The late 1980s in London was a period of heady transition for everyone in that city, and lesbian feminists were no exception. London's radically socialist local government, the Greater London Council, had been abolished by Margaret Thatcher's administration in 1986; the 1980s boom was rapidly declining; and the feminist theories on which lesbian feminist separatists had based their lives were being seriously challenged, particularly from within their own community.

Younger women entering the community seemed more interested in sexual desire and having fun and they were in feminist politics, and others constantly accused lesbian feminists of not taking differences between women, such as race and class, into account.

The book traces the relationship between changing theories about gender and sexuality and women's own lives, and looks at how lesbian feminists lived through this period, when it seemed as though their community was fragmenting into an apolitical, postmodernist chaos.