1. Martha Shelley at right.
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. (1970). Three members of Lavender Menace at the Second Congress to Unite Women, New York, 1970 May
2. July 4, 1969--Reminder Day picketing at Independence Hall, Philadelphia (final year for the annual demonstration). Photos by Nancy Tucker. Copyright held by the Lesbian Herstory Educational Foundation (Lesbian Herstory Archives), Brooklyn. Envelope 1 of 2. Smiling: Lilli Vincenz--Behind her: Martha Shelley--July 4, 1969--Photo: Nancy Tucker/Lesbian Herstory Archives, 1969
Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Barbara Gittings and Kay Tobin Lahusen gay history papers and photographs" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1969.
