Trans Femme Futures
Abolitionist Ethics for Transfeminist Worlds
Imagining a transfemme future is an act of revolution
'Femme' describes a constellation of queer, gendered expressions that uproot expectations of what it means to be feminine. Transfeminists take their experiences of desire, belonging and harm to create collective power through femininity, fighting for marginalised and non-conforming people.
Trans Femme Futures enriches this power. As trans people find themselves increasingly oppressed, envisioning a future is an act of revolution. The authors discuss struggles around trans healthcare and the need for collective autonomy, the importance of practising self-care, transfeminism as abolition, and the role of Social Reproduction Theory.
Ultimately the authors show how social transformation can be achieved through harnessing the knowledge that trans femmes are, have been and can be agents of transformative practices that allow queer life to thrive, especially in this current moment of climate, health, political and economic crises.
Nat Raha is a poet and activist-scholar. She contributed to the collection Transgender Marxism and has written numerous pamphlets of poetry, most recently four dreams. Her writing has appeared in numerous magazines and journals, and has been translated into 8 languages.
Mijke Van der Drift is tutor at the Royal Academy of Art, the Hague, and Visiting Lecturer at the Royal College of Art, London. Mijke was a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge in 2020-21, as part of the Revolutionary Papers project.
'Astute and hopeful, Trans Femme Futures manages to divulge profound theoretical insights of trans liberation as intimate and soulful endeavours of trans living and world making on the margins. Offering up an abolitionist 'transfeminist love-politics' as a practical antidote to the suffocating neoliberal world order, the book is a breath of fresh air amidst stale and moribund, if long rehearsed, existing bad faith discourses on gender and its many troubles'
- H.L.T. Quan, author of Become Ungovernable'A brilliant, useful, and immensely moving book that deals a critical blow to the epistemic austerity of our times. With their chromatic defence of theory as a 'tool to work upon the imagination,' Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift have exemplified that rare and precious genre of revolutionary writing that knows how to buoy and calm its reader enough to absorb complex argument and body forward its stakes'
- Jordy Rosenberg, author of Confessions of the Fox'A radical and sensuous ethics of trans femme complicity, collectivity and worldmaking, Raha and van der Drift theorise anti-colonial femmes practices which 'undo the grip of empire on the soul through the senses' in this beautiful and necessary work'
- Trish Salah, Associate Professor of Gender Studies, Queen’s University and author of Wanting in Arabic'When one thinks of trans, feminism, and radical as genuinely, inextricably entangled, one thinks of this book. This is what we need at this moment: a powerful, steadfast commitment to liberation. And this is it.'
- Marquis Bey, author of Black Trans Feminism'Trans Femme Futures offers a theoretically rich account of the forms of care that support the wellbeing of transfeminine people, showing how these caring practices link up tangibly to what could be called an ethics of abolition.'
- Mattie Armstrong-Price, Assistant Professor of History, Fordham UniversityIntroduction: Trans liberation is between us
1. ‘They would plant the rose garden themselves’: femme, complicity, and the rewiring of the sensuous
2. Transfeminist ethics and practices of care
3. 'It takes a nation of managers to hold us back': trans liberalism and liberation amid currents of empire
4. Medical institutions, collective care
5. Abolitionist transfeminist futures: solidarity, generosity and love
eBook ISBN: 9780745349411
140mm x 216mm