Drawing from the lived and shared experiences of abused lesbians in small town and urban America, Contesting the Utopia investigates the dissonance between lived experience of lesbian battering and the dominant discourses of relationship violence. Survivors' stories of denial of services and rejection from their own communities reveal how the power of utopic beliefs in lesbian relationships influence abusive relationship outcomes. Throughout the book, I argue that battered lesbians traverse complex networks of power relations, which they also resist in individually private as well as expressly public ways. Contesting the Utopia challenges us all to reconsider our basic assumptions of gendered violence.