Sophie Lewis, "Enemy Feminisms: Terfs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation" (Haymarket Books, 2025)

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Apr 19, 2025

Sophie Lewis, an Anglo-German writer and feminist theorist, dives into her new book, exploring the complexities of 'enemy feminisms' that range from imperial feminists to today’s TERFs. She passionately critiques how certain feminist ideologies can reinforce patriarchal structures and advocates for a more inclusive, anti-fascist feminism. Highlights include the historical ties of feminism to oppression, the troubling intersections with violence and militarism, and the necessity for solidarity with future generations to redefine feminist care and justice.

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INSIGHT

Redefining Feminism's Boundaries

Feminism can be defined as a woman-led vindication of women against patriarchy.
This broad definition includes problematic feminisms like pro-life feminists but excludes movements without an anti-patriarchal stance.

INSIGHT

Slavery Metaphor in Early Feminism

Early Anglophone feminists used slavery metaphors that ignored colonial contexts.
This framing positioned white women as oppressed slaves, overshadowing racialized realities and engendering harmful legacies.

INSIGHT

Abolition Beyond Prohibition

Many abolitionists opposed slavery but upheld racial hierarchy and white supremacy.
Abolition means building a world that satisfies human needs beyond just outlawing institutions like slavery.

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Enemy Feminisms: Terfs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2025) is a provocative compendium of the feminisms we love to dismiss and making the case for the bold, liberatory feminist politics we'll need to stand against fascism, nationalism, femmephobia, and cisness.

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. 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.

About the Author

Sophie Lewis is a writer. Her books, Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, and Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation, have been translated into nine languages.Sophie grew up in France, half-British, half-German, but now lives in Philadelphia and teaches online courses on utopian theory at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. She also has a visiting affiliation with the Center for Research on Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

About the Host

Stuti Roy has recently graduated with an MPhil in Modern South Asian Studies from the University of Oxford. She holds a BA in Political Science from the University of Toronto.

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