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reproutopia.bsky.social
Sophie Lewis
@reproutopia.bsky.social
11K followers 1.1K following 510 posts
Philadelphia feminist writer • ENEMY FEMINISMS: TERFS, POLICEWOMEN & GIRLBOSSES AGAINST LIBERATION • patreon.com/reproutopia • Full Surrogacy Now • Abolish the Family • essays @ LRB, Harper's, The Drift, Lux • octopus essay n+1 mag • "recovering academic"
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reproutopia.bsky.social
Cover reveal: FEMMEPHILIA: LOVE LETTERS TO TRANS MERMAIDS, QUEER MOTHERS, AND MARILYN MONROE

Design: Vivian Lopez Rowe www.vivianrowe.com/about feat. an 1809 illustration of a paper nautilus (pelagic octopus)

@haymarketbooks.org 16 June 2026. Editor: Katy O'Donnell

www.patreon.com/posts/142516...
The Patreon post cover image of Sophie Lewis (ReproUtopia)'s cover reveal Patreon post, showing the cover design by Vivian Rowe for Sophie's forthcoming FEMMEPHILIA: LOVE LETTERS TO TRANS MERMAIDS, QUEER MOTHERS, AND MARILYN MONROE (Haymarket 16 June 2026). It is iridescent pink-green-blue and features an early nineteenth century naturalist illustration of an octopus
October 31, 2025 at 5:14 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Over 300 writers so far are boycotting NYT Opinion until the NYT calls for an arms embargo on Israel, conducts a review into anti-Palestinian bias, and retracts 'Screams without Words.' Find out more here: www.boycottdivestunsubscribe.com/opinion-boyc... Then join us: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
October 27, 2025 at 3:10 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
I think that maybe, before or during reading and according attention to Michael Clune's novel, comrades might want to check out his January 29, 2025 testimony on Ohio Senate Bill 1 (tweeted/brought to our attention earlier this year by @sarahbrouillette.bsky.social) cc: @patblanchfield.bsky.social
September 29, 2025 at 3:19 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Meanwhile, this is their Opinion section today. Benny Gantz for eternal genocide-as-usual, and Thomas Friedman for "democracy". What a joke
Screen shot of today's Nyt opinion section with all the different headlines
September 24, 2025 at 7:14 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Eat sh*t RFK
Sophie smiling, outside an empty CVS minute clinic, pointing to the bandaid on their arm from the Covid vaccine they just got
September 15, 2025 at 1:31 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
It's easy to exceptionalize ruling class wannabe-mothers who outsource the work of anthrogenesis (peoplemaking) to working-class women. And we should be critical of the need for "genetic" kin. Still there is a risk that we fall into the idea that all "good" women must desire pregnancy. See FSN p.74:
from page 74 of FULL SURROGACY NOW (2019) by Sophie Lewis: In her study of surrogacy in the United States, Labor of Love, Heather Jacobson affirms: “As a group, surrogates are skilled at pregnancy and birth—and they speak about pregnancy and birth as skills … a skill set that could be honed and practiced.” The sociological information contained in Labor of Love is valuable, both differing from and paralleling findings from cheaper parts of the market such as Russia, Central America, and the Indian subcontinent, where workers also hone their “craft” of pregnancy. But Jacobson insists on pregnancy and birth being work for a particular and (to my mind) noncongenial reason: she thinks work is an inherently good thing. This is a moral perspective widely echoed in popular condemnations of celebrity consumers of surrogacy. It inflects the common reproach levelled against so-called “vanity surrogacies,” where there is no underlying fertility impediment motivating a female-bodied commissioning parent (who can therefore be deemed lazy). And this is particularly clear wherever the client is not dissimulating her glee and relief that she is not herself gestating, such as the case of Alex Kuczynski, the 2008 client of a commercial surrogate Cathy Hilling, who memorably described herself as an “Easy-Bake Oven.” (The New York Times’s readership “loathed” Kucyznski for “skiing and white-water rafting in the ninth month of Hilling’s pregnancy.”)69 Even Dr. Patel, despite the profits she might conceivably make if the culture of duty that still surrounds bourgeois women and childbirth were to shift, refuses to defend the right not to do gestational work and proclaims that she only serves deserving couples who would gestate their own baby if they could.
September 5, 2025 at 4:32 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
"Deadly risks could stifle information"?! "Why not just say: Hamas-controlled health ministry expresses worry that everyone being dead might interfere with the free flow of facts" or something like that while you're at it.

The New York Times should - and, I think will, ultimately - drown in shame
A New York Times push notification "Reporting in Gaza Palestinian journalist have often been the world's witnesses to Israel's offensive. Deadly risks could stifle information."
August 27, 2025 at 8:45 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
🪶 #birders is this ...possibly... an (immature female) mourning warbler? Or is it a common yellowthroat. Spotted in northern Vermont a few days ago
A gray and yellow bird in a tree A gray and yellow bird in a tree A gray and yellow bird in a tree A gray and yellow bird in a tree
July 22, 2025 at 10:24 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
A time when the family-form contracts and shrinks is not the time to abandon the horizon of positive supersession of the private nuclear household. Listening to comrades Emily Janakiram, Katie Gibson and @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social talk about abolition of the family at @socialismconference.org ❤️‍🔥
A picture of a conference podium with a table and a lectern with four K95-masked people at it (only three are visible)
July 4, 2025 at 5:31 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Bravo L.A. 🔥 The only foolproof antidepressant: spread of antifascist uprising, seeded by Angelenos using barricades, courage, homemade missiles, fists, fires, solidarity and ingenuity against the Gestapo/ICE. As ever, ignore the wretched nonviolence talk. Total solidarity with the riots, period.
Bravo bravo L.A. The only truly foolproof antidepressant substance: the spread of antifascist uprising, seeded by Angelenos in their thousands using barricades, courage, homemade missiles, fists, fires, solidarity and ingenuity against the Gestapo/ICE and demonstrating with words, already emergent strategies, and (for example) keffiyehs, that the fight aims at more than one government and sees the whole genocide-mongering apparatus for what it is. What beauty. P.S. AS EVER, I recommend practicing zero tolerance for the wretched nonviolence discourse. Simply point to the resources required to cut through this false consciousness (Vicky's book "In Defense of Looting" is great, as one example) and keep it moving. Come on. People have eyes. The anti violent violence of those throwing their bodies at the genocidaires, healthcare executives, pigs, and border goons is unmistakably the righteous course of action, a concrete expression of loyalty to mankind. It is scarcely comprehensible, at any time, but perhaps especially a mere five years after the uprising for George Floyd, that there are still self-described leftists denouncing the rioters as "violent," complaining that the people in the streets are somehow doing antifascism wrong, or even entertaining the absurd logic whereby fighting back is somehow "what Trump wants" and "providing them with the pretext they need for martial law" or whatever. Total solidarity with the protestors, period.
June 9, 2025 at 2:44 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Some bird pictures I took recently: a red-winged blackbird, a gray catbird, a spotted towhee and .... I'm actually not exactly sure what kind of gull this is (this was on Ocean Beach, San Francisco ... is it ring-billed? western?) #birds #birder 🪶
A close-up of a red-winged blackbird (very little red on the wing is visible), in profile, against a blurred green background A gray catbird sitting on a bench, against a blurry background of tall grass. A gull caught mid-step as it walks in the tidal water on the sand of Ocean Beach, San Francisco. A spotted towhee, pictured from behind, captured mid-hop! (in Seattle)
June 6, 2025 at 5:59 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
“Womanhood is not assigned. It is lived, sacred, & sovereign,” as the Transfuturist + Ad’iyah collectives remind us; “We do not & will never recognize the authority of any governmt or court to determine our legitimacy. They do not know us—and they can never name us” www.instagram.com/p/DIin9QrNg7...
An instagram post from the Ad'iyah Collective and the Transfuturist Collective [https://www.instagram.com/adiyahcollective/] which reads: "WOMANHOOD IS NOT ASSIGNED. IT IS LIVED, SACRED, AND SOVEREIGN. A joint statement by the Transfuturist Collective and the Ad'iyah Collective." Plus the logos of the two collectives, and some graphic design
April 22, 2025 at 5:29 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Chicago! Enemy Feminisms:
TUESDAY MARCH 25 | 7pm
PILSEN COMMUNITY BOOKS
with @emanabdelhadi.bsky.social
@pilsencommbooks.bsky.social
ENEMY FEMINISMS SOPHIE LEWIS & EMAN ABDELHADI TUESDAY MARCH 25 | 7pm PILSEN COMMUNITY BOOKS
March 24, 2025 at 3:18 AM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Past and future event-related links (in unlocked post) for your ease of reference, plus information about a WORKSHOP 4 GAZA I am holding on May 12. www.patreon.com/posts/sophie...
A table at Housman's Bookshop in London, UK, covered in (on the left) two big stacks of ENEMY FEMINISMS, and a variety of other books on display including Abolish Rent by Tracy Rosenthal and Why Should Feminists Trust the Police? by Leah Cowan, entre autres.
March 19, 2025 at 2:30 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
About the confluence here between Zionism, transmisogyny, racism, and cis feminism: What seems like a pivot from a feminist politician - from "pro-LGBTQ" pinkwashing to anti-trans woman-washing - is actually a seamless commitment to a settler-colonial, bourgeois, white-supremacist ideology: cisness.
A tweet from Nancy Mace showing herself in front of a bathroom door with a seemingly "Female" symbol outside of it, smiling, with the tweet itself reading: "Real women have their own bathroom in Israel! [🇮🇱]"
March 3, 2025 at 4:45 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
"The amniotechnics (watery) theoretical structure is an analysis of interpenetrability; of the way that bodies constitute each other on the chemical and biological level. This is the essence of the repudiation of the partitioning of bodies into penetrator and penetrator." patreon.com/posts/emma-h...
SL: We refuse the story of feminist “waves” as a kind of enemy historiography. The “waves” narrative formally invisibilises the feminist comrades to whom you and I feel the most deeply connected. EH: Yes, and also we feel and suspect that we don't even know the most miniscule crumb of it; of the full breadth of political activity that we want to know, that we want.
March 3, 2025 at 3:19 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Rereading the "long cut" of our @pinkomagazine.bsky.social conversation, and thinking about Emma @riislover667.bsky.social's exquisite answer to what are now the questions arising from organizers at almost every Enemy Feminisms event - Qs about holding on to one another, resisting disposability...
The point that women’s autonomy is important to feminism only works when it is clear a) that this is not the only form of autonomy that is important to feminism and that b) the category of women, like any other historically contingent political identity, is riven by internal antagonisms of, most significantly, race, class, and cisness. It’s not about everybody being the same, as liberal iterations of the politics have suggested. Autonomy is, in fact, primarily valuable insofar as political action is a place where antagonisms emerge directly, because people are not needing to tamp them down in order to defend themselves against larger violences, and ideally, can be dealt with. What do you think?
March 2, 2025 at 11:27 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
European starlings clustered at the top of a tree in the arboretum in Washington DC; a white-breasted nuthatch (not the best photo I'm aware!), and a Northern mockingbird - plus me, looking through some binoculars🪶
European starlings clustered together on the twigs at the top of a tree Northern mockingbird in the golden hour light A white-breasted nuthatch on a tree trunk Sophie, wearing a teal coat and a woolly black hat, looks through some binoculars at a winter woodland landscape
March 1, 2025 at 6:06 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
I took these photos of a beautiful bluebird in the National Arboretum in Washington, DC, a few hours before my event at @solidstatebooksdc.bsky.social 🪶
An Eastern bluebird perches on a branch An Eastern bluebird perches on a branch [with its blue feathered back to the camera]
March 1, 2025 at 5:52 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Behold this spectacular contemporary phenomenon wherein the collective courage of women - symbolized by individuals like Gisèle Pelicot and Carla Antonelli (here pictured) - stuffs patriarchy's shame back down the throats of its propagators. I could watch Antonelli's speech again and again.
A still of Carla Antonelli's speech with the subtitle: "la cara de vergüenza"
February 25, 2025 at 6:05 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
STAG DANCE absolutely slaps and you should pre-order it immediately. I'm enjoying and admiring this sexy axeman flirting and sex-theorizing so, so much. No one does it quite like Torrey Peters.
one nowhere would see me for the skooch I'd named myself -- which was my main aim from the outset. Only a few days as a skooch and already I began to see why so many of the fairer sex harbor such exasperation with their menfolk. The only medicine menfolk respect is a good clopping, yet the same menfolk insist that it is a certain reticence to hand out cloppings that makes the fairer sex fairer.
February 24, 2025 at 4:52 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Leah Cowan is someone I respect so much, so this is wonderful to read. "Lewis’s writing is frequently acerbic & always buoyant, dancing us through what could feel like, in other hands, a bleak gallery of ghouls. Her dedication to radical struggle shines through." www.redpepper.org.uk/culture-medi...
It is only through a refusal to dance in the neoliberal frames of fear, unsafety and scarcity, that instead a prioritisation of collective care, and a dedication to pleasure and joy can be placed firmly within our feminist purview. In Enemy Feminisms, as in Lewis’s earlier Full Surrogacy Now and Abolish the Family, the author confronts the boundaries that threaten to cage feminists past and present – including borders, the nuclear family, prisons, profit margins and the gender binary – while at the same time sailing us towards the urgent ‘feminisms against cisness and against whiteness’ that can and must be our guiding star.
February 24, 2025 at 2:11 AM
reproutopia.bsky.social
Send this to your Baltimore friends who need or want to talk enemy feminisms?

Wednesday and Thursday next week, at JHU and at @redemmas.org (with Jules Gill-Peterson)
TERF ISLAND COMES TOAMERICA 5:15 PM GILMAN 208 Wednesday, February 26th Buried Histories of the Feminism of Cisness with Sophie Lewis author of Full Surrogacy Now, Abolish the Family, and Enemy Feminisms: TERFS, Policewomen & Girlbosses Against Liberation A book talk on Enemy Feminisms, in conversation with Jules Gill-Peterson, will follow on February 27th at Red Emma’s, 7PM
February 17, 2025 at 7:54 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
London | Enemy Feminisms lecture
Dr Sophie Lewis
Fri. 7 March 2025, 6.30pm
Sarah Parker Remond Centre
(qUCL/GFRN Annual Lecture)
Archaeology, Lecture Theatre G6
31-34 Gordon Square
London WC1H 0PY

Check here for booking link:
www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of...
Enemy Feminisms Dr Sophie Lewis Fri. 7 March 2025, 6.30pm Sarah Parker Remond Centre Annual Lecture Archaeology, Lecture Theatre G6 31-34 Gordon Square London WC1H 0PY
January 28, 2025 at 5:11 PM
reproutopia.bsky.social
London | N.B. I fear this one might be sold out, or almost sold out, already:

Enemy Feminisms book talk
Sophie Lewis with Lola Olufemi. 7pm.
Thursday 6 March 2025
London Review Bookshop.
14-16 Bury Place
London WC1A 2JL
Tickets at londonreviewbookshop.co.uk
Enemy Feminisms book talk Sophie Lewis with Lola Olufemi. 7pm. Thursday 6 March 2025 London Review Bookshop. 14-16 Bury Place London WC1A 2JL Reserve a seat at londonreviewbookshop.co.uk
January 28, 2025 at 5:09 PM