A provocative compendium of two hundred years of enemy feminisms, making the case for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we need instead.
Fascism and violent transphobia are on the rise, reproductive rights are under threat, and feminism has become a face of brutal colonial violence. Yet as Sophie Lewis argues in Enemy Feminisms, now is not the time to put our differences aside under an inclusive banner of feminism. Instead, if we have any hope of building an abundant and liveable world, we must reckon with what Western feminism has wrought.
With her usual verve and eloquence, 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. As these stories reveal, feminism can be both a force of reaction and an insurgent force. Only when we acknowledge and understand our enemies can we finally find our comrades and engage in feminist strategizing that is truly antifascist.
At once a decolonial takedown of nationalist womanhoods, a call for the abolition of all organized scarcities, and a left transfeminist battlecry against cisness, Enemy Feminisms is above all a fierce love letter to feminism.
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Praise for Abolish the Family:
“A bracing invitation to think beyond an institution that immiserates so many but that, for just as many, remains a fixed point of social possibility. Sophie Lewis is, as always, sharp, bold, compassionate and fearless.”
–Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex
“I am consistently dazzled by Sophie Lewis's work, which is both intellectually capacious and heart-expanding. Abolish the Family is a liberatory demand and a world-making project proposed here with revolutionary love and inimitable style. Without fail, Lewis clarifies, disrupts and inspires.”
–Natasha Lennard, author of Being Numerous: Essays on Non-Fascist Life
“Sophie Lewis is our most eloquent, furious and funny critic of how the family is a terrible way to satisfy all of our desires for love, care, nourishment.”
–New Statesman“Thrilling.”
–Refinery29
Praise for Full Surrogacy Now“Sophie Lewis and her expansive vision of feminism are desperately needed right now. She makes the work of undoing what "womanhood" has come to mean look possible and irresistible.”
–Melissa Gira Grant, author of Playing the Whore
“Dazzling.”
–London Review of Books