#6 Think Pieces Podcast: The Feminism of Fools - When Real Feminists Do Fascism

The UCL Gender and Feminism Research Network (GFRN) and qUCL present a conversation with ex-academic writer Sophie Lewis and Victoria Mangan, PhD student in the English Department at UCL. On 7 March 2025, Sophie Lewis gave the annual qUCL/GFRN lecture on ‘The Feminism of Fools: When Real Feminists Do Fascism’, which explored the imperial, racist, and otherwise exclusionary legacies of various kinds of feminism – varieties of feminism that have not just been taken up by the regressive right, but have participated enthusiastically and feministly in these movements. In advance of her talk, Victoria Mangan met with Sophie to ask her a few questions about her new book, ‘Enemy Feminisms,’ and especially to ask her: why this book, and why now? They went on to discuss the relationship between Sophie’s current work and her previous books on family abolition, why it is that we are so attached to feminism as a unilateral ‘good’ despite evidence to the contrary, and the particular Englishness of certain feminist activism in the 21st century. ****** Sophie Lewis, an ex-academic writer, lives in Philadelphia and is the author of ‘Full Surrogacy Now, Abolish the Family,’ and ‘Enemy Feminisms.’ Her essays appear everywhere from n+1 to the LRB. She is working on an essay collection, ‘Femmephilia,’ and a book, ‘The Liberation of Children’ (forthcoming from Penguin, 2027). Victoria Mangan is a PhD student researching transgender literatures and theories. Her thesis enquires into how we read and interpret trans literature and what this growing body of work might offer literary criticism as a discipline. She is a Wolfson scholar in the humanities and has taught across several departments at UCL. Lewis and Mangan are introduced by Alex Hyde, Associate Professor in Gender Studies and Co-Director of the Gender and Feminism Research Network at UCL. The episode was produced by Marthe Lisson, Editor of Think Pieces.