"Lesbian Feminism had become the dominating ideology of the early 1980s. But this did not mean that everyone agreed with it......It was the rise of a group of self styled sex radicals that signalled the beginning of the lesbian sex war. This war was waged on the pages of lesbian newsletters, in books and magazines, in pubs and clubs. Battles were fought in conferences, in cinemas, and in the London Lesbian and Gay Centre.

 

On one side were these sex radicals, fighting for what they believed was their right to define their own sexuality and their own sexual practice. One the other side was a lesbian feminist orthodoxy that saw these practices as dangerous and destructive and in total opposition to everything they believed."

 

from Lesbian Sex Wars by Emma Healey (1996)