Femmephilia

Sophie Lewis is a writer, utopian, feminist, and independent scholar. She is the author of Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family, and Full Surrogacy Now, and a contributor to the collection Hope Against Hope. Lewis’s essays and articles routinely appear in academic journals like Feminist Theory as well as literary ones like n+1, Harper’s, and the London Review of Books. Lewis teaches short courses on feminist theory at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research and has a visiting affiliation with the Center for Research on Feminist, Queer, and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania. She is based in Philadelphia, PA.

• IntroductionWhat does “femme” mean, and how is it different from femininity? What kind of anticapitalist potential do femmes offer us? SWERFIt’s impossible to take a meaningful stand against transphobia if, like Catharine MacKinnon, Julie Bindel, and others, you remain a sex work prohibitionist.MermaidOn the transness of the Little Mermaid.VampireA portrait of cis-trans solidarity.DaphneDaphne was a woman who wanted to transition into a tree, and Apollo—you guessed it—was a chaser.MumputzYou can be femme and also femmephobic, a mother against motherhood, including the author’s own mother.MarilynOn the femme queerness of comrade Marilyn Monroe.ShulamithShulamith Firestone on femme labor, against Shulamith Firestone on femme labor.AndreaOn the femmephobia of Andrea Dworkin.CatsOn the antiwork dialectics of cats.OctopusOn the erotophilic promise of the octopus girlfriend.TradwifeThe femmephobic alliance between tradwife and girlboss.MaidMaid memoirs and momfluencers: On the limits of domestic heterofatalism in maid memoirs and by momfluencers.DianeDiane di Prima’s “acid commune-ist” mothering against motherhood.

Praise for Enemy Feminisms:“A field guide to reactionary archetypes from fascists to TERFs, Enemy Feminisms surfaces a hidden vein of feminist conservatism. A welcome alternative to political history as an accumulation of social media screenshots.”—Malcolm Harris, author of What’s Left: Three Paths Through the Planetary Crisis“Where would we be without Sophie Lewis? In a more impoverished political world. This book is mandatory reading for anyone interested in a rough and compelling vision of the feminist past, present, and future. Honest, brutal, historically comprehensive, and brilliant.”—Judith Butler“Enemy Feminisms is a compelling, provocative, ferocious book that shreds one received wisdom after another in a poised balance of incisive argument and elegant writing. Sophie Lewis has become an indispensable thinker for our era.”—Torrey Peters, author of Detransition Baby“Lewis’s Enemy Feminisms evidences the need for animosity between feminists and the histories of violence through which fascistic and reactionary accounts of feminism emerge. They warn us against the falsity of sisterhood, examining how and why we must be prepared to break with this myth in order to assert what feminism can and should do. With daring and inventive prose, they remind us that if ours is a liberatory vision, we must be able to identify our enemies.”—Lola Olufemi, author of Feminism Interrupted“Lewis treats feminism not as an inherent moral good but as a thick tangle of partial, contradictory practices that must be judged on their material effects—and shows us how we might cut our way through. Fearsome and deeply needed.”—Andrea Long Chu, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic at New York Magazine"Sophie Lewis is sharp, bold, compassionate and fearless.”—Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex“Everything about the necessity of Sophie Lewis to contemporary discourse on the left has been said, and rightly so! Her work and voice are crucial, learned, and stylistically a joy to read. But what needs to be said, more than this, is that Sophie Lewis is absolutely clear on the urgent material stakes of her writing. Enemy Feminisms expertly and painstakingly parses the historical and contemporary landscapes of reactionary fascist feminisms for our sake, and for the sake of a struggle we simply need to win.”—Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox"This lively counter-history ... is sure to entertain and provoke."—Publishers Weekly