DILF

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 sharp, funny and fearless exploration of what it means to be a man who never stopped being a feminist." — Ms. Magazine

". . . [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

“With insight and cleverness in equal measure, Jude brings an essential perspective to urgent questions about our politics, our culture, and our relationships with one another.” — Gillian Branstetter, Communications Strategist at the ACLU’s Women’s Rights Project and LGBTQ & HIV Project

“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

“The recent resurgence of anti-trans feminism has driven unnecessary wedges between cis women and trans people, and between transmasculine and transfeminine people. Jude Doyle draws from past and present trans and feminist perspectives to make a compelling case that all of our fates are intertwined, and that feminism is the movement that can and should unite us. A thoughtful and passionate book that speaks directly to our current moment.” — Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl

“DILF thoroughly pulled apart several built-in assumptions I knew I had about the world, several I didn't know I had about the world, and still more I didn't even begin to imagine I had about our ever fractious society. Jude Doyle is an incredibly incisive writer who is also quite funny, which is a rare combination." — Emily St. James, author of WoodworkingJude 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.FOR MOST OF MY ADULT LIFE, MY JOB WAS TO BE A WOMAN. In the fall of 2020, I quit my job. I was a feminist author from the blog era, the beneficiary of a brief, strange trend that allowed anyone with an internet connection and a sufficient number of hot takes to declare themselves a Feminist Expert. I had a clear and coherent and highly rehearsed persona, and I had several centuries of previous feminist writing to guide me every time I sat down to write.


I knew the issues and how to convey them, and what important things had already been said or written about them. Some people called me a manhating identitarian boner-killer, and some people called me a heroic strong-female-character girlboss, but all of those people knew what box to put me in and where I fit in their world. It made sense. I made sense—at least, I did to everyone but me. I firmly meant everything I said about feminism and misogyny and the necessity of smashing the patriarchy, and I stand by it. Yet I understood, on some deep-down level, that I was more miserable about being a woman than any woman I had ever met. In time, I realized that my misery had a name, and that I could end it. I came out publicly as nonbinary, then as trans, then as a nonbinary trans man. And then, suddenly, nothing about me made sense anymore.


“When you fail at being a woman so hard you decide to transition into a man, you don’t get to comment anymore on feminism, femininity, or motherhood. You canceled your membership, dude.”


“I also like how she opted out of being a woman but still wants people to acknowledge that she’s oppressed.”


“It also strikes me as intensely treacherous to be a feminist and then become a guy.”


I collected internet comments like this for years after my transition. I found them everywhere. You could write all these people off as bigots—they mostly are—but the confusion followed me into my real life, into my relationships with readers and friends. Cis women I had known for decades dropped out of my life after my transition. “I felt so empowered to embrace my feminine strength [because of your book],” wrote one woman, “and seeing you choosing a masculine pronoun instead of a feminine one left me a bit puzzled.”


Whether people loved me or hated me, whether they reviled me openly or quietly turned away, the message was the same: I had left feminism. I had left womanhood. I had abandoned my post, and I had let everybody down.


To me, though, it seemed clear that my transition was the most feminist thing I had done in my life, and perhaps the only feminist action that was truly aimed at liberation from patriarchal gender rather than slowly chipping away at the worst parts of patriarchy to make them livable.A Trans and/or Feminist Manifesto