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Enemy Feminisms
From the author of Abolish the Family, 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 /em> is above all a fierce, brilliant love letter to feminism.
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 /em> is above all a fierce, brilliant love letter to feminism.
397 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 18, 2025
150 people are currently reading
4849 people want to read
About the author
Sophie Lewis
6 books99 followersSophie Lewis is a freelance writer living in Philadelphia, teaching courses for the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research. Her first book was Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family, and her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, Boston Review, n+1, the London Review of Books and Salvage. Sophie studied English, Politics, Environment and Geography at Oxford, the New School, and Manchester University, and is now an unpaid visiting scholar at the Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 107 reviews
May 30, 2025
Every feminist needs to read this; know thy enemy!
Watch my interview with Sophie here: https://youtu.be/vlLTj2W4ORo?si=eaozN...-
Watch my interview with Sophie here: https://youtu.be/vlLTj2W4ORo?si=eaozN...-
March 3, 2025
I really can't watch the world falling apart on the news while reading a non-fiction book so caught up in the narrative that is part of the problem that it misses the irony in its chastising everyone and their mother - what an ideological clusterfuck. And I say that although I fully agree with Lewis' premise: "Why would women not be horrible, aren't they part of history?" Of course, women, and also feminists, can be outright bad, or uphold viewpoints and make decisions that harm other women. Of course, we need to discuss what kind of feminism we want, which includes tackling which positions we want to reject.
But really, I can't tolerate books anymore that claim (and do actually believe) to tackle privilege while including sentences like these: Kamala Harris et al. "are wielding giant apparatuses of racist state violence", and "for many of us, feminism denotes the task of abolishing all organized scarcities, from the private nuclear household to the nation". Well, I have great news for you: Western nation states are currently bending under pressure, the "apparatus of racist state violence" is dismantled by Donald Trump and turned into an authoritarian machine, him ridiculing the leader of a nation whose citizens are dying in Putin's ruthless war might just be the beginning, Ukraine just the first nation to be "abolished" in Europe.
So: Maybe instead of dreaming about the end of the nation state, the left should love its democratic institutions a little more? You know, the ones that make it possible for all of us to fight for feminism? And protect and defend these institutions against people who want to abolish them? And aim to make them function better, more justly? I mean, as long as we as societies still can?
But sure, you can also create a "bestiary of enemy feminisms" while you "expand your desire for revolution". Putin, Xi, Musk et al. will certainly shake in their boots. I mean before they take away your damn rights. Or, if you're an unlucky Ukrainian, your nation state, and then your life.
(No, I didn't make it past the first chapter, this nonsense was too much for me; and yes, I still think the project to detect problematic tendencies within feminism is valid, but not in an ally-enemy dichotomy, because it further enhances the issues we're already dealing with.)
But really, I can't tolerate books anymore that claim (and do actually believe) to tackle privilege while including sentences like these: Kamala Harris et al. "are wielding giant apparatuses of racist state violence", and "for many of us, feminism denotes the task of abolishing all organized scarcities, from the private nuclear household to the nation". Well, I have great news for you: Western nation states are currently bending under pressure, the "apparatus of racist state violence" is dismantled by Donald Trump and turned into an authoritarian machine, him ridiculing the leader of a nation whose citizens are dying in Putin's ruthless war might just be the beginning, Ukraine just the first nation to be "abolished" in Europe.
So: Maybe instead of dreaming about the end of the nation state, the left should love its democratic institutions a little more? You know, the ones that make it possible for all of us to fight for feminism? And protect and defend these institutions against people who want to abolish them? And aim to make them function better, more justly? I mean, as long as we as societies still can?
But sure, you can also create a "bestiary of enemy feminisms" while you "expand your desire for revolution". Putin, Xi, Musk et al. will certainly shake in their boots. I mean before they take away your damn rights. Or, if you're an unlucky Ukrainian, your nation state, and then your life.
(No, I didn't make it past the first chapter, this nonsense was too much for me; and yes, I still think the project to detect problematic tendencies within feminism is valid, but not in an ally-enemy dichotomy, because it further enhances the issues we're already dealing with.)
March 26, 2025
cw: mutilation, white supremacy, fascism, generally awful human beings
Angriest fucking tract I've read since Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto and Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism, and I am all for it. This is possibly the best genealogy I've read on fascism. It's not particularly in-depth, it's flighty, it's sassy, pissed off, annoying at times, but it's the perfect resource for identifying twelve forms of feminism that have allied themselves with imperialists, white supremacists, fascists, cops, religious fundamentalists, and the alt-right. Fall of civilisation shit. Hatred of poor, brown, queer, and sex workers. White crusaders out for black blood—whether Jewish, African, or Trans—so they can retain the purity of empire in the face of globalisation.
Do you know why we fight whiteness? Not because white people are inherently bad, but because whiteness has been used as a weapon of colonisation for centuries. John Stuart Mill in the 1800s wrote that utilitarianism's goal was the maximum benefit of all. That it operated under a no harm principle. But how do liberals define harm? Well, you see those brown people over there not maximising their utility? They need to be put to work, for both their benefit and ours. Otherwise they'd languish under their own laziness. They'd remain in a Hobbesian state of nature for the rest of their lives.
This is the logic of colonisation: an imposition of morality that elides material conquest—primitive accumulation/land theft, chattel slavery, cultural genocide—in other words, civilisation.
White women, in particular, were seen as moral compasses in Britain and America, pure and pristine, a force of Godliness against degeneration, entropy, and blackness. From the Congo to the KKK, white women were used in crusades against blackness, and they were not passive in their use. Mary Sheldon, the daughter of a Southern plantation owner, toured Africa in the late 1800s to enlighten the ignorant, passive, and barbaric races of the dark continent. She was a humanitarian. She wielded pistols and stood on the backs of her retainers so she was always above the masses she addressed. They named her (so Mary claimed) Bébé Bwana—The White Queen. When she returned to America, she became known as a colonial reformist. She had such a reputation that she was sent to King Leopold's Congo to investigate claims of colonial genocide. When she returned, she stated that King Leopold's officers had committed no atrocities. The natives had cut off their own hands! There was no genocide in the Congo, just poor blacks who needed to be demystified from their own irrational customs. She was not only a girlboss, but a PR publicist—a corporate shill whose virtue signalling permitted the enslavement, torture, and murder of millions.
These kinds of logic were used against poor women, as well. In the early 1900s, white suffragettes and prohibitionists turned their sights to the empire's interior. Colonialism had created a massive sex trade which, the prohibitionists proposed, was driven by sex trafficking. In fact, there was a pedophile ring. Predatory men, predominantly dark-skinned, were preying on our white, virginal daughters. A ring funded by Jewish and Catholic elites (the KKK added). Foreign capital. Foreign capital used to seduced our wayward sister into the twin vices of Greed and Lust. A force so powerful it could destroy the Christian family. It could destroy civilisation through miscegenation—white genocide.
I'm not exaggerating. These were literal arguments used by reactionary feminists in the 1900s to ship migrant women back to "their own countries", to imprison sexually-active children as juveniles, and to destroy the economic security of working (class) women.
You can see how such logics informed fascist women, right? The enemy of solidarity is moralism—speaking over and for others. Controlling the bodies of those seen as amoral, in need of raising, saving, and civilising. Seeing all other forms of consciousness other than one's own as false consciousness, without any sociological analysis of what pushes people towards work, of what structures constrain and direct them, of what pragmatics are necessary for survival under capitalism. It's an idealism based in hatred, disgust, and pity.
Sophie is clear about how seductive such ideas can be, despite their absurdity. Women were told they lived in a liberal democracy, despite having no formal political power. They were held back in every arena of life; told tales of heroic men, yet expected to support abusive partners; objectified and ogled at, yet shamed for their sexuality. The liberal state had lied to them. And men . . . they were savages! Liberty, fraternity, equality for whom? The fucking elites! So when the KKK and the fascists offered a total revolt, a sacred cleansing of the corrupt bureaucracy, and an excision of blackness (that dreadful source of savagery that had corrupted white Christian men), it was fucking enticing. And it was inexorably white.
Fascism is called the socialism of fools because it mobilises mass grievances towards pernicious and self-destructive ends. Over and over again, reactionary feminists have allied with white supremacists, only to find themselves sidelined the moment their male allies gained power. Betrayed by the state, betrayed by patriarchy, they become a footnote in history. We cry out, feminism can't possibly be reactionary, can it? Those people over there, they're not true feminists! Rather than argue semantics, we have to accept that for as long as there has been empire and exploitation, there have been enemy feminisms. From the high chair of moralism, the working class appear dirty, ragged, evil. Everywhere the moralist's gaze falls, it sees destitution. It sees theft, murder, and sex. It sees squalidness as immanent to poor people, effusing from their bodies like some essential deviance. It's a victim-blaming gaze—and its answer is control, exclusion, and murder. From black to trans, our bodies are annihilated for an ontological security that never arrives—because we aren't the fucking problem.
One time, a sex worker unionist attended a talk by Catharine A. MacKinnon, an anti-pornography carceral feminist. She said "I'm sure you don't want women controlled by police" and MacKinnon simply replied she had nothing to say to "a woman like [her]". Transwomen have persistently challenged the logic of J. K. Rowling's statements, and she has responded with bad faith deflections, distortions, and exaggerations.** These are our enemy feminists: women who don't even care to understand the needs of others. Women who use the strong-arm of the state to destroy lives. Women who align themselves with religious patriarchs to control sexuality. Women who use the logic of degeneration to place blacks and queers on the lynching tree.
—
* Jean Paul-Sartre once wrote, "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous. . . . But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert."
** TERFs consistently deploy Antisemitism as a discursive style. When a child comes out as trans or nonbinary, their family is usually ignorant of queer issues, and will seek to educate themselves to better support their child. TERFs, however, argue children are being indoctrinated by liberal elites. That they're being brainwashed. That their experience of their body is false consciousness. First of all, this is a fascist argument that relies on the logics of decadence and degeneration; secondly, it presumes children are impressionable to the point of self-erasure. It's like they've never engaged with a child, who will do whatever the fuck they want, unless they're bullied out of it. Children experiment with gender all the time, when they smash cars together, or squirt water guns at one another. TERFs create a moral panic over the mere act of play, because they're too fucking fragile to understand some people want to play differently to others, and because they're obsessed with reproduction and bloodlines.
TERFs have strong ties to reactionary Christians too. They're obsessed with nature and the "natural body". With normalising children into a strict binarism that posits any deviation as mutilation. But discourses on nature become quickly absurd when you integrate them into an ecological framework. Cow's milk is fucking packed with estrogen, but fascists love it. Food is filled with hormones, and chemicals that interact with hormones. So, it's not the hormones they're obsessed with, but your capacity to choose what ones you want to take. They want your body as a reproductive body—as a childbearing organ of the nation. Anything against this is "self-mutilation". It's a discourse of control, masquerading as nature, with ties to the Volksgemeinschaft.
Angriest fucking tract I've read since Valerie Solanas's SCUM Manifesto and Aimé Césaire's Discourse on Colonialism, and I am all for it. This is possibly the best genealogy I've read on fascism. It's not particularly in-depth, it's flighty, it's sassy, pissed off, annoying at times, but it's the perfect resource for identifying twelve forms of feminism that have allied themselves with imperialists, white supremacists, fascists, cops, religious fundamentalists, and the alt-right. Fall of civilisation shit. Hatred of poor, brown, queer, and sex workers. White crusaders out for black blood—whether Jewish, African, or Trans—so they can retain the purity of empire in the face of globalisation.
Do you know why we fight whiteness? Not because white people are inherently bad, but because whiteness has been used as a weapon of colonisation for centuries. John Stuart Mill in the 1800s wrote that utilitarianism's goal was the maximum benefit of all. That it operated under a no harm principle. But how do liberals define harm? Well, you see those brown people over there not maximising their utility? They need to be put to work, for both their benefit and ours. Otherwise they'd languish under their own laziness. They'd remain in a Hobbesian state of nature for the rest of their lives.
This is the logic of colonisation: an imposition of morality that elides material conquest—primitive accumulation/land theft, chattel slavery, cultural genocide—in other words, civilisation.
White women, in particular, were seen as moral compasses in Britain and America, pure and pristine, a force of Godliness against degeneration, entropy, and blackness. From the Congo to the KKK, white women were used in crusades against blackness, and they were not passive in their use. Mary Sheldon, the daughter of a Southern plantation owner, toured Africa in the late 1800s to enlighten the ignorant, passive, and barbaric races of the dark continent. She was a humanitarian. She wielded pistols and stood on the backs of her retainers so she was always above the masses she addressed. They named her (so Mary claimed) Bébé Bwana—The White Queen. When she returned to America, she became known as a colonial reformist. She had such a reputation that she was sent to King Leopold's Congo to investigate claims of colonial genocide. When she returned, she stated that King Leopold's officers had committed no atrocities. The natives had cut off their own hands! There was no genocide in the Congo, just poor blacks who needed to be demystified from their own irrational customs. She was not only a girlboss, but a PR publicist—a corporate shill whose virtue signalling permitted the enslavement, torture, and murder of millions.
These kinds of logic were used against poor women, as well. In the early 1900s, white suffragettes and prohibitionists turned their sights to the empire's interior. Colonialism had created a massive sex trade which, the prohibitionists proposed, was driven by sex trafficking. In fact, there was a pedophile ring. Predatory men, predominantly dark-skinned, were preying on our white, virginal daughters. A ring funded by Jewish and Catholic elites (the KKK added). Foreign capital. Foreign capital used to seduced our wayward sister into the twin vices of Greed and Lust. A force so powerful it could destroy the Christian family. It could destroy civilisation through miscegenation—white genocide.
I'm not exaggerating. These were literal arguments used by reactionary feminists in the 1900s to ship migrant women back to "their own countries", to imprison sexually-active children as juveniles, and to destroy the economic security of working (class) women.
You can see how such logics informed fascist women, right? The enemy of solidarity is moralism—speaking over and for others. Controlling the bodies of those seen as amoral, in need of raising, saving, and civilising. Seeing all other forms of consciousness other than one's own as false consciousness, without any sociological analysis of what pushes people towards work, of what structures constrain and direct them, of what pragmatics are necessary for survival under capitalism. It's an idealism based in hatred, disgust, and pity.
Sophie is clear about how seductive such ideas can be, despite their absurdity. Women were told they lived in a liberal democracy, despite having no formal political power. They were held back in every arena of life; told tales of heroic men, yet expected to support abusive partners; objectified and ogled at, yet shamed for their sexuality. The liberal state had lied to them. And men . . . they were savages! Liberty, fraternity, equality for whom? The fucking elites! So when the KKK and the fascists offered a total revolt, a sacred cleansing of the corrupt bureaucracy, and an excision of blackness (that dreadful source of savagery that had corrupted white Christian men), it was fucking enticing. And it was inexorably white.
Fascism is called the socialism of fools because it mobilises mass grievances towards pernicious and self-destructive ends. Over and over again, reactionary feminists have allied with white supremacists, only to find themselves sidelined the moment their male allies gained power. Betrayed by the state, betrayed by patriarchy, they become a footnote in history. We cry out, feminism can't possibly be reactionary, can it? Those people over there, they're not true feminists! Rather than argue semantics, we have to accept that for as long as there has been empire and exploitation, there have been enemy feminisms. From the high chair of moralism, the working class appear dirty, ragged, evil. Everywhere the moralist's gaze falls, it sees destitution. It sees theft, murder, and sex. It sees squalidness as immanent to poor people, effusing from their bodies like some essential deviance. It's a victim-blaming gaze—and its answer is control, exclusion, and murder. From black to trans, our bodies are annihilated for an ontological security that never arrives—because we aren't the fucking problem.
One time, a sex worker unionist attended a talk by Catharine A. MacKinnon, an anti-pornography carceral feminist. She said "I'm sure you don't want women controlled by police" and MacKinnon simply replied she had nothing to say to "a woman like [her]". Transwomen have persistently challenged the logic of J. K. Rowling's statements, and she has responded with bad faith deflections, distortions, and exaggerations.** These are our enemy feminists: women who don't even care to understand the needs of others. Women who use the strong-arm of the state to destroy lives. Women who align themselves with religious patriarchs to control sexuality. Women who use the logic of degeneration to place blacks and queers on the lynching tree.
—
* Jean Paul-Sartre once wrote, "Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous. . . . But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert."
** TERFs consistently deploy Antisemitism as a discursive style. When a child comes out as trans or nonbinary, their family is usually ignorant of queer issues, and will seek to educate themselves to better support their child. TERFs, however, argue children are being indoctrinated by liberal elites. That they're being brainwashed. That their experience of their body is false consciousness. First of all, this is a fascist argument that relies on the logics of decadence and degeneration; secondly, it presumes children are impressionable to the point of self-erasure. It's like they've never engaged with a child, who will do whatever the fuck they want, unless they're bullied out of it. Children experiment with gender all the time, when they smash cars together, or squirt water guns at one another. TERFs create a moral panic over the mere act of play, because they're too fucking fragile to understand some people want to play differently to others, and because they're obsessed with reproduction and bloodlines.
TERFs have strong ties to reactionary Christians too. They're obsessed with nature and the "natural body". With normalising children into a strict binarism that posits any deviation as mutilation. But discourses on nature become quickly absurd when you integrate them into an ecological framework. Cow's milk is fucking packed with estrogen, but fascists love it. Food is filled with hormones, and chemicals that interact with hormones. So, it's not the hormones they're obsessed with, but your capacity to choose what ones you want to take. They want your body as a reproductive body—as a childbearing organ of the nation. Anything against this is "self-mutilation". It's a discourse of control, masquerading as nature, with ties to the Volksgemeinschaft.
Read
March 9, 2025I was blocked by a german woman who quit reading the book during the introduction because she felt like it disparaged Kamala Harris too much. I told her she was ignorant to American history, especially what's in the book, and that she was embarrassing. So she blocked me. I don't usually write reviews but I'm actually really annoyed by this for whatever reason and I'm not allowed to comment on her post due to the block.
"And how does that relate to the thoughts in my review? Do you have any arguments or are you just here for the aimless insults?"
The way that it relates to the thoughts in your review is that the book doesn't argue the things you're saying it does, and in fact, the book directly addresses what you're claiming to care about. We're talking about a book that you didn't read. Your argument is that the racist state apparatus of America is necessary to maintaining democracy, and not a hindrance to it. You clearly don't know shit about what is going on here. So I do have an argument, and it's better than yours: read the fucking book before you talk about it. You are embarrassing.
"And how does that relate to the thoughts in my review? Do you have any arguments or are you just here for the aimless insults?"
The way that it relates to the thoughts in your review is that the book doesn't argue the things you're saying it does, and in fact, the book directly addresses what you're claiming to care about. We're talking about a book that you didn't read. Your argument is that the racist state apparatus of America is necessary to maintaining democracy, and not a hindrance to it. You clearly don't know shit about what is going on here. So I do have an argument, and it's better than yours: read the fucking book before you talk about it. You are embarrassing.
March 15, 2025
This book claps back at the sort of shallow feminism that implies every choice a woman makes is necessarily a feminist one. It calls out “enemy feminisms” throughout history and the modern day, including the white supremacist feminism of the KKK in the early twentieth century, the sort of girl-boss nationalism practiced by the likes of Marine Le Pen, and the current wave of TERF ideology.
I really enjoyed all of the history in this book and I appreciate the thorough research that must have gone into it. However, I think the feminist texts I lean toward are more journalistic or memoiristic in nature, and this one was dense with academic feminist theory. This is an important book, and I think a lot of readers will absolutely love it, but it wasn’t a favourite for me.
I really enjoyed all of the history in this book and I appreciate the thorough research that must have gone into it. However, I think the feminist texts I lean toward are more journalistic or memoiristic in nature, and this one was dense with academic feminist theory. This is an important book, and I think a lot of readers will absolutely love it, but it wasn’t a favourite for me.
August 7, 2025
This book is for you if you've ever abhorred over a TERF or a SWERF (trans exclusionary radical feminist, sex work exclusionary radical feminist), and exclaimed "Well that's not feminism!" Sophie Lewis argues that it is. That feminism is deeply steeped in histories of colonial and racial violences, in the accumulation of state power, and the bid of white women to fit into the white man's world. A "field-guide" of reactionaries, Enemy Feminisms tackles The KKK-Feminist, The Policewoman, The Pornophobe, and The Adult Human Female, among other Liberal Feminist Archetypes.
By homing in on specific cases of moral panic, scapegoating tendencies, and cult-like fanaticism, she tells the story of feminism that often is obscured by revisionist histories. I think Sophie Lewis provides a guide to those who are unsure if feminism is still a useful tool in organizing the oppressed, she identifies enemy-feminisms and advocates for solidarity-feminisms, for comrade-feminisms. By creating a liberatory/non-liberatory dichotomy I think she clarifies a path forward for the reader, to define their own practice moving forward.
By homing in on specific cases of moral panic, scapegoating tendencies, and cult-like fanaticism, she tells the story of feminism that often is obscured by revisionist histories. I think Sophie Lewis provides a guide to those who are unsure if feminism is still a useful tool in organizing the oppressed, she identifies enemy-feminisms and advocates for solidarity-feminisms, for comrade-feminisms. By creating a liberatory/non-liberatory dichotomy I think she clarifies a path forward for the reader, to define their own practice moving forward.
February 3, 2025
Good fucking gods READ THIS BOOK. It's incredibly powerful and dismantles the entire notion that "feminism" as a movement is at all inclusive, equal, or diverse or that it has ever worked for any population of people who aren't cis het white women. If you have ever asked yourself "how can women advocate for X" or "how can women vote for Y" this book will answer those questions.
January 1, 2025
Going to be in my highly recommended reads for early 2025, if only because we elected the fucking Leopards Eating Your Face Off party into power again, and it needs spelling out that not every feminist is working for the betterment of all. There are probably some folks who are going to take issue with the idea of classifying some of the people in here as "enemies", but man, Lewis uses historical and current precedent to show that not everyone using the feminist label is on your side.
November 27, 2025
A highly readable book on a sometimes very infuriating subject: feminists that basically carry water for the patriarchal capitalist nation state, from white supremacist to trans eliminationists. Lewis organizes her book along pivotal figures and moments, starting with white abolitionist feminists and suffragettes from mid-19th century, ending with the really abominable proto-fascist TERFs of today. It's a parade of women enamored with power, whose only beef with the patriarchal state and society is that they – as women – don't get a shot at really calling the stakes. Lewis gives us citations from their speeches and writings, that really makes you wonder about the delusional state of mind of some of these ladies. And you're absolutely allowed to hate them. Showing that there's absolutely no reason to show these people and their ideas any form of solidarity or give them "a fair hearing" in the marketplace of ideas, is a major reason for Lewis to write this book, as she states in the foreword. All this has the advantage of making the book so highly readable, even to readers without a working knowledge of the latest in feminist theory. But I've some squabbles: Biographical sketches and anecdotes make for an easy and fun read, but tend to undermine Lewis' argument of the structural nature of these forms of feminisms. Focussing on this assortment of very unlikeable, hateful women does a bit of a disservice to recognizing how they're ultimately more or less tools of the dominant power structure. I think showing a bit more of the workings of this power structure through these abominable ladies would have made the book a better tool for fighting them.
July 9, 2025
Every feminist should read it and think about it. This book changed me as a person, and gave me so much points to think about. I admire Sophie Lewis and I am grateful that there are still feminists who are not afraid to speculate.
May 29, 2025
I wanted to read this to find out what it would say. I’m not at all interested in reviewing it though.
February 3, 2025
against the rising tide of cynical anti-trans panic and legislative and executive threats to the baseline concept of bodily autonomy for any and all, lewis does what is required of all of us and imbues herself in historicity towards the goal of expanding the horizon of our imagination as to what our collective struggle and future might be. insisting that we take seriously the legacy of fascist contingents within broader contours of feminist movements, she paints a vivid picture not only of the ugly realities often eschewed or purposefully forgotten but presents alternatives that both were and might have been. the chapter on the pornophobe, specifically offers a cogent account of how political feminism was defanged as it was pushed into the realm of the cultural and simultaneously chained at the hip to carceralism and anti-whore rhetoric.
sophie lewis is mother, in that she has consistently and effectively showed us how to struggle against motherhood towards a future in which freedom and care are guaranteed for all.
sophie lewis is mother, in that she has consistently and effectively showed us how to struggle against motherhood towards a future in which freedom and care are guaranteed for all.
May 30, 2025
I am currently trying to listen to this book as an audiobook, but am struggling to engage with it for two reasons.
First, this text is much more academic and advanced in nature than I had anticipated. I would suggest you have some previous experience in reading academically about historical feminism before attempting to read this book. I am an educated reader who cannot break through the dense prose and bizarre vocabulary Lewis uses frequently. The organisation of the text also feels coded - I want to skip to bits I think I will be most interested in (TERFs in particular) and can't tell from the index where I will find this section. Frustrating.
Second, the voice on the audiobook has not helped the cause for me. Evidently it is read by a flesh and blood actor with experience of narrating several audiobooks, but the voice sounds like AI reading a text - the intonation, pauses, and pace are bizarre. I don't know if the text has affected how the actor has read it, or if how the actor is reading it has affected hoe the text sounds to me. Whatever the cause, I am finding it an unpleasant experience that I do not envision myself being able to persevere in.
First, this text is much more academic and advanced in nature than I had anticipated. I would suggest you have some previous experience in reading academically about historical feminism before attempting to read this book. I am an educated reader who cannot break through the dense prose and bizarre vocabulary Lewis uses frequently. The organisation of the text also feels coded - I want to skip to bits I think I will be most interested in (TERFs in particular) and can't tell from the index where I will find this section. Frustrating.
Second, the voice on the audiobook has not helped the cause for me. Evidently it is read by a flesh and blood actor with experience of narrating several audiobooks, but the voice sounds like AI reading a text - the intonation, pauses, and pace are bizarre. I don't know if the text has affected how the actor has read it, or if how the actor is reading it has affected hoe the text sounds to me. Whatever the cause, I am finding it an unpleasant experience that I do not envision myself being able to persevere in.
September 26, 2025
Not totally sure how to rate this. On the one hand, brilliant. Sophie Lewis gets it and is on the right side of feminism and of history. I learned many new things in Enemy Feminisms (especially in the beginning where she talked a lot about early feminism’s ties to white supremacy, the KKK et cetera).
But for a self-described Marxist, the text was anything but accessible. I found this intellectually elitist. While I had no problem keeping up, all I could think throughout was that the language used is pretentious and highfalutin (discursive, heuristic, epistemological, ontology, et cetera 🙄). All the big academia buzz words. This makes me question who Enemy Feminisms was actually written for, because it certainly was the “every person,” who, ironically, Marx advocated for. I think Sophie needs to take a step back with the next one and re-think some language going forward. It honestly reads like the author loves the sound of her own voice rather than wanting readers to rethink their positions or help educate them.
Yours, a comms person who thinks about audiences every single day.
But for a self-described Marxist, the text was anything but accessible. I found this intellectually elitist. While I had no problem keeping up, all I could think throughout was that the language used is pretentious and highfalutin (discursive, heuristic, epistemological, ontology, et cetera 🙄). All the big academia buzz words. This makes me question who Enemy Feminisms was actually written for, because it certainly was the “every person,” who, ironically, Marx advocated for. I think Sophie needs to take a step back with the next one and re-think some language going forward. It honestly reads like the author loves the sound of her own voice rather than wanting readers to rethink their positions or help educate them.
Yours, a comms person who thinks about audiences every single day.
April 30, 2025
I could not have picked a more apropos day to have started reading this: the day before it became the official policy of the UK government that trans women are not women, that I am not a woman. In light of that, it was certainly not an easy read, there is a lot in this book that made me furious, and it should make you angry too. The cast of hypocrites, colonizers, capitalists, and bigots of all stripes featured are shown to be largely villains of choice, women who anti-solidaristically chose against their contemporary projects of liberation out of class- and self-interest. By imposing a materialist reading, Lewis is able to articulate not only the incoherency of legacy (white, capitalist, imperial, carceral, cis-heteronormative) feminism’s insistence on treating gender as gender-qua-class, but also the need to incorporate actual class analysis into the discussion. I recommend it unreservedly, especially if you take seriously feminism as a project.
April 24, 2025
A bit funny of me to read a Sophie Lewis book literally the day after reading Vanishing World, which- if taken at face value- is a harsh and angry critique of family abolitionist ideas.
Anyway.
This was brisk, relevant, useful. I’m thoroughly confused by the way the entirety of the ambivalent-to-negative reviews all call this ‘too dense’ or ‘hard to understand,’ because for me (who is an idiot with no attention span, who does not read enough theory, whose closest brush with academia has been business school), the style of this book is very much in the pop nonfic realm. The substance is obviously better, but this is no more difficult a read than any of the nonfiction bestsellers. I do think it was missing a real prescriptive element. Okay, so these enemy feminisms are feminisms. What do we do with this reframe? How do we build coalitions with them without compromising our own values/identities? Is this even possible without capitulating our own feminism to oppositional sexism? Maybe that’s an unfair ask because it’s a damn difficult question- I should probably just read more theory- but that’s the only fair critique I can imagine.
Anyway.
This was brisk, relevant, useful. I’m thoroughly confused by the way the entirety of the ambivalent-to-negative reviews all call this ‘too dense’ or ‘hard to understand,’ because for me (who is an idiot with no attention span, who does not read enough theory, whose closest brush with academia has been business school), the style of this book is very much in the pop nonfic realm. The substance is obviously better, but this is no more difficult a read than any of the nonfiction bestsellers. I do think it was missing a real prescriptive element. Okay, so these enemy feminisms are feminisms. What do we do with this reframe? How do we build coalitions with them without compromising our own values/identities? Is this even possible without capitulating our own feminism to oppositional sexism? Maybe that’s an unfair ask because it’s a damn difficult question- I should probably just read more theory- but that’s the only fair critique I can imagine.
May 13, 2025
This is a very good overview of different oppressive forms of feminism. My favourite and most useful for me was the analysis on transphobia and TERFism, drawing on an analogy with antisemitism and “socialism of fools” to argue that TERFism is something of a “feminism of fools”. I am also very persuaded by the slogan Feminism Against Cisness.
I found some of the digressions throughout the book slightly grating and incongruent, but overall found this to be a helpful read!
I found some of the digressions throughout the book slightly grating and incongruent, but overall found this to be a helpful read!
July 21, 2025
I read this on audiobook. Some of this was over my head for sure, but it made me really think and evaluate some of my views. It is also helpful to examine how feminism as we know it now came about. and how it continues to be nuanced and involved.
Read
December 13, 2025This is such a needed book that makes some really important arguments about understanding and learning from the negative aspects of feminist history but I dislike Lewis’ writing style SO much that it was a real slog and genuinely difficult to read
October 14, 2025
I wish I could talk to Roni Jo and a women's studies class about this book
Dense but impactful and very well researched
Dense but impactful and very well researched
March 17, 2025
obsazne a komplexne, sophie je skvela spisovatelka, kniha podava radikalny pohlad na vyznam intersekcionality. napriek tomu, ze nesuhlasim s mnohym (tiez by bolo zvlastne, kebyze hej) tak je tato knizka essential pre angazovanie sa v dnesnom diskurze. skoda ze samotny nazor i ramcovanie dodava knihe divisive nadych, i ked finalna myslienka je opacna
September 26, 2025
I bought the audiobook and found it ponderous and long-winded but know that this can be a failing of the medium rather than the text. Bought the book as well and flew through it in a few days; Lewis’s writing is tight and precise without sacrificing explanatory power. I do feel that the book could be twice the length if a broader, less academic audience were to be targeted, and there are a dozen or more typos that surprised me (including, repeatedly “Me no frego” instead of “Me ne frego”), but the substance itself is as scintillating and insightful as one might expect from a touchstone like Lewis, and the book itself, as a tactile object, is a lovely thing; possibly an odd compliment, but kudos to the publisher for making an object that I enjoyed holding in my hands.
March 3, 2025
really good content, not overly engaging
January 27, 2025
A well-written, impeccably researched book that ALSO uses an iconic exchange from The Eric Andre show as a chapter epigraph? ✨YES✨
November 17, 2024
I am not used to nonfiction books making references to all the newest memes and history. Usually by the time book comes out it's all slightly outdated and by the time I read it it's very out of date.
This book is about the feminisms which fight against women's interests and why they do that. (I'll never understand marginalized people wanting to be oppressors) Each chapter has different subject beginning from white supremacist feminism, pornophbia to TERFs. It contains biography, cultural context and commentary on the most noticable representative of that particular movement. I've read some feminist literature but not much I'll admit. I personally found a lot of new information on this work. I doubt that will be the case for someone more versed in the studies than me. At least now I know where the world girlboss came from. 😅 The book is mostly about the UK with some added context to the USA.
I didn't fact check all the references but the ones I checked did say what the author claimed they say.
Thank you Haymarket books and Netgalley for providing me with free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
This book is about the feminisms which fight against women's interests and why they do that. (I'll never understand marginalized people wanting to be oppressors) Each chapter has different subject beginning from white supremacist feminism, pornophbia to TERFs. It contains biography, cultural context and commentary on the most noticable representative of that particular movement. I've read some feminist literature but not much I'll admit. I personally found a lot of new information on this work. I doubt that will be the case for someone more versed in the studies than me. At least now I know where the world girlboss came from. 😅 The book is mostly about the UK with some added context to the USA.
I didn't fact check all the references but the ones I checked did say what the author claimed they say.
Thank you Haymarket books and Netgalley for providing me with free ARC in exchange for an honest review.
March 7, 2025
On the one hand, this book is theoretically a good idea—surveying and contrasting different types of feminisms. On the other hand, the book was largely confusing and terribly written, mostly assuming what it needs to prove, and never mounting complete or coherent arguments. I am already primed to dislike this book since I agree with almost none of the underlying philosophy, but even so it didn't live up to the hopes I had for it. If you are already in agreement with the author's views and don't mind that most of the book rails rather than argues, you might like it more than I did.
August 26, 2025
I appreciate the author's firm stance against racism and colonialism in feminism. I disagree with her stances on prostitution and porn and she might see me as her enemy, it's possible. I am bewildered by some of her takes on sexuality (she claims it'd be utopian to have no taboo on incest).
I would recommend this book for some interesting facts and perspectives. This is not a Feminism 101 so I believe folks who will reads this are informed enough to analyze what they agree with and what they disagree with.
I would recommend this book for some interesting facts and perspectives. This is not a Feminism 101 so I believe folks who will reads this are informed enough to analyze what they agree with and what they disagree with.
March 4, 2025
A fantastic book from a brilliant author, as usual. Since the subject matter is pretty heavy, I didn't anticipate the occasional puncturing humour that succeeds in taking some "enemies" down a peg without pausing the arguments. There's also an appealing bravery to the book: Lewis willingly faces down the fact that feminism is not inherently a net positive without ceding an inch to anti-feminism or right-wing feminism.
But I'm going to have to disagree a bit with the framing of the chapter on girbosses - I think, like Moira Donegan (who Lewis mentions), that we're in an era where the participation of women in non-feminized work sectors is under constant attack and that widespread attacks on women's status in the workplace should be a valid subject of feminist resistance. Lewis objects to the "work-life balance" or "work/money advice" genres of feminist literature just as much as she disagrees with the less-selfaware "Lean Ins" of the world. Girl-landlordism and girl-capitalism are certainly enemies, but if the feminist literature she mentions is partly about middle-class women trying to make it in a hostile work landscape, then a full-throated repudiation of the whole thing seems a bit off. The movements for free childcare, UBI, and worker ownership aren't going to materialize themselves instantly so Lewis's call to work for them, instead for the corporate world, is welcome; but I still expect that women are going to be living in a fraught neoliberal situation for decades to come, if not a situation that is getting worse under a wave of antifeminist backlash that doesn't want to have to deal with women in any position of power. "Don't be a landlord or a girlboss in the meantime" is a solid, comradely line to draw; the idea that managerial power is a stultifying lure is probably fair. But I would expect someone as great at holding tensions in mind as Lewis to have "a critique of the critique", given how the anti-girlboss critique is not always labour feminist and indeed is often the province of right-wing feminisms like the ones depicted in the pro-life chapter (and of straight-up anti-feminisms). It's disappointing to have a chapter that merrily savages capitalist feminism without fully engaging with the clear and present threat of maternalist back-to-the-home politics.
But I'm going to have to disagree a bit with the framing of the chapter on girbosses - I think, like Moira Donegan (who Lewis mentions), that we're in an era where the participation of women in non-feminized work sectors is under constant attack and that widespread attacks on women's status in the workplace should be a valid subject of feminist resistance. Lewis objects to the "work-life balance" or "work/money advice" genres of feminist literature just as much as she disagrees with the less-selfaware "Lean Ins" of the world. Girl-landlordism and girl-capitalism are certainly enemies, but if the feminist literature she mentions is partly about middle-class women trying to make it in a hostile work landscape, then a full-throated repudiation of the whole thing seems a bit off. The movements for free childcare, UBI, and worker ownership aren't going to materialize themselves instantly so Lewis's call to work for them, instead for the corporate world, is welcome; but I still expect that women are going to be living in a fraught neoliberal situation for decades to come, if not a situation that is getting worse under a wave of antifeminist backlash that doesn't want to have to deal with women in any position of power. "Don't be a landlord or a girlboss in the meantime" is a solid, comradely line to draw; the idea that managerial power is a stultifying lure is probably fair. But I would expect someone as great at holding tensions in mind as Lewis to have "a critique of the critique", given how the anti-girlboss critique is not always labour feminist and indeed is often the province of right-wing feminisms like the ones depicted in the pro-life chapter (and of straight-up anti-feminisms). It's disappointing to have a chapter that merrily savages capitalist feminism without fully engaging with the clear and present threat of maternalist back-to-the-home politics.
October 28, 2025
More like a 3.5, since I enjoyed it so much. A majority of the information included in this takedown of "enemy feminisms" is great, and I learned a lot, especially about feminist movements across the pond. I had a lot of fun reading it and agreed with most of Sophie Lewis's arguments. But the scope, methodology, and tone were all over the place.
I was prepared for this book to be "academic" and "dense" per other reviews, but I was surprised to find it accessible. Sometimes the tone was snarky like a blog, and this was entertaining. But Lewis's voice is often not that nuanced, and she doesn't spend enough time detailing her methods for the "academic" descriptor to be true. I'm suspecting the "density" is more attributable to buzzword flooding than anything else. Not that the buzzwords serve no purpose; they have their uses. If you know the jargon (say, you've spent some time reading queer family abolitionist arguments or reading gender discourse online) and you've read at least one or two historical feminist texts, you'll be fine. I'm neither an academic nor a specialized gender studies person, if that's anything to go by.
About the central thesis: should we really concede that everyone who calls themselves a feminist might as well be a feminist? Particularly the pro-life types. "I'm a feminist because I want men to honor their housewives uwu and I think it's nice when girls fulfill their natural role as beautiful kind white mothers uwu" are actual stances observable in the wild today; when are their arguments convoluted with justifications enough to count as a coherent feminist stance? But what's the point of grasping at semantics here, when "feminism" in common discourse seems to mean whatever the speaker thinks is "good for women"? I think nobody can really answer this and the point is to just concede their identity as feminists, so we can jump straight to categorizing and tracking these feminisms through history, while calling out exactly why their stances are stupid and bad. This is not a very precise way to look at Lewis's argument, but whatever, it's a thought-provoking idea.
So, Lewis's scope and the methodology. In general, I felt more framing was needed for her approach. Are we linking these ideologies due to vibes, aesthetics, observable direct influence, political ideologies, gender philosophies, racial attitudes, and/or rhetoric? Sometimes the links were strong (sex work prohibition and anti-porn stances through the years, for example), others only gestured toward or relatively unsupported. At one point she mentions liberal feminism, Paglia, and other backlashes against radical feminism as problematic; why not take them down too? Are they not femmephobic enough? Is she only covering feminisms that she thinks are formidable historical enemies within leftist feminism/radical feminism/lesbian feminism, or is she focusing on the ills that she feels are most relevant to today (a fair strategy, if that was it, but I would have liked to see more work done to link them on the page). Why bring in lesbian subculture and its aesthetics only sometimes (why sneak a little jab in there about the 1970s androgynous "uniform" as if it's necessarily a reflection of femmephobia instead of its more likely explanation, a simple reaction against the racheting up of compulsory gender conformity in the 50s? And IIRC Lewis didn't take full advantage of the robust comparisons that can be made between colonialist white feminisms and landyke attitudes)? Why not focus more on taking down Janice Raymond and Adrienne Rich in the chapter on TERFs; why spend so much time focusing on the coalition or lack thereof in one lesbian feminist conference during the 70s? I enjoyed the storytelling here and did find it relevant, but the approach felt different from other chapters. I guess TERFery is too big a can of worms for just one chapter.
In other words, a compendium this is not. Otherwise, it's a fun (if sometimes frustrating) read, up-to-the minute... I even learned about some contemporary whackjobs I've never encountered before. I would happily recommend this for those already in the feminist history and discourse Soup.
I was prepared for this book to be "academic" and "dense" per other reviews, but I was surprised to find it accessible. Sometimes the tone was snarky like a blog, and this was entertaining. But Lewis's voice is often not that nuanced, and she doesn't spend enough time detailing her methods for the "academic" descriptor to be true. I'm suspecting the "density" is more attributable to buzzword flooding than anything else. Not that the buzzwords serve no purpose; they have their uses. If you know the jargon (say, you've spent some time reading queer family abolitionist arguments or reading gender discourse online) and you've read at least one or two historical feminist texts, you'll be fine. I'm neither an academic nor a specialized gender studies person, if that's anything to go by.
About the central thesis: should we really concede that everyone who calls themselves a feminist might as well be a feminist? Particularly the pro-life types. "I'm a feminist because I want men to honor their housewives uwu and I think it's nice when girls fulfill their natural role as beautiful kind white mothers uwu" are actual stances observable in the wild today; when are their arguments convoluted with justifications enough to count as a coherent feminist stance? But what's the point of grasping at semantics here, when "feminism" in common discourse seems to mean whatever the speaker thinks is "good for women"? I think nobody can really answer this and the point is to just concede their identity as feminists, so we can jump straight to categorizing and tracking these feminisms through history, while calling out exactly why their stances are stupid and bad. This is not a very precise way to look at Lewis's argument, but whatever, it's a thought-provoking idea.
So, Lewis's scope and the methodology. In general, I felt more framing was needed for her approach. Are we linking these ideologies due to vibes, aesthetics, observable direct influence, political ideologies, gender philosophies, racial attitudes, and/or rhetoric? Sometimes the links were strong (sex work prohibition and anti-porn stances through the years, for example), others only gestured toward or relatively unsupported. At one point she mentions liberal feminism, Paglia, and other backlashes against radical feminism as problematic; why not take them down too? Are they not femmephobic enough? Is she only covering feminisms that she thinks are formidable historical enemies within leftist feminism/radical feminism/lesbian feminism, or is she focusing on the ills that she feels are most relevant to today (a fair strategy, if that was it, but I would have liked to see more work done to link them on the page). Why bring in lesbian subculture and its aesthetics only sometimes (why sneak a little jab in there about the 1970s androgynous "uniform" as if it's necessarily a reflection of femmephobia instead of its more likely explanation, a simple reaction against the racheting up of compulsory gender conformity in the 50s? And IIRC Lewis didn't take full advantage of the robust comparisons that can be made between colonialist white feminisms and landyke attitudes)? Why not focus more on taking down Janice Raymond and Adrienne Rich in the chapter on TERFs; why spend so much time focusing on the coalition or lack thereof in one lesbian feminist conference during the 70s? I enjoyed the storytelling here and did find it relevant, but the approach felt different from other chapters. I guess TERFery is too big a can of worms for just one chapter.
In other words, a compendium this is not. Otherwise, it's a fun (if sometimes frustrating) read, up-to-the minute... I even learned about some contemporary whackjobs I've never encountered before. I would happily recommend this for those already in the feminist history and discourse Soup.
November 23, 2025
Sophie Lewis is a brilliant writer, deftly identifying the ideologies of white supremacy, classism, imperialism, eugenics, and cisness that have been present in western Europe/North American feminism from the very beginning and continue through today. I gleefully enjoyed the takedowns of individual feminist thinkers in each chapter, and I thought these examples were well chosen to encapsulate each specific camp of enemy feminism. Though the book details the failures in thought of the feminist movement throughout history, Lewis manages a hopeful tone by liberally citing counter examples of thinkers and radicals who opposed the anti-liberatory aspects of the feminist movement at each point in time. A feminism of inclusion does not mean the inclusion of hierarchy loving fascist feminists. I found this book extremely helpful in understanding the current nativist gender essentialism that has become the mainstream of the right wing.
As others have noted, the prose was dense with academic language in places where I thought the point could be better and more succinctly made in vernacular. However, I think engaging with the theoretical language that Lewis presents allows for a deeper understanding of the material, if one has the patience for it.
As others have noted, the prose was dense with academic language in places where I thought the point could be better and more succinctly made in vernacular. However, I think engaging with the theoretical language that Lewis presents allows for a deeper understanding of the material, if one has the patience for it.
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