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The lesbian press at the turn of the 1980s and throughout the decade was not a reflection of a movement predating it but rather the site from which a collective sense of belonging was structured and invented. This article investigates the role of the lesbian press in the social, political, and cultural construction of a lesbian subject. Following an analysis of the unsettling position of lesbians in the 1970s women’s movement, the connective role of the lesbian press in the forming of a collective consciousness will be examined through the following three lines of enquiry: the creation of social bonds through the example of the magazine Lesbia and its personal ads, the unfolding of a political debate on the issues of lesbian sadomasochism and alliances between gays and lesbians, and finally, the elaboration of an intimate, poetic, and utopian form of self-writing.