Enemy Feminisms

Sophie Lewis, the author of Abolish the Family, turns her attention to the feminisms that are easy to dismiss in Enemy Feminisms. White feminism and girlboss feminism have taken a justified beating in recent years. Leaning in has not made work more bearable, and white women have often proved unreliable allies. Yet amid rising fascism, constant attacks on reproductive justice and violent transphobia, Lewis argues that we need to reckon honestly with what Western feminism has produced if we want to build the feminist world we need.

The book offers a frank tour through feminisms that worked against liberation. It starts with nineteenth-century imperial feminists and police officers, moves through twentieth-century KKK feminists and pornophobes, and arrives at today's anti-abortion and TERF feminists. Lewis insists that these enemy feminisms exist and that feminism is not automatically a political good. Only by admitting this, she says, can we understand how such movements pushed toward counterproductive and sometimes violent ends, and begin the kind of strategy that is truly antifascist.

Lewis writes from a left transfeminist, decolonial and sex-radical standpoint. The book stands against cisness, takes apart nationalist ideals of womanhood, and answers femmephobia in all its forms. She frames the whole project as a love letter to feminism.