The Program in Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Dr. Sophie Lewis' new book, Enemy Feminisms, will be out in February. Billed as “a provocative compendium of the feminisms we love to dismiss, making the case for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we’ll need to stand against fascism, nationalism, femmephobia, and cisness," Enemy Feminisms can be pre-ordered here. Please contact Anne Rumberger to get a review copy.
Here is a blurb of the book: "This book seeks to offer 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. 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. 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."
