Femmephilia
Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe
Will be published approx. on 16. June 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
272 pages
979-8-88890-597-5 (ISBN)
Description
From the author of Enemy Feminisms and Abolish the Family, an original diagnosis of femmephobia in our culture, and a vision of a life-giving femme feminism for all.
To be femme is to embody a dispossessed femininity, to be freighted with freedom, to refuse to be made proper or institutionalized. To love it is to embrace love for women (be they butch or not) in the broadest sense. In Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis makes the case for the vital importance of politicized femme-ness: a feminism that is self-consciously artificial, extravagant in its erotic and political appetites, and staunchly anti-work, abolitionist, and utopian. Femme labors deserve our care, respect, and support, but instead face dismissal from masculinist antagonists and feminist allies alike.
Where neoliberal women's empowerment has failed to combat the eruption of right-wing, anti-trans, and anti-feminist attacks, Lewis argues that femmephilia can help us imagine a radical future. In essays on the high femme genius of Marilyn Monroe and trans yearning in the myth of Apollo and Daphne; on octopuses and girlbosses, reluctant heterosexuals, lesbian separatists, and anti-work cats; and on a mother on strike from maternity, Femmephilia offers a new logic of liberation for all feminized people.
To be femme is to embody a dispossessed femininity, to be freighted with freedom, to refuse to be made proper or institutionalized. To love it is to embrace love for women (be they butch or not) in the broadest sense. In Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis makes the case for the vital importance of politicized femme-ness: a feminism that is self-consciously artificial, extravagant in its erotic and political appetites, and staunchly anti-work, abolitionist, and utopian. Femme labors deserve our care, respect, and support, but instead face dismissal from masculinist antagonists and feminist allies alike.
Where neoliberal women's empowerment has failed to combat the eruption of right-wing, anti-trans, and anti-feminist attacks, Lewis argues that femmephilia can help us imagine a radical future. In essays on the high femme genius of Marilyn Monroe and trans yearning in the myth of Apollo and Daphne; on octopuses and girlbosses, reluctant heterosexuals, lesbian separatists, and anti-work cats; and on a mother on strike from maternity, Femmephilia offers a new logic of liberation for all feminized people.
Reviews / Votes
"Femmephilia collects seventeen of Sophie Lewis' essays, drenched in excessive, decorative, provocative, seductive prose, devoted to expansive communist femme-inism, founded in the distinction between insurrectionist femme-ness and supposedly natural, normative femininity. The essays are a gorgeous, enthralling, essential addition to our collective intellectual, political and aesthetic wardrobe."-Lisa Duggan, author of Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed
"Femmephilia-in the grand tradition of Joan Nestle, Amber Hollibaugh, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Raechel Anne Jolie, and Tourmaline-is a sublimely rendered paean to the sparkly, bold lip-wearing, gender mercurial, world-breaking, world-making, radical multitudinousness of femme. Brilliantly warping and weaving personal reflection and cultural criticism, each essay in Lewis' florilegium dazzles with its deconstruction of the mechanisms and machinations of femmephobia, while making a powerful case for us all to be femmephiles (and, bear with me, unabashed 'octophiles')."
-Lucie Fielding, therapist, sex educator, and author of Trans Sex: Nurturing Trans Erotic Embodiment and Gender-Pleasure
"Sophie Lewis's love letters to the femmes at the heart of femme-inism are fun, sad, erudite, full of longing and urgency. Whether she is reminding us of Marilyn Monroe's intellect, rewriting the story of Daphne, transing mermaids, cruising utopia with Monique Wittig or writing about octopus sex, she is funny, irreverent, and sharp as newly manicured nails. This is the right moment for a book of essays on the pleasures, the potential and the awesome power of femininity."
-Jack Halberstam, author of Anarchitecture After Everything
"What better time than an emergency to join Sophie Lewis in 'squinting at' and struggling for the femmunist horizon. In that lush future, we'll work little and care often. The disrespectable, the soft, the creaturely-all are welcome."
-Heather Berg, author of Porn Work: Sex, Labor, and Late Capitalism
"In the lush and provocative Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis approaches femmeness as a sexuality. By this I mean they ask what would happen if we prioritized pleasure, sex, and care over work, productivity, and capitalism. Drawing on an eclectic archive of femmes and femme positions, Lewis illuminates the hidden structures of femme phobia while offering glimpses into what living in femmeness-regardless of gender!- might look like. For Lewis, it is the femme embrace of excess that offers a way through the muck of the world. And there, most delightfully, we find desire, wetness, and fucking."
-Amber Jamilla Musser, author of Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined
"Sophie Lewis is sharp, bold, compassionate and fearless."
-Amia Srinivasan, author of The Right to Sex
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Chicago
United States
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 194 mm
Width: 123 mm
Thickness: 29 mm
Weight
343 gr
ISBN-13
979-8-88890-597-5 (9798888905975)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
approx. 06/2026
HAYMARKET BOOKS
€9.49
Available for download
Person
Sophie Lewis is a writer, utopian, feminist, and ex-academic scholar based in Philadelphia, hailing originally from the UK, France, and Germany. She is the author of Enemy Feminisms, Abolish the Family, and Full Surrogacy Now. Lewis's essays and articles appear routinely in magazines such as n+1, Harper's, The Drift, the LA Review of Books, Boston Review, and the London Review of Books; as well as on her Patreon newsletter, "ReproUtopia." She teaches online courses on critical theory at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research, and is working on a book about the liberation of children.
Content
Introduction
What does "femme" mean, and how is it different from femininity? What kind of anticapitalist potential do femmes offer us?
SWERF
It's impossible to take a meaningful stand against transphobia if, like Catharine MacKinnon, Julie Bindel, and others, you remain a sex work prohibitionist.
Mermaid
On the transness of the Little Mermaid.
Vampire
A portrait of cis-trans solidarity.
Daphne
Daphne was a woman who wanted to transition into a tree, and Apollo-you guessed it-was a chaser.
Mumputz
You can be femme and also femmephobic, a mother against motherhood, including the author's own mother.
Marilyn
On the femme queerness of comrade Marilyn Monroe.
Shulamith
Shulamith Firestone on femme labor, against Shulamith Firestone on femme labor.
Andrea
On the femmephobia of Andrea Dworkin.
Cats
On the antiwork dialectics of cats.
Octopus
On the erotophilic promise of the octopus girlfriend.
Tradwife
The femmephobic alliance between tradwife and girlboss.
Maid
Maid memoirs and momfluencers: On the limits of domestic heterofatalism in maid memoirs and by momfluencers.
Diane
Diane di Prima's "acid commune-ist" mothering against motherhood.
What does "femme" mean, and how is it different from femininity? What kind of anticapitalist potential do femmes offer us?
SWERF
It's impossible to take a meaningful stand against transphobia if, like Catharine MacKinnon, Julie Bindel, and others, you remain a sex work prohibitionist.
Mermaid
On the transness of the Little Mermaid.
Vampire
A portrait of cis-trans solidarity.
Daphne
Daphne was a woman who wanted to transition into a tree, and Apollo-you guessed it-was a chaser.
Mumputz
You can be femme and also femmephobic, a mother against motherhood, including the author's own mother.
Marilyn
On the femme queerness of comrade Marilyn Monroe.
Shulamith
Shulamith Firestone on femme labor, against Shulamith Firestone on femme labor.
Andrea
On the femmephobia of Andrea Dworkin.
Cats
On the antiwork dialectics of cats.
Octopus
On the erotophilic promise of the octopus girlfriend.
Tradwife
The femmephobic alliance between tradwife and girlboss.
Maid
Maid memoirs and momfluencers: On the limits of domestic heterofatalism in maid memoirs and by momfluencers.
Diane
Diane di Prima's "acid commune-ist" mothering against motherhood.