Quim: for dykes of all sexual persuasions was a British sex-positive lesbian softcore magazine published between 1989 and 1994, with a further issue in 2001. Edited by Sophie Moorcock and Lulu Belliveau—Belliveau had previously worked as a photo editor at the U.S. women’s erotica magazine On Our Backs—it is a core artifact of UK lesbian S/M and pro-sex print culture for anyone mapping how dyke desire fought censorship inside gay and lesbian bookstores as well as outside them. The subtitle already announces the editorial bet: not one correct lesbian sexuality, but room for persuasion, kink, and explicit heat.
Influences and Irregular Production
Influences included Shocking Pink, a young women’s zine produced in London from 1979 to 1992; Chain Reaction, a lesbian S/M club that opened in Vauxhall in 1987; and Sheila McLaughlin’s 1987 film She Must Be Seeing Things. That mix—feminist youth zine energy, a working SM club, and a film that itself sparked lesbian community controversy—explains Quim’s tone better than any single “porn vs. politics” binary. Publication was irregular and depended on when funding and content were available—zine economics rather than monthly newsstand reliability. That intermittency is part of the historical texture: desire first, schedule second. Readers who collected issues lived with gaps; the project still left a complete enough run to be cited decades later.
Content: Anti-Censorship, Pro-Sex, Little Filtering
Editorial stance was explicitly anti-censorship and pro-sex. There was little internal filtering of material; most pieces came from volunteer contributors. Quim ran articles, creative writing, art, and photography on fantasies, orgasm, masturbation, safer sex, sex toys, and sadomasochism—topics that mainstream lesbian press of the era often handled with gloves or not at all. In 1991, “Quim Notebooks” circulated in gay and lesbian bars and bookshops to solicit stories and ideas, turning nightlife and retail spaces into submission pipelines. Issue one included an interview with Susie Bright, editor of On Our Backs, linking the UK title to the U.S. sex-positive women’s erotica wave. Issue five centered black lesbians’ experiences. The sixth and final edition focused on the eviction of a lesbian house and direct-action hub on Bird in Bush Road—politics and housing struggle sitting next to smut rather than replacing it. Fiction contributors included Pat Califia, Jane Solanas, Jo Fisk, and Leonora Rogers Wright; photography included work by Della Grace and Lola Flash—a contributor list that ties the magazine to transatlantic leatherdyke writing and queer visual culture.
Hostile Reception and Bookstore Bans
The first issue met a hostile response; two years passed before issue two appeared. Because content was explicit and sadomasochistic, a number of lesbian and gay bookshops—including Sisterwise and Gay’s the Word—refused to carry the magazine. Unfavorable reviews continued in the gay press. The irony is familiar to SM historians: institutions that fought mainstream homophobia still policed lesbian S/M as too much sex, too much pain, or the wrong politics. Quim stayed controversial by design. For bdsmwild readers that shelf war is the story as much as any single photo spread: softcore dyke SM was not automatically welcomed by “the community”; it had to fight for counter space the way leather writing fought feminist purity tests in San Francisco and New York.
