Should Legal Sex be Abolished? Utopianism, Failure, and the Challenge of Designing Contentious Law
- Date
- November 06, 2025
- Time
- 12:30 PM EST - 2:00 PM EST
- Location
- POD-457 (lunch will be provided)
This talk draws on four years of funded research into “decertification” – a controversial proposal to abolish legal sex and gender status in Britain. It explores why such abolition might be a good idea, the opposition it encountered particularly from gender-critical feminists, and the challenge that experimental legal designs face, more generally, when read as both fictional and as failed. To address this challenge, the talk turns to utopian studies. Since utopianism is widely understood as a desire for a better world that is both imaginary and unachievable, can it help legal designers (academics, NGOs, lawyers, and others) in developing legal proposals that do not currently seem attainable? What thoughtways does utopianism provide for valuing far-reaching legal proposals to advance social justice, and can it offer ways of responding - not only to the criticism such proposals face but also to their attack?
Dr. Davina Cooper is a Research Professor in Law & Political Theory at King’s College London. She has researched and written extensively on radical politics and governance, sexuality and gender, and concepts such as equality and the state.
She has just finished a book on conceptual politics. Other books include Feeling Like a State and Everyday Utopias. She is an elected fellow of the British Academy, and of the Academy of Social Sciences, directed the AHRC Research Centre in Law, Gender and Sexuality, and has been a local London politician and magistrate.