Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity

with Professor Paisley Currah

About the talk

Every government agency in the United States, from Homeland Security to Departments of Motor Vehicles, has the authority to make its own rules for sex classification. Many transgender people find themselves in the bizarre situation of having different sex classifications on different documents. Whether you can change your legal sex to “F” or “M” (or more recently “X”) depends on what state you live in, what jurisdiction you were born in, and what government agency you’re dealing with. In this talk, Paisley Currah explores this deeply flawed system, showing why it fails transgender and non-binary people and reveals the hidden logics that have governed sex classification policies in the United States.

The speaker

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 author of the book “Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity” (NYU Press, 2022)