Skip to content

2026 RBMS Virtual Showcase

June 23-26, 2026

Virtual Book Fair Exclusive

Women in the Martial Arts [working draft]

$150
Offered by Fugitive Materials
  • Binding: Photo-mechanical reproduction from holograph and typescript. Corner stapled packet, 5 pp. 8 ½ x 14 in. Very good
  • Publisher: np
  • Location: New York
  • Date: 1976
  • Seller SKU: 10317

New York: np, 1976. Photo-mechanical reproduction from holograph and typescript. Corner stapled packet, 5 pp. 8 ½ x 14 in. Very good. Working draft, with edits photo-mechanically reproduced from holograph, of an uncredited essay about the feminist self-defense movement.

The essay responds to and ultimately refutes the critique that the self-defense movement was a "macho trip" that reproduced cultures of violence. The essay quotes prominent women martial arts pioneers such as Nadia Telsey, who founded Brooklyn Women's Martial Arts in 1974, and Roberta Schine, then teaching at Richmond College on Staten Island. Richmond College, now the St. George campus of the College of Staten Island, was a major center of queer organizing on Staten Island in the 1970s. Richmond College merged with another local school to become the College of Staten Island in 1976, dating this essay to the mid-1970s. The essay also promotes the Women's Martial Arts Union, a prominent feminist collective of women formed in 1972 to promote self-defense and martial arts training.

"Is it a 'macho trip', or does it help women combat the patriarchal culture? Is it adopting the 'violence culture', or is it a necessity for curbing violence against women?"

A working document from inside the women's self-defense movement of the 1970s, addressing a criticism made of the movement by other feminists.

Offered by Fugitive Materials

Sold
Reserved
$150

Or Contact the Exhibitor to Purchase:

Phone/Text: (917) 239-1385
See other items from this exhibitor
Fugitive Materials
Specializing in Archives & Collections, Black Liberation, Central & Latin America, Feminism, Lgbtq+, Middle East, Radicalism, Social Movements and Underground Art.

Fugitive Materials is committed to the preservation of radical, lesser-known, and alternative histories, and to the disruption of informational privilege through archiving, publishing, and bookselling. We specialize in global material cultures of resistance: the detritus of radical social movements, queer histories, counterculture, pedagogy, urbanism, uprisings, and art. We organize, catalog, and place archives, ephemera, and primary-source documents with universities and museums around the world. As members of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), we buy and sell books, periodicals and ephemera and locate rare and out-of-print publications. Fugitive Materials also publishes books, zines, and catalogs, oftentimes prompted by archival materials we handle

Contact the Seller
Daylon Orr
686 Sterling Place
2nd Floor
BROOKLYN, New York 11216
Phone/Text: (917) 239-1385
https://www.fugitivematerials.com/
Sign up for Fugitive Materials’s Mailing List

All items subject to prior sale. Returns will be accepted for any reason within a week of receipt. Please provide advance notice of the return. All books and ephemera are graded to general antiquarian guidelines, with fine being our highest grade.

Fugitive Materials Catalog #5 Progress in Process: Resistance and Affirmation
tracking-