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Paisley Currah

@paisleycurrah.com
6.2K followers 1.1K following 481 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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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 26/09/2026
7:04 pm
Picture of trees and buildings and a streaked red sky in the background
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 26/09/2026
The author, Toby Buckle, is not wrong—though I would say restrictions in ELITE competition. Once you cave to the right, as Labor did, you end up where Labor is now: viciously going after trans people, cutting health care for children & adults, denying trans people access to ANY bathroom.
Just about every trans person I know thinks concerns about sports are misleadingly presented and vastly overblown. They also would trade restrictions here for broader social acceptance and inclusion in a heartbeat if they thought that was a deal that was on the table. They just don’t think that it is. And I think they’re correct to think that.
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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 · 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 · 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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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 · 22/05/2026
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 22/05/2026
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 22/05/2026
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 22/05/2026
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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 · 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 · 26/02/2026
@adamconover.net has a terrific podcast, and I don't say that just because I'm on it this week. Adam is the polymath of comedians. It's a pleasure to talk to him about trans issues. He's so well informed, one doesn't have to retread the usual talking points, so the conversation goes further.
Factually! with a headshot of Adam Conover.  February 26, 2026, 1 hour, 10 minutes. The Anti-Trans Playbook is Designed to Hurt Women, with Paisley Currah
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 25/02/2026
I always enjoy talking to @adamconover.net, the polymath of comedians. headgum.com/factually-wi...
Factually! with Adam Conover

February 25, 2026

Anti-Trans Playbook is Designed to Hurt Women, with Paisley Currah

Why is it that the anti-trans movement is so ferociously set on upending the livelihood of people who are simply trying to live their lives? As it turns out, it’s because it’s part of a larger playbook to dismantle civil rights as we know them. Paisley Currah is a Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, the author of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, and the writer of an essential new essay in the New York Review Books titled The Anti-Trans Playbook. Today Paisley joins Adam to discuss how we must approach the ongoing attacks on trans rights in America. 
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 25/02/2026
@judith-levine.bsky.social watched Melania so we don't have to. Techbros, Fuentes, Epstein and Musk: On women in Trumpland. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...
The insular world of Melania Trump is a microcosm of the country Trump is presiding over in his second term. In Trump’s America, tech bros invent apps, like Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, that “nudify” and sexualize images of women and children without their consent and direct the deepfake sexual assaults where the user requests, including the victims’ social media accounts. This is a nation in which pregnant women who miscarry are prosecuted—or allowed to die—lest they be seeking an abortion, while the president’s Nazi podcaster pal Nick Fuentes declares, to an audience in the hundreds of thousands, that they should be sent to “the breeding gulags.” It is the world of Jeffrey Epstein, where women and girls serve as personal accessories, interior décor, and instruments of gratification, and the powerful, wealthy, white men they are compelled to serve are protected from legal accountability, or even embarrassment.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 20/02/2026
DOGE comes to higher ed: Proud of my friend @lisalmoore.bsky.social, of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UT Austin, who does not pull her punches, on demoting WGS and other "woke" departments. www.austinchronicle.com/news/ut-head... 1/
News
UT Head of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Speaks Out
Lisa Moore defends the value of ethnic and gender studies
Avatar photo
by Brant Bingamon
February 19, 2026
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 15/02/2026
Read Melinda Cooper on Epstein and the tech bros: primal fathers, the backlash against #MeTo, and the return of master-servant relationship. (One has to create a free account to read) www.equator.org/articles/eps...
Epstein Family Values
14.02.2026
Argument

The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants. [Image of Musk, Epstein and Weinstein.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 13/02/2026
Guardian piece by the redoubtable Joan Scott explaining the connections between Trump’s Defending Women EO and shutting down women’s and gender studies prograns. archive.is/2026.02.13-1...
Gender studies courses are shutting down across the US. The Epstein files reveal why
Joan Wallach Scott
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 13/02/2026
bsky.app/profile/jess...

‪Jessica Kant‬
 ‪@jessdkant.bsky.social‬
· 16d
We didn't make everything about us. They did. Compare the Advocate, the oldest and largest LGBTQ newspaper in the US, to Fox and the NYT. Both have been publishing more about us than our own newspapers for 3+ years.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 11/02/2026
CFP for a special issue on the global politics of anti-trans moral panics from transfeminist perspectives. Timely and necessary. www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandg...
Global Politics and Anti-Trans Moral Panics: Transfeminist Perspectives
Academic Editor(s): Charlotte Galpin (University of Birmingham), Gina Gwenffrewi (University of Edinburgh), and Ash Stokoe (University of Birmingham)

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 March 2026
Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 August 2026
Publication of the Issue: January/June 2027
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 19/01/2026
We become the people capable of changing the world by acting as if we already are. Seems like Minnesotans are doing this. From an essay by Amia Srinivasan. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
But organising rests on the insight – which was also Aristotle’s rejoinder to Plato – that the psyche can flow from action, that what is sometimes needed to become the sort of subject who feels empowered to stand up to the boss or the police or the state, is simply to act, in some small way, as if you already were that sort of subject. To stand up, and find yourself standing with others, find yourself winning with others. And then to find yourself a subject with a greater measure of freedom and power, and more desire too, than you ever knew.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 15/01/2026
Oxford University Press description:
Real Men on Top
How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality
Robin Dembroff

A paradigm-shifting book by a rising public philosopher—lucid, expansive, and deeply relevant

Shows that patriarchy isn't just about men over women—it's a system of reality control that shapes what we feel is real, possible, and right

Expands feminist thinking by showing how patriarchy targets women, children, and animals—and uses those identities to degrade and control

Shows how biology is used to justify social hierarchies, and how patriarchy weaponizes "nature" to enforce inequality

Takes a hard look at masculinity—and how the myths men are sold end up isolating and exploiting them

Blends philosophy, history, and personal insight to explore how we absorb the world's worst rules—and how we might start to break them
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 15/01/2026
Just saw the exciting news that Robin Dembroff's eagerly anticipated book will be coming out in April. global.oup.com/academic/pro...
Book cover. Robin Dembroff, Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 09/11/2025
And is a short piece condensing the argument: static1.squarespace.com/static/6160c...
Screenshot of a web page: The New York Review, "What Sex Does," by Paisley Currah.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 06/11/2025
Headline change from this morning, I see. Probably meant what they said the first time. Liberal feminism doesn't really work as a euphemism for women.
Picture of a Times oped: Interesting Times, Did Women Ruin the Workplace? And if so, can conservative feminism fix it?  November 6, 2025
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 16/10/2025
Or, as @lornab.bsky.social put it, don't let UT Austin succeed in its bid to become the University of Austin
UT Austin wants to eliminate its Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Gender Studies Departments. Tell them you won't stand for it.  President Jim Davis: president@utexas.edu; Provost, William Inboden, provost@utexas.edu; Interim Liberal Arts Dean David Sosa: david_sosa@austin.utexas.edu #EducationalLIberty #SaveUT
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 16/10/2025
This decision by UT’s administration is not driven by any educational reasons--UT administrators are bowing to a national political attack on the freedom to learn by censoring subjects and silencing departments. The state should not be telling administrators what their students can study.
UT Austin wants to eliminate its Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Gender Studies Departments. Tell them you won't stand for it.  President Jim Davis: president@utexas.edu; Provost, William Inboden, provost@utexas.edu; Interim Liberal Arts Dean David Sosa: david_sosa@austin.utexas.edu #EducationalLIberty #SaveUT
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 05/07/2025
Good morning Brooklyn.
Dog in window with Zohran poster
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 18/06/2025
Didn’t realize someone on Bluesky could get ratioed so badly so quickly.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 17/06/2025
Today, I'm on a Zoom panel about the Trump 2.0. English and Spanish translation available. Short presentations and group discussions. bit.ly/dialogos-pendientes-emergentes-1706
The New World Disorder: Meanings and Impacts of Trump 2.0, June 17m 2025, 6:00 p.m. Argentina, 5:00 p.m. New York, 4:00 p.m. Colombia/Perú. Diálogos Pendientes y Emergentes
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 09/06/2025
This book will make you see the debate over women's sports in a very different light--it unlocks the history of sex testing in Olympic sports, and it's not what you thought. For NYC people, I'm doing an event with Michael Waters to mark the paperback release of this fabulous book--Wed. June 11th
 image of text that says 'Michael Waters (THE OTHER OLYMPIANS: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports) with with Paisley Currah Wednesday, June 11, 2025 7:00M 8:00PM Barnes & Noble- Upper West Side 2289 Broadway, New York, NY, 10024 Headshot of Michael Waters. Then a picture of his book cover: The Other Olympians: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 02/06/2025
New York friends--I am doing at event with Jamie Lauren Keiles, Whit Washington, and Joanna Wuest on Wednesday at 6:30 at the McNally Jackson store at South Street Seaport. The event is sold out but I have a few free tickets, if anyone is interested--DM me.
Four headshots and this text: Preservation of Record, McNally Jackson Festival. JUNE 4th |  6:30pm at McNally Jackson Seaport
Revisiting the Archive of American Trans Politics
Paisley Currah, Joanna Wuest, and Whit Washington
moderated by Jamie Lauren Keiles
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 28/05/2025
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 22/05/2025
williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications...
The Williams Institute estimates that

1.3 million adults in the U.S. identify as transgender and approximately 276,000 of them are enrolled in Medicaid.
Sixty percent (164,000) of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries have affirmative access to coverage for gender-affirming care under express policies in state law.
For 27 percent (74,000) of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries, coverage is uncertain because they live in states where the laws are silent or unclear on coverage for gender-affirming care.
Fourteen percent (38,000) of transgender Medicaid beneficiaries live in states with express bans that deny access to covered gender-affirming care
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 14/05/2025
The times, they are a changing. Found this blast from the past going through old files.
New York Times editorial August 29, 2000, titled Transgender Rights. People who have had sex-change surgery, cross-dressers and others whose gender identity does not conform to societal norms are often targets of violence and bias that force them to live in fear for their safety or the loss of their jobs and shelter. A bill now before the New York City Council would give this marginalized population basic protection against discrimination in housing, employment and public accommodations.

The city's human rights law has long barred discrimination based on gender. Since the 1980's, the law has also prohibited discrimination based on ''sexual orientation.'' But that provision focuses on issues of heterosexuality, homosexuality or bisexuality. It does not protect those who identify themselves as transgender. The new legislation, which has 28 sponsors in the City Council, would broaden the definition of ''gender'' to include not only a person's sex, but also a person's expression of gender identity, self-image and appearance.

Similar anti-bias laws have been enacted in nearly two dozen cities, including Atlanta, San Francisco and Minneapolis. The proposed measure has strong support from civil rights groups and political leaders, including Public Advocate Mark Green and City Comptroller Alan Hevesi. Council Speaker Peter Vallone, however, has not taken a position on the measure. Mr. Vallone should move swiftly to get the bill passed, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani should sign the measure.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 12/05/2025
What's happening is even worse than you realize. @naomiaklein.bsky.social explains the rage of the tech-bro oligarchs: science supports regulation on business, therefore science (and universities) must be dismantled; culling humans is good. Also AI will solve everything. archive.ph/oRn3z
Elon Musk at podium doing Nazi salute.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 07/05/2025
Just arrived. So excited to read @talia-mae.bsky.social’s book. We really need new good ideas, and I can’t wait to dig in. @uminnpress.bsky.social
Book cover: Beyond Personhood: An Essay in Trans Philosophy. Talia Mae Bettcher.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 23/04/2025
June 4th, New York.
McNally Jackson Festival
Revisiting the Archive of American Trans Politics
Paisley Currah, Joanna Wuest, and Whit Washington
Moderated by Jamie Lauren Keiles
June 4th at 6:30 p.m. Seaport
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 21/04/2025
Todays news--No NIH grants to universities that have DEI programs or boycott Israel.
Stat+ Exclusive, April 21, 2025: NIH moving to ban all future grants to universities with DEI programs or Israel boycotts, document suggests. 
New rules appear to be next step in Trump assault on campus diversity programs and antisemitism
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 19/04/2025
This is very bad news for me because I love em dashes, have one or a set in every paragraph. But I’m not AI (as far as I know).
Are you AI, or simply a grammar pedant? Use of em dashes is being taken as a tell-tale sign of machine-generated writing.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 18/04/2025
Could this bad news be good? Is it possible for trans people to NOT be outed in our medical records? I fear the big systems I'm part of (NYU Langone, Mt. Sinai) would just hand over lists of trans patients if Trump asked. A year ago, if I'd had this thought I'd accuse myself of paranoia, but not now
STAT News. HHS will not enforce gender and sexual orientation requirements for medical records
Capturing this information is critical to combat health disparities, experts say
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/04/2025
Turns out April 3 WAS liberation day--not from tariffs, but from Pamela Paul. Her reactionary liberalism paved the way for the authoritarianism we're hurtling toward. Andrea Long Chu's essay on Paul's contributions is not to be missed. nymag.com/intelligence...
Opinion Pamela Paul My Farewell Column, April 3, 2025. Image of purple ribbon
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/03/2025
This is a book I've been waiting for. From Carolyn Wolf-Gould, Dallas Denny, Jamison Green, and Kyan Linch. (Facebook wouldn't a bookstore advertise this book. If you're on FB, only use it with your computer and only with an ad blocker). sunypress.edu/Books/A/A-Hi...
Description
The most comprehensive history of transgender medicine to date, as told by more than forty scholars, physicians, psychologists, and activists from trans, gender-diverse, and allied medical communities.

Arriving at a critical moment in the struggle for transgender rights, A History of Transgender Medicine in the United States takes an empathic approach to an embattled subject. Sweeping in scope and deeply personal in nature, this groundbreaking volume traces the development of transgender medicine across three centuries-centering the voices of transgender individuals, debunking myths about gender-affirming care, and empowering readers to grasp the complexities of this evolving field. More than forty contributors-including patients, advocates, physicians, psychologists, and scholars-weave an illuminating, sometimes surprising narrative of collaboration and conflict between trans people and the scientists who have studied and worked with them. An indispensable guide to understanding the current tumult surrounding trans health-care access in the United States, the volume underscores a crucial message: gender diversity is not a new phenomenon but an integral part of our shared human history.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 25/02/2025
In December, during oral arguments in Skrmetti, Justice Coney Barrett opined, "we don't have a history of de jure discrimination against transgender people." I was flabbergasted. So I chronicled some of the most egregious examples for @law360.bsky.social static1.squarespace.com/static/6160c... .
High Court Must Acknowledge US History Of Anti-Trans Laws
By Paisley Currah ·  Listen to article

Law360 (February 24, 2025, 6:57 PM EST) -- 

Paisley Currah
President Donald Trump's sweeping executive order directing federal agencies to change policy and rules that make transgender people's lives harder marks the latest chapter in a long history of government-sanctioned discrimination against this group.[1]

The U.S. Department of State must now prevent transgender people from obtaining passports that align with their gender identity. Federal agencies are required to remove existing protections in shelters, schools, prisons and workplaces and to deny funding to contractors who serve transgender clients. This dramatic assertion of state power to target transgender people might seem unprecedented — but it's not.

During December's oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that "we don't have a history of de jure discrimination against transgender people."[2]

As a political scientist who has studied how governments treat transgender people, I must respectfully disagree.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 25/02/2025
Hot off the press. (This is published in @law360.bsky.social , which is paywalled, hence the PDF). static1.squarespace.com/static/6160c...
Expert Analysis - Opinion
High Court Must Acknowledge US History Of Anti-Trans Laws
By Paisley Currah ·  Listen to article

Law360 (February 24, 2025, 6:57 PM EST) -- 

Paisley Currah
President Donald Trump's sweeping executive order directing federal agencies to change policy and rules that make transgender people's lives harder marks the latest chapter in a long history of government-sanctioned discrimination against this group.[1]

The U.S. Department of State must now prevent transgender people from obtaining passports that align with their gender identity. Federal agencies are required to remove existing protections in shelters, schools, prisons and workplaces and to deny funding to contractors who serve transgender clients. This dramatic assertion of state power to target transgender people might seem unprecedented — but it's not.

During December's oral arguments in United States v. Skrmetti, Justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that "we don't have a history of de jure discrimination against transgender people."[2]

As a political scientist who has studied how governments treat transgender people, I must respectfully disagree.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/02/2025
Um, no. (Seriously, though, a reminder to exercise care in responding to random emails.)
Email text: Hows it going profesar paisley?

Im an aussie bloke traveling around the world documenting everything to show me mates back home in manangatang. I reelized a lot of things here in new york that are pretty different to back home and I really dont get how gender works here. I see things I’ve never seen before and I don’t really get it.

So id be rlly keen to interview someone whos experted in this stuff.Wld love to sit down with you for a quick chat to rap my head around it and so I can send it to me mates back home so they understand all the things im learning. I reckon my mates back home would be keen to hear what you have to say to. Let me no if your up for it! Cheers

Ozzy
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/02/2025
Some more information, from 2015. (Corrected 9/, picture added) transequality.org/sites/defaul...
Image of a bar chart indicating the percentage of survey respondents able to update gender at various agencies.
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Paisley Currah @paisleycurrah.com · 03/02/2025
The Wall Street Journal described the EO on sex definition as creating “headaches” for trans people: “individuals could end up with conflicting government identification documents that use different gender markers, a headache when completing tasks such as opening a new bank account.” 1/
Screenshot of WSJ headline: Trump Draws Bright Line Between Sexes. Headaches Are Ahead. Executive order requires changes to passports, prisons and other areas of American life
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