"Why Does the State Care About Your Gender?" Paisley Currah in conversation with Robin Dembroff

A special event co-hosted with the Boston Review!
What does the regulation of transgender identity tell us about society's approach to sex and gender writ large?
In this conversation with Robin Dembroff, Paisley Currah offers an account of the work that sex classifications do in structuring politics and policy. Moving away from a simple identification of transphobia as a cause of discriminatory policies, Currah considers a more nuanced and ultimately more informative set of questions about what we can learn from looking at how, when, and why state institutions collaborate in or thwart sex reclassification. In this way, he helps us understand much more about what sex does for state projects, and ultimately why gender pluralism can help to liberate our political imaginations - and our lives.
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. He 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. Currah’s book, "Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity", was published this year by New York University Press.
Website: www.paisleycurrah.com
Twitter: / paisleycurrah
Robin Dembroff is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy. They work on feminist and LGBTQ philosophy, and focus on questions related to what gender is and how it shapes social outcomes, experience, and ways of knowing. In addition to scholarly venues, their writing has been featured in popular venues including Scientific American, Boston Review, TIME, the Guardian, and the New York Review of Books. Dembroff's first book, "Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Weaponizes Gender", will be published in 2023 by Oxford University Press.
Website: www.robindembroff.com
Twitter: / rdembroff