Although the Lesbian Avengers had a young, punkish image, the six women who conceived the group—Anne-Christine D’Adesky, Marie Honan, Ann Maguire, Sarah Schulman, Ana Maria Simo, and Maxine Wolfe—were veteran lesbian activists who had long been active in pro-choice, social justice, and AIDS organizing. The founders were concerned that young queer women were not receiving sufficient organizing experience in groups comprised mostly of gay men. "The original motive for the Lesbian Avengers was to find some kind of training ground to teach younger lesbians organizing skills, because male-dominated groups were not allowing them to develop," said Schulman, a well-known lesbian author.

The Lesbian Avengers’ debut action took place on the first day of classes at a public grade school in Queens, a protest against the increasing influence of religious conservatives on the curriculum. Directly confronting societal fears about queers recruiting children, the Avengers handed out 300 lavender balloons with the message "Ask About Lesbian Lives."

In the ensuing years, Avengers chapters sprang up in cities, small towns, and campuses across the United States and around the world. Although no official count was ever taken, it is estimated that at the movement’s peak there were 50 to 60 chapters, representing some six countries.

Eschewing process-heavy meetings and boring rallies, the Lesbian Avengers became known for their in-your-face direct-action tactics, campy humor, and creative use of art and media, similar to other activist groups of the day such as ACT UP, Women’s Health Action and Mobilization (WHAM), Queer Nation, and the Women’s Action Coalition (WAC). Fire-eating became the Avengers’ signature, and stickers featuring the group’s logo of a lit bomb adorned lampposts and public mailboxes throughout New York, San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, and other cities.

The Lesbian Avengers’ battles were fought on many fronts. The New York chapter erected a papier-mache likeness of Alice B. Toklas next to an existing statue of her lover, writer Gertrude Stein, in Bryant Park on Valentine’s Day in 1993. To protest a 1994 anti-immigrant ballot initiative, the San Francisco Avengers set up a "citizen checkpoint" at the city’s opera house. And in 1995, the Boston chapter held an "eat-out" outside a local Jenny Craig center to protest the diet industry.

But the Avengers’ most consistent target was the religious right. In February 1995, the San Francisco chapter unleashed a plague of locusts (actually 1,000 crickets) at the headquarters of Exodus International, an organization that claims to "cure" homosexuals. In October 1997, Avengers from around the country protested at a national rally of the Promise Keepers, a patriarchal Christian men’s group. The following year, the Washington, D.C. Avengers presented their Spirit of Bigotry awards to legislators Trent Lott (for "outstanding leadership in the area of homophobia"), Bob Barr (for his "willingness to uphold and promote pre-Civil War family values"), and Henry Hyde (for "displays of misogyny above and beyond the call of duty"). The group also established the Lesbian Avengers Civil Rights Organizing Project, which sent full-time lesbian activists to Maine and Idaho to organize against antigay ballot initiatives.

The most enduring legacy of the Lesbian Avengers may be the annual dyke marches, usually held on the eve of LGBT Pride parades. The first dyke march, organized by members of the Avengers and ACT UP along with local lesbian activists, took place in April 1993 in conjunction with the national Lesbian, Gay, and Bi March on Washington. Some 20,000 dykes marched without a permit to the White House in what Schulman called "the largest lesbian event in the history of the world." Two months later, some 3,000 women turned out for a dyke march in New York City and 10,000 marched in San Francisco.

While most organized Lesbian Avengers chapters are no longer active, radical queer women still adopt the Avengers’ name to carry out bold, outrageous actions. A small group of Santa Cruz Lesbian Avengers, for example, braved the cold rain topless to protest against the World Trade Organization in Seattle in 1999. And in cities across the United States and around the world, dyke marches are going strong and growing larger.