Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation

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 a 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. Leaning in won’t make jobs any more tolerable and that white women have proven to be, at best, unreliable allies. In all these senses, feminism has proven to not be inherently good. This book reckons with the ways these feminisms have pushed us toward counterproductive and even violent ends, in order to 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, first and foremost, a fierce, brilliant love letter to feminism.