Femmephilia
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.
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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.
