Book Salon: Paisley Currah, "Sex Is as Sex Does"

Lincoln Alexander Law professor Joshua Sealy-Harrington will join the presentation of Paisley Currah's new book Sex is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity (NYU Press, 2022), hosted by The Center for the Study of Women and Society. Paisley Currah will be in conversation with Red Washburn and Joshua Sealy-Harrington.

Sex Is as Sex Does reveals the hidden logics that have governed sex classification policies in the United States and shows what the regulation of transgender identity can tell us about society’s approach to sex and gender writ large. Ultimately, Currah demonstrates, because the difficulties transgender people face are not just the result of transphobia but also stem from larger injustices, an identity-based transgender rights movement will not, by itself, be up to the task of resolving them.

Providing examples from different states, government agencies, and court cases, Currah explains how transgender people struggle to navigate this confusing and contradictory web of legal rules, definitions, and classifications. Unlike most gender scholars, who are concerned with what the concepts of sex and gender really mean, Currah is more interested in what the category of “sex” does for governments. What does “sex” do on our driver’s licenses, in how we play sports, in how we access health care, or in the bathroom we use? Why do prisons have very different rules than social service agencies? Why is there such resistance to people changing their sex designation? Or to dropping it from identity documents altogether?

About the Speakers:

Paisley Currah is a Professor of Political Science and Women’s & Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Currah has written widely on transgender issues, including on topics such as discrimination, sex reclassification, and the transgender rights movement. He is the co-founder of the leading journal in transgender studies, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly. His current book project looks at the contemporary legislative assaults on transgender people, especially transgender youth, in the United States. He is also working on an edited volume, with Blas Radi, on transgender people and the state in the Americas. Currah has advocated for transgender rights at all levels of government. He was a founding board member of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute, served on the founding board of directors of Global Action for Trans Equality, and sat on the advisory board of Human Rights Watch’s LGBT Program. Currah co-edited, with Shannon Minter and Richard Juang, Transgender Rights, the first book on the movement for transgender rights, which won the Sylvia Rivera Award in Transgender Studies and was a finalist for a Lambda Literary Award. Currah received an MA and PhD in Government from Cornell University and a BA (Hon.) in Political Studies from Queen's University at Kingston, Canada. He also teaches for Columbia University’s Institute for the Study of Human Rights.

Red Washburn, PhD, is Professor of English and Director of Women’s and Gender Studies at CUNY Kingsborough. They also teach Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center. They are the co-editor of WSQ, published by the Feminist Press. Red’s articles appear in Journal for the Study of Radicalism, Women’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, and Journal of Lesbian Studies. Their essays are in several anthologies, including Theory and Praxis: Women’s and Gender Studies at Community Colleges, Introduction to Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies: Interdisciplinary and Intersectional Approaches, and Trans Bodies, Trans Selves: A Resource for the Transgender Community. They are the co-editor of Sinister Wisdom’s Dump Trump: Legacies of Resistance, 45 Years: A Tribute to Lesbian Herstory Archive, and Trans/Feminisms. Finishing Line Press published their poetry collections Crestview Tree Woman and Birch Philosopher X. Their academic book Irish Women’s Prison Writing: Mother Ireland’s Rebels, 1960-2010s is forthcoming from Routledge in July 2022. They are co-editing WSQ’s issue Nonbinary (forthcoming September 2023). They received an ACLS/ Mellon fellowship for their next project Nonbinary: Tr@ns-Forming Gender and Genre in Nonbin@ry Literature, Performance, and Visual Art. Red is a coordinator at the Lesbian Herstory Archives and on the board of directors of Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS).

Joshua Sealy-Harrington is a passionate teacher, scholar, and advocate. As an Assistant Professor at the Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University, Professor Sealy-Harrington teaches about criminal law, legal theory, and social change. He is the faculty advisor for the Black Law Students’ Association and the annual moot problem drafter for the Julius Alexander Isaac Moot, Canada’s critical race theory mooting competition. His writing has been published in various law journals, The Globe and Mail, Newsweek, and The Walrus. His legal scholarship has been cited by various tribunals, including the Federal Court, the Federal Court of Appeal, and the Supreme Court of Canada. Sealy-Harrington is also a doctoral candidate at Columbia Law School, and serves as counsel at Power Law, where he strategically mobilizes criminal and constitutional law to advance the interests of marginalized communities.

About the Event:

Co-sponsored with the Center for LGBTQ Studies (CLAGS), Women's Studies Quarterly, The Center for the Humanities, the CUNY Graduate Center PhD Program in Political Science and MA Program in Liberal Studies, the PublicsLab, and The Feminist Press.