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Lesbian Feminist Killjoys: Sin, Queer Negativity, and Inherited Guilt
Not yet published
Expected 3 Nov 26How lesbian feminist theories of sex illuminate public anxieties about sin, guilt, and innocence
Stereotyped as manhating, puritanical killjoys, lesbian feminists have drawn almost as much contempt as the conservative Christian movements to which they are compared. Rather than dismissing this negativity, Lesbian Feminist Killjoys embraces it. The book draws on the negativity of an earlier era to develop more liberatory visions of queer and trans life today.
Grounded in the archives of lesbian feminist movements, Lesbian Feminist Killjoys centers the contributions of four key lesbian Beverly Smith, Andrea Dworkin, Pat Parker, and Jill Johnston. Author Wendy Mallette unpacks these writers’ understanding of sex as inextricably tied to patriarchy, capitalism, racism, and colonialism. Their thinking is brought into conversation with theorizations of queer negativity and the concept of social sin. By taking cues from Black, womanist, and queer Christian theology, Mallette traces how fantasies of innocence—appearing in same-sex marriage debates, Christian theology, and legislative battles over race and sex in public education—underwrite a violent tendency to disavow guilt and scapegoat others. Mallette also responds to denials of inherited guilt displayed in recent anti-critical race theory, anti-DEI, and anti-trans legislation. Ultimately, Lesbian Feminist Killjoys reveals how strands of negativity can offer powerful resources to contend with gender and racial oppression.
Stereotyped as manhating, puritanical killjoys, lesbian feminists have drawn almost as much contempt as the conservative Christian movements to which they are compared. Rather than dismissing this negativity, Lesbian Feminist Killjoys embraces it. The book draws on the negativity of an earlier era to develop more liberatory visions of queer and trans life today.
Grounded in the archives of lesbian feminist movements, Lesbian Feminist Killjoys centers the contributions of four key lesbian Beverly Smith, Andrea Dworkin, Pat Parker, and Jill Johnston. Author Wendy Mallette unpacks these writers’ understanding of sex as inextricably tied to patriarchy, capitalism, racism, and colonialism. Their thinking is brought into conversation with theorizations of queer negativity and the concept of social sin. By taking cues from Black, womanist, and queer Christian theology, Mallette traces how fantasies of innocence—appearing in same-sex marriage debates, Christian theology, and legislative battles over race and sex in public education—underwrite a violent tendency to disavow guilt and scapegoat others. Mallette also responds to denials of inherited guilt displayed in recent anti-critical race theory, anti-DEI, and anti-trans legislation. Ultimately, Lesbian Feminist Killjoys reveals how strands of negativity can offer powerful resources to contend with gender and racial oppression.
288 pages, Kindle Edition
Expected publication November 3, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
While this is a really academic text and definitely not for the everyday reader, I really enjoyed it! It brought me back to my grad school days in the best way, grappling with nuanced topics in an interdisciplinary fashion.
It did take me some time to fully respect the premise of the book and the positioning of lesbian feminist ideology and Christian conceptualization of sin as “bad objects.” At first, this felt like a very big assumption. Attributing a tool of women’s oppression and an ideology designed to fight back against women’s oppression both as “bad objects” without a strong argument for why felt very trite. But the use of a primary source with Beverly Smith’s writing about a heterosexual wedding really helps the reader to understand why lesbian feminism is positioned in this way.
There are a lot of reviews so far that feel the book veers too far into dense academic jargon, but I think a lot of is necessary for such a complex topic rooted in so much theory. The author assumes the reader has critical thinking skills, intellect, and (most importantly) general understanding of women’s and gender studies. While that works perfectly for a dissertation, that’s a more difficult assumption to make for a book designed for public consumption. Where I struggle is I don’t know if the complexity and nuance of the topic could remain if the intellectual intensity of the work was decreased. That inherently creates a really narrow audience for the book, but doesn’t negate its value and the really interesting questions it raises.
If you’re looking for a dense read that will make you think with every paragraph and are interested in feminism and women’s studies, I would highly recommend this book! While I don’t agree with everything in it, the author does a wonderful job of presenting her arguments and treats her primary sources with great respect, while bringing together two topics that are often viewed very disparately.
This is a review of an eARC gifted by the publisher via Netgalley
It did take me some time to fully respect the premise of the book and the positioning of lesbian feminist ideology and Christian conceptualization of sin as “bad objects.” At first, this felt like a very big assumption. Attributing a tool of women’s oppression and an ideology designed to fight back against women’s oppression both as “bad objects” without a strong argument for why felt very trite. But the use of a primary source with Beverly Smith’s writing about a heterosexual wedding really helps the reader to understand why lesbian feminism is positioned in this way.
There are a lot of reviews so far that feel the book veers too far into dense academic jargon, but I think a lot of is necessary for such a complex topic rooted in so much theory. The author assumes the reader has critical thinking skills, intellect, and (most importantly) general understanding of women’s and gender studies. While that works perfectly for a dissertation, that’s a more difficult assumption to make for a book designed for public consumption. Where I struggle is I don’t know if the complexity and nuance of the topic could remain if the intellectual intensity of the work was decreased. That inherently creates a really narrow audience for the book, but doesn’t negate its value and the really interesting questions it raises.
If you’re looking for a dense read that will make you think with every paragraph and are interested in feminism and women’s studies, I would highly recommend this book! While I don’t agree with everything in it, the author does a wonderful job of presenting her arguments and treats her primary sources with great respect, while bringing together two topics that are often viewed very disparately.
This is a review of an eARC gifted by the publisher via Netgalley
Review of advance copy received from NetGalley
Thank you to NetGalley and NYU Press for the eARC in exchange for an honest review! ♡
Lesbian Feminist Killjoys is dense, sometimes exhausting and very much the sort of book that assumes you have arrived with at least some knowledge ready to go in your brain. Thankfully, I am a lesbian feminist, so I felt like a sleeper agent waking up.
Mallette is interested in the women feminism sometimes tries to tidy away: the angry ones, the uncompromising ones, the ones accused of hating sex, hating men, ruining the mood, making everything political.
God forbid!
What I loved is that the book does not rehabilitate them by insisting they were secretly nice and reasonable all along. It takes their negativity seriously. It asks what anger, refusal, guilt and discomfort can actually do politically, especially when queer and feminist spaces become obsessed with proving their own innocence. Because “we are the good people” is an incredibly convenient sentence. It also does absolutely nothing to stop a community from reproducing racism, misogyny, capitalism, colonial thinking or any of the other structures it claims to oppose.
I disagreed with bits. I got lost in bits. Still, I came out of this with several new questions, a longer reading list and a renewed affection for women who have historically responded to “you’re making everyone uncomfortable” with “excellent.”
Lesbian feminist killjoys, you will always have a seat at my table.
Lesbian Feminist Killjoys is dense, sometimes exhausting and very much the sort of book that assumes you have arrived with at least some knowledge ready to go in your brain. Thankfully, I am a lesbian feminist, so I felt like a sleeper agent waking up.
Mallette is interested in the women feminism sometimes tries to tidy away: the angry ones, the uncompromising ones, the ones accused of hating sex, hating men, ruining the mood, making everything political.
God forbid!
What I loved is that the book does not rehabilitate them by insisting they were secretly nice and reasonable all along. It takes their negativity seriously. It asks what anger, refusal, guilt and discomfort can actually do politically, especially when queer and feminist spaces become obsessed with proving their own innocence. Because “we are the good people” is an incredibly convenient sentence. It also does absolutely nothing to stop a community from reproducing racism, misogyny, capitalism, colonial thinking or any of the other structures it claims to oppose.
I disagreed with bits. I got lost in bits. Still, I came out of this with several new questions, a longer reading list and a renewed affection for women who have historically responded to “you’re making everyone uncomfortable” with “excellent.”
Lesbian feminist killjoys, you will always have a seat at my table.
June 15, 2026
Thanks for the ARC, NetGalley!
This book (dissertation?) is so incredibly good. We’re thrown into the deep end at the very beginning, and learning to swim was ✨fascinating✨
We dive straight into the history of feminism and how it intersects with lesbianism. It also highlights the intersectionality between feminism, racism, and Queer theory.
My favourite part of this book is how it breaks down how modern feminism became so white-centric, how lesbian feminists are commonly stereotyped as “manhating, puritanical killjoys”, and how they came to be compared to conservative Christian movements. I particularly loved the discourse around political lesbianism.
Wendy has written some very interesting theories and her research is very thorough, always cited, and challenges the ideas of gender, sexuality, race and so forth, especially in regards to religion, both historical and modern.
This book (dissertation?) is so incredibly good. We’re thrown into the deep end at the very beginning, and learning to swim was ✨fascinating✨
We dive straight into the history of feminism and how it intersects with lesbianism. It also highlights the intersectionality between feminism, racism, and Queer theory.
My favourite part of this book is how it breaks down how modern feminism became so white-centric, how lesbian feminists are commonly stereotyped as “manhating, puritanical killjoys”, and how they came to be compared to conservative Christian movements. I particularly loved the discourse around political lesbianism.
Wendy has written some very interesting theories and her research is very thorough, always cited, and challenges the ideas of gender, sexuality, race and so forth, especially in regards to religion, both historical and modern.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
I received a free advanced reader copy of this book from NetGalley. This review is my honest and voluntary opinion.
A fascinating and nuanced delve into the history of lesbian feminism, highlighting the work of activists that came before, the importance of intersectionality and the dangers of scapegoating. This is a must read for sapphic activists, full of history and theory underpinning modern queer discourse, to inform our path ahead.
A fascinating and nuanced delve into the history of lesbian feminism, highlighting the work of activists that came before, the importance of intersectionality and the dangers of scapegoating. This is a must read for sapphic activists, full of history and theory underpinning modern queer discourse, to inform our path ahead.
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July 18, 2026DNF 58%. Thank you to the publisher for the ARC. This book has a lot to say and tries to say it in way too many words. I have a degree in gender studies and nowadays spend a lot of time listening to feminist and Black studies audiobooks, and yet this somehow was still way too academic for me. The 4th chapter on sin just completely lost me. Before that I was in and enjoying it but once I got there I skimmed for a while then realized this isn't teaching me anything new in a way that is worthwhile. The author is so deep into her analysis that she can't bring it down to layman's terms and this book suffers from being so technical and academic. A lot of great thoughts but this didn't need to be a 200+ page book.
PS the word "sin" is going to haunt me in my sleep.
PS the word "sin" is going to haunt me in my sleep.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews