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Paisley Currah

@paisleycurrah.com
6.2K followers 1.1K following 477 posts

My specialty: government decisions on sex classification. Distinguished Professor, Brooklyn College, CUNY. Dad, dog companion, kayaker. Pieces in n+1, Boston Review, Nature, New Yorker, New York Review, Yale Review. www.paisleycurrah.com

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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 28/09/2026
Today Cornell tells us that suspension, expulsion, writing an essay, and/or attending a workshop are adequate punishments for SA. Saying these "consequences" are adequate is itself evidence of the problem. They can't be bothered to disguise their misogyny.
District Attorney’s investigation of 2024 sexual assault allegations
Sept. 28, 2026

Cornell University supports the decision of the Tompkins County District Attorney (DA) to provide an opportunity for the victim’s story in the 2024 Chi Phi fraternity sexual assault case to be heard by a criminal grand jury.

Cornell also conducted a thorough Title IX investigation, which is separate from a criminal proceeding, over the course of several months. During that investigation, temporary suspensions and other restrictive measures were used. After investigation, and pursuant to federal law, the matter was sent to a hearing where a panel of trained faculty and staff heard evidence over multiple days. The complainant and respondents had the opportunity to testify and present evidence. At its conclusion, the hearing panel issued a range of sanctions, which included expulsions and suspensions from Cornell. None of the individuals charged were offered the opportunity to write essays as a sole consequence of their involvement.

In addition, the involved fraternity chapter was closed in 2024 and remains barred from campus.

Any suggestion that the university did not impose consequential punishments for those involved is false. A continuation of the false narrative that there were minimal consequences in this case is irresponsible, will make survivors feel less safe and supported, and will perpetuate the underreporting of sexual assault.

Kyle Kimball
Vice President for University Relations
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Queering Education Research Institute (QuERI)®️ @queeringedu.bsky.social · 27/09/2026
Reframing bullying has been key in our scholarship & public policy work for over 15 yrs. These ideas anchor our new book "Queer Kids & Social Violence" @uminnpress.bsky.social. Book talk w @paisleycurrah.com and @ecpayne.bsky.social at @bgsqd.bsky.social Oct7th. Bullying is political.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 26/09/2026
Well, there’s always Bluesky! Seriously, I think I will go to an actual theater to this when it’s released October 9. www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/dig...
hollywoodreporter.com
The Major Social Media Platforms Are All Rejecting Paid Ads for Alex Gibney’s ‘Musk’ (Exclusive)
YouTube, TikTok and Meta have all turned down the trailer for the Oct. 9 doc, citing “political” content. X won't even take Bleecker Street's calls. The distributor is appealing.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 26/09/2026
Read this. newrepublic.com/article/2155...
newrepublic.com
Centrists Won’t Tell You Where “Moderating” on Trans Rights Ends Up
The recent example of the U.K. Labour Party shows that “compromising” rarely stops at some acceptable midpoint.
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Jeanne Theoharis @jeannetheoharis.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Please amplify: As the report from the @aclu.org and @amnesty.org documented, universities like @cuny.edu are punishing students and faculty for pro-Palestine politics. We’re out today saying no to blacklisting at @cuny.edu and @brooklyncollege.bsky.social! Rehire the Fired Fourth!
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 22/09/2026
Musk is going all out this election cycle on anti-trans propaganda: popular.info/p/the-lie-do...
popular.info
The lie dominating Musk's 2026 political ads
Musk is blanketing the internet with digital ads falsely accusing Democratic Senate candidates of supporting “taxpayer-funded sex changes for kids.”
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Queering Education Research Institute (QuERI)®️ @queeringedu.bsky.social · 10/09/2026
Join us for a Book Talk in conversation with Paisley Currah. The work of anti-bullying is not exclusive to educational contexts but is part of the broader address of social inequalities experienced by gender & sexual minority people. @paisleycurrah.com @uminnpress.bsky.social @ecpayne.bsky.social
eventbrite.com
Queer Kids and Social Violence with Elizabethe Payne and Paisley Currah
Join us for a reading and conversation with Elizabethe Payne, editor of the new book Queer Kids and Social Violence: The Limits of Bullying.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 01/09/2026
A pleasure to rediscover Mapquest…90s chic avatars and all. www.independent.co.uk/news/world/a...
independent.co.uk
MapQuest surges in rankings after Google bows to Trump and re-labels Lake Ontario
Trump renamed the body of water as Lake America after trade talks between Canada and the US fell apart
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Adam Conover @adamconover.net · 19/08/2026
thinking about this past episode of the show today. one of my favorites. recording what i expect to be another favorite tomorrow, with @quillkukla.bsky.social. love that i get to do this job sometimes
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/08/2026
Especially at this juncture we don’t need any more ontological debates about gender, but a politics. “Trans Rights Without a Theory of Gender” from 2017. digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu/cgi/viewcont...
digitalcommons.law.utulsa.edu
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 31/07/2026
The Institute on Gender, Law, and Transformative Peace at CUNY Lae is hiring a program manager. rfcuny.wd108.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/RFCUNY...
rfcuny.wd108.myworkdayjobs.com
Program Manager
Thank you for considering a career with the Research Foundation of The City University of New York (RFCUNY). The team at RFCUNY is made up of dedicated, talented professionals committed to providing t...
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 30/07/2026
Good advice from @daniellaurison.bsky.social Certainly no one clued me into this when I was new to academia. Anyways, I’ll be in Boston during APSA, so happy to do coffee dates with people who’d like meet up and talk about research. pcurrah@gc.cuny.edu
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Madison Pauly @msjpauly.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
The thing about that Heritage Center paper against women's sports is not just the hypocrisy, or even the blatant sexism. A real argument is building in the courts to toss the longstanding rules that have caused schools to expand girls' sports. The story: www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
The Heritage Foundation only wanted to protect women's sports when it was about trans athletes
Not anymore.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 16/07/2026
Some of us try to parse the transphobia, see an underlying logic or rationality--attacking trans people is a way to undermine feminism, or to prop up a masculinity that the economy no longer does. But sometimes it's just batshit crazy.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 16/07/2026
Some of us try to parse the transphobia, see an underlying logic or rationality--attacking trans is a way to undermine feminism, or to prop up a masculinity that the economy no longer does. But sometimes it's just batshit crazy.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 15/07/2026
When the real news is so much more nuts than The Onion.
Hegseth Announces Annual Testosterone Screenings for Service Members, Picture of Hegseth. By ellen Mitchell, 7-15-26
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 10/07/2026
Glad to see that Texas Tech's Draconian censoring of what can be taught about race and gender has now been challenged.
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Evan Urquhart @evanurquhart.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
Every outlet in our news tracker covered the recent trans sports ban decision at SCOTUS, but when I looked at the coverage I found one clear outlier - the New York Times had the most stories (5 in all) but not one included a quote from a trans person or representative of a trans rights organization.
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Billie Jean Sweeney @billiejsweeney.bsky.social · 06/07/2026
“The Times stands out as the only news outlet to run more than three stories on the court decision without quoting a person identified in the copy as transgender or as the representative of a transgender rights organization.”🧵
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 30/06/2026
Justice Thomas: “Sex is an immutable ‘biological’ characteristic…To use language to obscure reality—to show ‘indifference regarding truth’—is to lie to the public.” By Thomas's logic—not mine—I should still play on women's teams, have an ID with an F on it, use the women's room. Who's lying?
Headshot of balding man with beard wearing a blue shirt.
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National Center for LGBTQ Rights @nclrights.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Breaking: Supreme Court issues decision in transgender student athlete case.  Thanks to our partner @gladlaw.bsky.social.
BREAKING:  Supreme Court issues decision in transgender student athlete case

National Center for LGBTQ Rights and GLAD Law logo at the bottom of the page
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Benjamin McKean @blmckean.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
Clarence Thomas citing MIT philosopher Alex Byrne to support his ultra-transphobic opinion. I hope all the analytic philosophers who defended Byrne as a serious, apolitical scholar see this and learn something, but I'm not hopeful.
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ElieNYC @elienyc.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
See, people always want to make this just about "sports," but the real upshot here is that, 6-3, trans women can't make a claim under the Equal Protection Clause. And if they can't do that, it's hard to see how they have constitutional rights.
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Jay Willis @jaywillis.net · 30/06/2026
Clarence Thomas's concurring opinion in the trans sports ban case in West Virginia contains some of the ugliest transphobic stuff I have ever seen in a legal opinion. Straight-up gleeful. Vile man. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
2 WEST VIRGINIA v. B. P. J.
THOMAS, J., concurring
judgment). Because “gender dysphoria” is a mutable men-
tal state that is the object of psychiatric treatment, it does
not resemble the immutable characteristics on the basis of
which our precedents have applied heightened scrutiny—
race, sex, or national origin. Instead, gender dysphoria re-
sembles other characteristics on the basis of which legisla-
tures may classify with a merely rational basis. See, e.g.,
Heller v. Doe, 509 U. S. 312, 321 (1993) (mental illness);
Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202, 220 (1982) (immigration sta-
tus). Legislatures have many obvious rational bases to
keep men who believe that they are women out of teams
and private spaces reserved for women.
Second, as the Court recognizes, this case concerns “bio-
logical men” and “boys who identify as girls.” Ante, at 10,
27. Men and boys with gender dysphoria are not women or
girls, even if they believe that they are. Sex is an immuta-
ble “biological” characteristic, see ante, at 10; it is binary;
and “man” and “woman,” “boy” and “girl,” are the terms that
correspond to adults and children of each sex. See A. Byrne,
Are Women Adult Human Females? 177 Philosophical
Studies 3783, 3786–3787 (2020). To use language to ob-
scure reality—to show “indifference regarding the truth”—
is to lie to the public and cease to treat our fellow citizens
“as equal[s].” J. Pieper, Abuse of Language—Abuse of
Power 17, 21 (1992).
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Chris Geidner @chrisgeidner.bsky.social · 30/06/2026
BREAKING: The Supreme Court upholds West Virginia and Idaho's laws banning trans girls and women from women's sports. Justice Kavanaugh has the opinion for the court, holding that states "may" make sports eligibility based on "biological sex." www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
supremecourt.gov
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 15/06/2026
Tomorrow is Lou Sullivan's birthday and we all need some inspiration in this time of anti-trans insanity. This quote never fails to inspire me. Here he is at 13, writing in his diary. (Sullivan grew up to be a gay trans man & a pioneer of FTM community organizing, dying died of AIDS in 1991.
I wanna look like what I am but don’t know what someone like me looks like. I mean, when people look at me I want them to think—there’s one of those people that has their own interpretation of happiness. That’s what I am.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 01/06/2026
He didn’t need to go here to make his point. But he did. You can make a case for Platner without relying on this tired misogyny. (Picture from his Substack.)
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 24/05/2026
Read this. www.liberalcurrents.com/the-end-of-t...
liberalcurrents.com
The End of Trans Rights In the UK Is the Start Of Democratic Collapse
It's never just one minority.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 22/05/2026
Trying to get Claude to help me understand the geometry of edging a kayak in wind. Didn’t go well.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 21/05/2026
Had a lively conversation about Trump, sex classification, and the administrative state on @laurieessig.bsky.social's podcast, Feminism, Fascism, and the Future. sites.middlebury.edu/feminismfasc...
sites.middlebury.edu
We Talk to Really Smart People: Paisley Currah – Feminism, Fascism, and the Future
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Prism @prismreports.org · 12/05/2026
A new crop of state laws are “leveraging criminalization as a tactic against trans people,” Kae Petrin reports. At least 10 states have imposed new misdemeanor or felony penalties since 2022—a stark increase in the use of criminal law to target trans people & their support networks.
prismreports.org
State laws are ‘leveraging criminalization against trans people’
10 states have imposed new misdemeanor or felony penalties since 2022—a stark increase in the use of criminal law to target trans people
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Erin Reed @erininthemorning.com · 06/05/2026
1. In a stunning example of restricting students from talking about LGBTQ+ people, Pensacola State College as violated decades of Supreme Court precedent and blocked a student journalism magazine from publishing 3 stories because they included LGBTQ+ topics. Subscribe to support our journalism.
erininthemorning.com
Pensacola State College Bans Student Journalists From Publishing On LGBTQ+ People
The allegations, which were made public in a letter from FIRE, represent a stunning restriction on campus free speech.
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 27/04/2026
no better study of these restrictions than the PEN America report from Jan 2026, which reveals how 50% of all students in america lived in a state with laws that censored or directly undermined academic freedom,coauthored by the incredible Dr Amy Reid, former chair of WGS at New College Florida
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GC Political Science @gcpolisci.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
@thegraduatecenter.bsky.social Join us on Thursday, April 30th, to find out how the "War on DEI" is reshaping the contemporary university and what is at stake for higher education as a site of knowledge production, professional training, and democratic engagement.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 25/04/2026
This is exactly why I no longer use the platforms my college provides for distributing my course content.
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MuckRock @muckrock.com · 23/04/2026
More than 125,000 U.S. Supreme Court records and briefs are now publicly available through the @archive.org. The collection contains official records from the lower court, briefs and opinions.
blog.archive.org
U.S. Supreme Court Records and Briefs: The Arguments That Shaped America, Now Freely Available | Internet Archive Blogs
Thanks to a generous gift of materials from the Wolf Law Library at the William & Mary Law School, and the Internet Archive’s mission to digitize and provide universal access to knowledge, we are…
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 15/04/2026
Okay…this is a piece of good news. A guy whose intellect has been powering the LGBTQ movement for decades, but who thinks social media is only for cat pictures, gets the recognition he deserves.
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Madison Pauly @msjpauly.bsky.social · 14/04/2026
The authors of the HHS report on trans youth health care were chosen by the Manhattan Institute's Leor Sapir. Now, a rule based on the controversial report could wipe out this care at hospitals. Parents are begging the administration not to go through with it. www.motherjones.com/politics/202...
motherjones.com
Trump is about to drop a “nuclear weapon” on trans youth health care
How a report led by a right-wing pundit laid the groundwork for upending gender-affirming treatment
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 14/04/2026
NYT today: Magyar won because he distanced himself from pesky LGBTQ community. 2025: Budapest Pride turned into a major pro-democracy event after Orban banned it, over a hundred thousand show up in support, not just LGBTQ people. NYT eds should read their own paper www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/o...
Image of thousands of people on a bridge
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 08/04/2026
These sad people find woke too cringe. Guess no one told them that cringe is cringe. They can rest easy now that the anti-woke is now the rule of law, and it’s open season on trans people. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/08/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Did Wokeness Leave Us Worse Off?
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Paula Villa Braslavsky @paulita.bsky.social · 21/03/2026
This has just been published in “Theory & Society” (formerly) considered THE top #sociology /theory journal, after Springer Nature redid the board, installing Steven Pinker among them. Shame shame shame
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 20/03/2026
The right: trans people don’t exist. Also the right: we must develop systems to identify them.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 20/03/2026
The right: trans people don’t exist. Also the right: we must develop systems to identify them.
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Darren Rosenblum @darrenrosenblum.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
In a new @latimes.com Op-Ed, I discuss how Kansas’s recent law invalidating 1,700 transgender individuals’ driver’s licenses raises significant questions about proportionality and administrative purpose. It criminalizes trans folks for no benefit to anyone. www.latimes.com/opinion/stor...
latimes.com
Contributor: Anti-trans laws aren’t protecting women or anyone, only doing harm
A new Kansas law instantly invalidated the licenses of 1,700 people who had been allowed to update their gender on their state ID. To what end?
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 12/03/2026
Madeline Pape on sports and sex is worth a listen. Behind the rhetoric—what the science actually says. I bet you can’t guess (well, my followers probably can) which side of the research is more rigorous.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/03/2026
Kansas invalidated the driver's licenses of hundreds of trans people, made it a crime to drive to the DMV to "correct" them, & started keeping a list of everyone who did so. @isaacsederbaum.bsky.social & I on trans people in the state's surveillance architecture for @donmoyn.bsky.social's substack.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/03/2026
This is it exactly. As @isaacsederbaum.bsky.social and I wrote in a piece out today--even as these states deny the existence of trans identity, they build administrative systems to track us-- an expanding architecture of surveillance and control. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/when-compl...
donmoynihan.substack.com
When Compliance Becomes A Crime
What Does Transgender Citizenship Mean after a New Kansas Law?
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/03/2026
It's all in how questions are worded and issues are framed. For example, 64% of respondents hold contradictory opinions on transgender policy. This is why Democrats should lead with a vision, not pander to the Fox News manosphere.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/03/2026
True story—Years ago on Twitter, before Jamelle Bouie joined the Times, I assumed he was trans because I thought (wrongly it turned out) that a cis journalist wouldn’t be posting so much stuff about transphobia.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/03/2026
Yesterday the Supreme Court blocked California policies protecting trans students BUT NY Attorney General Tish James told NYU that its decision to stop trans care for youth may violate the law, so continue doing it. States rights!
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