Femmephilia : Love Letters to Trans Mermaids, Queer Mothers, and Marilyn Monroe

From the author of Enemy Feminisms and Abolish the Family, a fierce critique of femmephobia within feminism, and a vision of a life-giving femme feminism for all.

For two centuries, feminists have tried to be respectable and serious. In Femmephilia, Sophie Lewis makes the case for the vital political importance of “femmeness”: a femininity that is self-consciously artificial, a femininity whose erotic and political appetites are considered unacceptable and unnatural. Being femme is a kind of work that merits love and respect—but femmes instead face criticism from 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 tradwives and girlbosses, reluctant heterosexuals, lesbian separatists, and anti-work cats; and on a mother on strike from maternity and a poet who mothered against motherhood, Femmephilia offers a new logic of liberation for all feminized people.