Sophie Lewis

Front cover of Social Research quarterly issue 92(4), winter 2025 - the title in capital letters is ABOLITION THEN AND NOW (in sprayed red, on stone textured gray)

The abstract for the article: Destroy the Family to Realize Its Promise: Abolition as Care Communization Sophie Lewis Social Research: An International Quarterly Johns Hopkins University Press Volume 92, Number 4, Winter 2025 pp. 1019-1042 The idea of family abolition has reappeared among parts of the radical left, following a hiatus of almost 50 years. But— as some have objected—is not capitalism itself “abolishing” familial life (in the colloquial sense of destroying it) in various ways? Indeed, the private nuclear household appears embattled and undermined. In this context, the resurgent debate clarifies why the form of destruction family abolitionists seek is one that realizesfamilism’s false promise. Abolition, here, is the actualization of humanity’s universal care-neediness through the communization of lifemaking. Defending this sense of the word “abolish” (i.e., positive supersession) remains worthwhile.

I have a new article up at SOCIAL RESEARCH: "Destroy the Family to Realize Its Promise: Abolition as Care Communization." Check it out:
doi.org/10.1353/sor....

Do me a favour and hear @reproutopia.bsky.social out! 🖤 doi.org/10.1353/sor....

Transcript Death Panel episode “Health Fascism and the Anti-State State” (December 22 2025): “Second: we fight by recruiting defectors from inside the house. This is a call to healthcare workers: betray your training when your training demands cruelty. If it means someone gets what they need to live—betray your bosses, your licensing board, your EMR, your scope of practice. Care is not your credential, it’s your calling, your skills, your knowledge, your access, your obligation to your community. And sometimes that obligation will mean disobedience. If we are to build the world we need, we need you on our side, not on the side of your administrator. We need you willing to take risks, not just for your reputation, but for the material survival of those around you. The struggle is already here and you can either enforce the harm or interrupt it. We need insurgent care. And we needed it yesterday. If you have access pass it on. If you have knowledge, share it, weaponize it. If you have creativity, run with it.”

Transcript Death Panel episode “Health Fascism and the Anti-State State” (December 22 2025): “This is where the real transformation begins. Not just in asking the system to care, but also in building the world we wished we lived in. A world where care is not determined by billing or zip code, or citizenship, or employment status, or formulary, or diagnosis codes. A world where no one is surplus. Where illness is not a source of shame or debt or punishment—but simply a part of life, and a part of being and feeling cared for.”

a call to healthcare workers from “Health Fascism and the Anti-State State” in December:

www.deathpanel.net/transcripts/...

It seems clear Alex Pretti, a healthcare worker, was murdered for engaging in the exact kind of community care we hope all care workers to embody: the kind that doesn’t stop at the threshold of the hospital, the clinic, but that aims to care for and support the community where and how they can

I have had that feeling before where in the middle of an action you feel how tangibly another world is possible, but this time I feel it across an entire city. So many here are seeing what life could be like if it were organized around different principles, if the rhythm were completely different

Thank you. :) which chapters have been most 😵 for you so far? or: any facts or dynamics that stood out, made things click for you - if you feel like sharing?

Oh! My bad then sorry

Well, no! Not according to the essay!

Enemy Feminisms

Sophie Lewis' Enemy Feminisms was one of my favorites this year for her chapter-by-chapter historical analysis of how feminism was used by aspiring female colonizers, fascists, and racists across the centuries. "Feminism" is not an inherent political good! www.haymarketbooks.org/books/2489-e...

“We are >2 years into a genocide waged by a settler state armed to the teeth by the world’s most cruel empire, itself a settler colony, currently turning that cruelty inward at an alarming rate against migrants, students, & any dissident or non-normative subject” (opening of Lara Sheehi's next book)

Not All Women | Dayna Tortorici The point of all this cataloging — which is less schematic in Lewis’s presentation than my summary suggests — is to help us recognize traces of enemy feminism when we encounter them in the present. An...

◆Tortorici, Dayna, 2026, "Not All Women", n+1, 52 (Winter 2026), (www.nplusonemag.com/issue-52/rev...).
―❝【Lead】Feminism has always been divided❞
＊Sophie Lewis. Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation. Haymarket, 2025.

Of course, my pleasure. I have a lot on this in my first book, Full Surrogacy Now (a radical critique of the gestational labor industry from a family abolitionist standpoint) and also in an essay I wrote about Donna Haraway, if you feel like googling that

Not All Women | Dayna Tortorici The point of all this cataloging — which is less schematic in Lewis’s presentation than my summary suggests — is to help us recognize traces of enemy feminism when we encounter them in the present. An...

“Given the history of intrafeminist conflict, Lewis suggests, it’s time we gave up the comforting myth that feminism is always and everywhere a force for good.”

In n+1’s Winter 2026 issue: coeditor @dtortorici.bsky.social on Sophie Lewis’s ENEMY FEMINISMS. www.nplusonemag.com/issue-52/rev...

Sure - but Qs of technofascism &, generally, capitalist tech, can and should be separated from 'tech', which is not to say technoutopianism or uncritical technophilia is ok; I am tempted to call the proper approach anti-anti-tech. Technophobia in feminism is closely entangled w femmephobia + TERFism

"What are the red flags of enemy feminism? For starters, fear: an emphasis on danger over pleasure; a preoccupation with purity; technophobia; congealed opinion; resistance to surprise or novelty; and the desire for strong borders.... But by far the most common feature of enemy feminism is racism."

Literally the dream review - not only does Dayna *get it*, she illuminates the stakes of what I was trying to do in ways I needed to have explained back to me / didn't totally grasp or know how to articulate. I'm so thrilled I could die

Literally the dream review - not only does Dayna *get it*, she illuminates the stakes of what I was trying to do in ways I needed to have explained back to me / didn't totally grasp or know how to articulate. I'm so thrilled I could die

Best of 2025: Enemy Feminisms w/ Sophie Lewis | The Death Panel Get more from The Death Panel on Patreon

5/ Sophie Lewis @reproutopia.bsky.social on the history of “fascist feminisms,” what this history can tell us about the current state of US politics, and her book Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation

www.patreon.com/posts/best-o...

Another one joins the ranks of the illuminated

Happy "Best of 2025" Hellidaze with Sophie Lewis and "Enemy Feminisms" | This Is Hell! Get more from This Is Hell! on Patreon

For a sixth time, you chose an interview with @reproutopia.bsky.social as one of your favorites of the year.

Today on "Best of 2025," it's Sophie on "Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation" (@haymarketbooks.org).

... and IT'S FREE!

www.patreon.com/posts/happy-...

👼🏻🥹

Best of 2025: Sick Sad World w/ Vicky Osterweil | The Death Panel Get more from The Death Panel on Patreon

First up: @reallandsend.bsky.social and @vickyacab.bsky.social on the holes in the Trump administration’s grip on power and how the field is ripe for mass movements to challenge not just Trump administration policies like mass deportation, but federal power itself

www.patreon.com/posts/best-o...

"I think most people never imagine there could be such a thing as KKK feminism or fascist feminism. And yet there is, actually." @reproutopia.bsky.social

The Year in Books - Inquest Inquest staff recommendations of not-to-be-missed decarceral books from 2025.

'Enemy Feminisms' by @reproutopia.bsky.social @haymarketbooks.org was recommended in our Year in Books by Inquest editor @romaissaa.bsky.social who calls it "distinctive, poetic, and rupturing, slicing through conventional thinking to reveal uncomfortable truths."

Video content:

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Podcasts:

ORDINARY UNHAPPINESS podcasts.apple.com/is/podcast/9...

LRB podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/s...

DEATH PANEL podcasts.apple.com/za/podcast/e...

SAD FRANCISCO podcasts.apple.com/ba/podcast/w...

THIS IS HELL podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/e...

NEW BOOKS newbooksnetwork.com/enemy-femini...

Here are some (written) ENEMY FEMINISMS interviews

publicseminar.org/2025/04/some...

thebaffler.com/latest/femin...

www.patreon.com/posts/q-and-...

www.interviewmagazine.com/literature/s...

www.radicalphilosophy.com/interview/sm...

This long and broad article links eco-fascism to anti-trans feminism and is very worth reading

An incredibly useful and (for me at least) pretty groundbreaking history of how the rancid ideology of organized transphobia worked its way into mainstream feminism. "Enemy feminism" is a great way of framing it. Many thanks to @reproutopia.bsky.social for this valuable intervention.

TERF Island - Lux Magazine There Have Always Been Enemies Inside the Feminist Camp

The recognition of what I propose we call “enemy feminism” is also liberating, because it means we can skip the stage of “calling in” people who are plainly more interested in upholding a version of patriarchy that includes them in its upper ranks than destroying it.
lux-magazine.com/article/terf...