2024 Minx Auerbach Lecture: Legislating Gender
The legislative assault on transgender people in the United States seems new, but governments have been regulating the lives of transgender people for decades. Outside of trans communities, few were aware of the Kafkaesque web of regulations that trans people find themselves in. Now that policing of the gender binary has been transformed from an unremarkable aspect of bureaucratic policymaking to a weapon in the culture wars, everyone is paying attention. In this talk, Paisley Currah will explore the connections between contemporary conflicts over trans issues and the history and persistence of gender and racial hierarchies in American society.