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Lola Olufemi: Feminism, Interrupted (2020, Pluto Press) 4 stars

Lola Olufemi explores state violence against women, the fight for reproductive justice, transmisogyny, gendered Islamophobia …

Feminism, Interrupted

5 stars

An incisive work of Black feminism in Britain covering reproductive justice, trans inclusionary feminism, supporting sex workers, prison abolition, and—excitingly—art as witness. I would have been bowled over if the chapter on food concentrated on food justice with inspiration from Vandana Shiva. Olufemi envisages a living, breathing practice of feminism that is anticapitalist, transnational, and collective.

"Legality does not equal access. There are many more complicated demands to be made: mainstream movements will always defeat their own purpose as long as they consider the law as the sole indicator of progress. Perhaps the most powerful thing that can be done is sabotaging the law-making project and refusing to concede that abortion is unlawful."

"When anti-sex work feminists talk about the very real and devastating consequences of trafficking and bolster the police state to respond to it, they do so with the intention of fortifying the borders that ruin people’s lives, not with the intention of tearing them down."

"Apolitical approaches, or approaches that seek to deaden the resistant potential of artistic practice are merely another mechanism through which the status quo is reproduced."