“Femmephilia collects seventeen of Sophie Lewis’ essays, drenched in excessive, decorative, provocative, seductive prose, devoted to expansive communist femme-inism, founded in the distinction between insurrectionist femme-ness and supposedly natural, normative femininity. The essays are a gorgeous, enthralling, essential addition to our collective intellectual, political and aesthetic wardrobe.“ —Lisa Duggan, author of Mean Girl: Ayn Rand and the Culture of Greed

“Femmephilia—in the grand tradition of Joan Nestle, Amber Hollibaugh, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Raechel Anne Jolie, and Tourmaline—is a sublimely rendered paean to the sparkly, bold lip-wearing, gender mercurial, world-breaking, world-making, radical multitudinousness of femme. Brilliantly warping and weaving personal reflection and cultural criticism, each essay in Lewis’ florilegium dazzles with its deconstruction of the mechanisms and machinations of femmephobia, while making a powerful case for us all to be femmephiles (and, bear with me, unabashed ‘octophiles’).” —Lucie Fielding, therapist, sex educator, and author of Trans Sex: Nurturing Trans Erotic Embodiment and Gender-Pleasure

“Sophie Lewis’s love letters to the femmes at the heart of femme-inism are fun, sad, erudite, full of longing and urgency. Whether she is reminding us of Marilyn Monroe’s intellect, rewriting the story of Daphne, transing mermaids, cruising utopia with Monique Wittig or writing about octopus sex, she is funny, irreverent, and sharp as newly manicured nails. This is the right moment for a book of essays on the pleasures, the potential and the awesome power of femininity.” —Jack Halberstam, author of Anarchitecture After Everything