Talk:Martha Shelley

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Bisexual[edit]

I've read biographical information about Martha Shelley that says that she's actually bisexual and not lesbian. This should be mentioned in the article. 96.227.207.86 (talk) 16:40, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Has she spoken on this specifically? From her 2003 oral history interview, in which she talks about "the pressure to be heterosexual or bisexual, which meant I was screwing around with guys quite a bit," she says that her relationship with Stephen Donaldson "had ended by the time Gay Liberation Front started, so I don’t think I’ve had – I didn’t have any sexual relationships with men after that, after 1969. After the Stonewall riot, really." (Maybe "queer" is a better descriptor, per that same interview: "I’ve been using it all my life.") IcebergSings (talk) 01:29, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Here's a more recent interview with her, from 2019: "I stopped trying, in some ways, to assimilate. I had been trying to relate to guys sexually, and it never really worked. It worked in the sense that I was able to enjoy the sex, but I never fell in love with a guy, and that’s a huge difference. With a woman, I would fall in love and feel emotional passion, not just sexual pleasure. After Stonewall, it was like, 'I'm not even going to bother to try. I don’t care anymore. I don’t care what the straight world thinks.'" Some people with those experiences would identify as bisexual, but she seems to have identified as lesbian (earlier in the same interview, she recounts, "If you were gay, they pressured you to be bisexual"). IcebergSings (talk) 02:38, 24 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Also from the 2003 oral history interview: "At the same time, I started having an affair with Patrick Fitzgerald, somebody who my Jewish mother’s heart would’ve burst over. But I met him at a party, and he was gorgeous. He was very handsome, green eyed, etc. I later found out that he was living on his own, he got arrested for shoplifting and did 30 days or something. So I was taking care of his apartment and my girlfriend Louva moved out from her husband and moved into that apartment while Patrick was in jail. But before that happened, she and I had our first sexual relations with each other. She was – her husband was working as a civil engineer and he would get up at 5 in the morning and go to the job site, and then he’d come home and crash at the end of the day. She invited me over for dinner one evening. He comes home, he crashes, he’s sound asleep, and we make love on the living room floor. And that was – I mean, I knew when I kissed her, that this was totally different from kissing boys. That the intensity of the feeling was so different, and I went home, and I thought, I’m a lesbian. This is what it is. And I knew it. It was like, I had just been given a vision of my destiny. And I called her the next day and she said, 'Oh, it wasn’t that big a deal.' You know, 'I don’t know yet for sure what I am and don’t make such a big fuss over it.' She wanted to continue having relations but I don’t think she wanted that label on it." IcebergSings (talk) 04:12, 25 June 2022 (UTC)[reply]

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