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 nineteenth century imperial feminists and police officers to twentieth 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 battle cry 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.
'Where pregnancy is concerned, let every pregnancy be for everyone. Let us overthrow, in short, the family.'
The surrogacy industry is estimated to be worth over $1 billion a year, and many of its surrogates around the world work in terrible conditions—deception, wage-stealing and money skimming are rife; adequate medical care is horrifyingly absent; and informed consent is depressingly rare. In Full Surrogacy Now, Sophie Lewis brings a fresh and unique perspective to the topic. Often, we think of surrogacy as the problem, but, Full Surrogacy Now argues, we need more surrogacy, not less! Rather than looking at surrogacy through a legal lens, Lewis argues that the needs and protection of surrogates should be put front and center. Their relationship to the babies they gestate must be rethought, as part of a move to recognize that reproduction is productive work. Only then can we begin to break down our assumptions that children “belong” to those whose genetics they share. Taking collective responsibility for children would radically transform our notions of kinship, helping us to see that it always takes a village to make a baby.
The seriously radical cry for full gestational justice that I long for … unique and bracing.”– Donna Haraway
“Full Surrogacy Now is a landmark text of visionary feminist thinking. This book is as breathtaking as it is necessary.”– Natasha Lennard
“An extraordinary book, as nuanced as it is provocative. I cannot recommend it highly enough.”– Helen Hester
This book goes far into places where few gender abolitionists have ventured and brings us a vision of another life.” – McKenzie Wark
“Sophie Lewis is at the top of a new generation of scholars and activists thinking the transformation of gestational labor within contemporary pharmacopornographic capitalism.– Paul B. Preciado
“Sophie Lewis and her expansive vision of feminism are desperately needed right now.– Melissa Gira Grant
