Sophie Lewis with E.T. Stone: Enemy Feminisms

From the author of Abolish the Family, a provocative compendium of the feminisms we love to dismiss and making the case for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we'll need to stand against fascism, nationalism, femmephobia, and cisness.
In recent years, "white feminism" and girlboss feminism have taken a justified beating. We know that leaning in won't make our jobs any more tolerable and that white women have proven to be, at best, unreliable allies. But in a time of rising fascism, ceaseless attacks on reproductive justice, and violent transphobia, we need to reckon with what Western feminism has wrought if we have any hope of building the feminist world we need.
Sophie Lewis offers an unflinching tour of enemy feminisms, from 19th century imperial feminists and police officers to 20th century KKK feminists and pornophobes to today's anti-abortion and TERF feminists. Enemy feminisms exist. Feminism is not an inherent political good. Only when we acknowledge that can we finally reckon with the ways these feminisms have pushed us toward counterproductive and even violent ends. And only then can we finally engage in feminist strategizing that is truly antifascist.
At once a left transfeminist battlecry against cisness, a decolonial takedown of nationalist womanhoods, and a sex-radical retort to femmephobia in all its guises, Enemy Feminisms is above all a fierce, brilliant love letter to feminism.

Sophie Lewis is an ex-academic feminist living in Philadelphia with several of her kin, including Barnacle the cat. Besides Enemy Feminisms, Sophie's published books include Abolish the Family and Full Surrogacy Now, both of which have been translated into many languages. You can support Sophie's writing at patreon.com/reproutopia and find her essays everywhere from the New York Times to the London Review of Books.

E.T. (Emma Thurber) Stone researches how law structures relationships of material and emotional support in the United States. Her research and writing has been funded by the History and Political Economy Project, the Charles Warren Center for American History, the American Society for Legal History, and the Program on Law and Political Economy at Harvard Law School. She is currently a PhD candidate in Harvard University’s Program on American Studies.

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