
Enemy Feminisms
TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation
Haymarket Books · Print & ebook · February 28, 2025
From the author of Abolish the Family, an unflinching tour of two hundred years of enemy feminisms, making the case instead for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we need.
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- Who it’s for
- A brisk, unsparing look at feminism's uneasy alliances and what they cost.
- Genres
- Feminist Theory & Criticism, Transgender Studies, Gender Studies
- Published
- Haymarket Books, February 28, 2025
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From the author of Abolish the Family, an unflinching tour of two hundred years of enemy feminisms, making the case instead for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we need. 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.
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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.
Feminism, Framed
A brisk, unsparing look at feminism's uneasy alliances and what they cost.
Come here for
- feminism argued from the side of liberation, not comfort
- sharp category-crossing provocations
Expect
- radical politics with a polemical edge
- a sustained, ideas-forward read
Where it sits
| Feminist Theory & Criticism | 99% |
|---|---|
| Transgender Studies | 44% |
| Gender Studies | 16% |
Percentages are BookFrontier’s reading of the book.
Publisher categories
- Radical Politics
- Feminist Theory & Criticism
- Transgender Studies
- Authors
- Sophie Lewis
- Publisher
- Haymarket Books
- Published
- February 28, 2025
- Format
- Print & ebook
- Reading lane
- Radical Politics