In 1979 the British feminist newsletter Women’s Information and Referral Enquiry Service (WIRES) published the controversial paper “Political Lesbianism: The Case Against Heterosexuality” by the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group. They argue that feminists should abandon heterosexual relationships and embrace lesbianism as a way of authentically living feminist values. This provoked a prolonged debate between readers of WIRES by means of the periodical’s letter-to-the-editor pages. This paper examines these negotiations and demonstrates that the material form of the feminist periodical avoided promoting the fantasy of a frictionless political movement and enabled a networked, multi-level, and good-faith disagreement through the serialised exchange of letters.
