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In this sharp manifesto, veteran author and activist, Jude Doyle, reunites feminist and trans politics through a common belief: that all people deserve to have the final say about who they are…
When Jude Doyle began his transition in the summer of 2020, he had a very public career as a feminist—winning awards from women's organizations, writing for women's magazines, publishing books on "women's issues." Then, after a decade in the movement, he had to walk out in front of the public and tell them he had never been a woman at all.
Doyle offers a seldom-heard and much-needed transmasculine perspective on feminist subjects, drawing together strands of intersectional feminist theory and queer and trans politics to show that all their struggles are the same struggle: The fight for gender-marginalized people to maintain autonomy and full selfhood in a patriarchy that is always eager to hollow us out and use us to further its own agenda.
DILF offers a strong rebuke to trans-exclusionary feminisms that seek to drive a wedge between gender-marginalized communities. Using interviews, critical analysis, and Doyle's own personal experience, DILF proves that feminism is a vital and necessary tool for breaking free of patriarchal control, whoever you are.
"[A] formidable polemic...an evocative demonstration of how stereotypes about gender and battles for bodily autonomy affect trans and cis people in overlapping ways. Doyle concludes with a call for burying the hatchet—if all feminists acted as 'one cohesive constituency, we could have what it takes' to overthrow patriarchy's violent enforcement of expectations around gender, he writes. The result is a heartening call for feminist solidarity." —Publishers Weekly
"Pulling from feminist history, including profiles of influential thinkers and activists, Doyle paints a dark picture of the gender and racial dynamics at work to keep white men in power, calling for a safer world for trans children, for feminism that accounts for transmasculine people, and for seeing trans people not as threats to systems based on exclusion but as examples of what's possible with the will to change." —Booklist
"I found it a humane, accessible and (from a transmasc feminist perspective) deeply relatable read. I think it's a must-read for any trans person grappling with their relationship to feminism, and an essential building block in our liberated transfeminist future." —Kit Heyam, author of Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender
"With DILF, Jude Doyle has written an approachable, thorough primer on the tensions many trans mascs face in feminism today. For anyone who has ever wondered if feminism has a place for you, this book will speak to you." —Devon Price, author of Unmasking Autism and Unlearning Shame: How We Can Reject Self-Blame Culture and Reclaim Our Power
This information about DILF was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Jude Ellison S. Doyle is the author of Trainwreck: The Women We Love to Hate, Mock, and Fear ... and Why and Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power. He is also the author of the graphic novels Maw SC and The Neighbors. His work has appeared in In These Times, The Guardian, Elle.com, The Atlantic, Slate, Buzzfeed, Rookie, among other publications. He is the founder of the blog Tiger Beatdown. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.
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