Paisley Currah

@paisleycurrah

My specialty: government decisions on sex classification. Distinguished Professor, Brooklyn College, CUNY. Dad, dog companion, kayaker. Pieces in n+1, Boston Review, Nature, New Yorker, New York Review, Yale Review. www.paisleycurrah.com

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Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· 26d

Some of us try to parse the transphobia, see an underlying logic or rationality--attacking trans people is a way to undermine feminism, or to prop up a masculinity that the economy no longer does. But sometimes it's just batshit crazy.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· 27d

When the real news is so much more nuts than The Onion.

Hegseth Announces Annual Testosterone Screenings for Service Members, Picture of Hegseth. By ellen Mitchell, 7-15-26

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jun 30

Justice Thomas: “Sex is an immutable ‘biological’ characteristic…To use language to obscure reality—to show ‘indifference regarding truth’—is to lie to the public.” By Thomas's logic—not mine—I should still play on women's teams, have an ID with an F on it, use the women's room. Who's lying?

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jun 15

Tomorrow is Lou Sullivan's birthday and we all need some inspiration in this time of anti-trans insanity. This quote never fails to inspire me. Here he is at 13, writing in his diary. (Sullivan grew up to be a gay trans man & a pioneer of FTM community organizing, dying died of AIDS in 1991.

I wanna look like what I am but don’t know what someone like me looks like. I mean, when people look at me I want them to think—there’s one of those people that has their own interpretation of happiness. That’s what I am.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jun 1

He didn’t need to go here to make his point. But he did. You can make a case for Platner without relying on this tired misogyny. (Picture from his Substack.)

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· May 22

Trying to get Claude to help me understand the geometry of edging a kayak in wind. Didn’t go well.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Apr 14

NYT today: Magyar won because he distanced himself from pesky LGBTQ community. 2025: Budapest Pride turned into a major pro-democracy event after Orban banned it, over a hundred thousand show up in support, not just LGBTQ people. NYT eds should read their own paper www.nytimes.com/2026/04/14/o...

Image of thousands of people on a bridge

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Feb 26

@adamconover.net has a terrific podcast, and I don't say that just because I'm on it this week. Adam is the polymath of comedians. It's a pleasure to talk to him about trans issues. He's so well informed, one doesn't have to retread the usual talking points, so the conversation goes further.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Feb 25

I always enjoy talking to @adamconover.net, the polymath of comedians. headgum.com/factually-wi...

Factually! with Adam Conover

February 25, 2026

Anti-Trans Playbook is Designed to Hurt Women, with Paisley Currah

Why is it that the anti-trans movement is so ferociously set on upending the livelihood of people who are simply trying to live their lives? As it turns out, it’s because it’s part of a larger playbook to dismantle civil rights as we know them. Paisley Currah is a Professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, the author of Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity, and the writer of an essential new essay in the New York Review Books titled The Anti-Trans Playbook. Today Paisley joins Adam to discuss how we must approach the ongoing attacks on trans rights in America.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Feb 25

@judith-levine.bsky.social watched Melania so we don't have to. Techbros, Fuentes, Epstein and Musk: On women in Trumpland. www.bostonreview.net/articles/the...

The insular world of Melania Trump is a microcosm of the country Trump is presiding over in his second term. In Trump’s America, tech bros invent apps, like Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok, that “nudify” and sexualize images of women and children without their consent and direct the deepfake sexual assaults where the user requests, including the victims’ social media accounts. This is a nation in which pregnant women who miscarry are prosecuted—or allowed to die—lest they be seeking an abortion, while the president’s Nazi podcaster pal Nick Fuentes declares, to an audience in the hundreds of thousands, that they should be sent to “the breeding gulags.” It is the world of Jeffrey Epstein, where women and girls serve as personal accessories, interior décor, and instruments of gratification, and the powerful, wealthy, white men they are compelled to serve are protected from legal accountability, or even embarrassment.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Feb 20

DOGE comes to higher ed: Proud of my friend @lisalmoore.bsky.social, of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at UT Austin, who does not pull her punches, on demoting WGS and other "woke" departments. www.austinchronicle.com/news/ut-head... 1/

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Feb 15

Read Melinda Cooper on Epstein and the tech bros: primal fathers, the backlash against #MeTo, and the return of master-servant relationship. (One has to create a free account to read) www.equator.org/articles/eps...

Epstein Family Values
14.02.2026
Argument

The billionaire patriarchs of the American far-right want to rule an economy of masters and servants. [Image of Musk, Epstein and Weinstein.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Feb 13

Guardian piece by the redoubtable Joan Scott explaining the connections between Trump’s Defending Women EO and shutting down women’s and gender studies prograns. archive.is/2026.02.13-1...

Gender studies courses are shutting down across the US. The Epstein files reveal why
Joan Wallach Scott

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Feb 13

bsky.app/profile/jess...

‪Jessica Kant‬
‪@jessdkant.bsky.social‬
· 16d
We didn't make everything about us. They did. Compare the Advocate, the oldest and largest LGBTQ newspaper in the US, to Fox and the NYT. Both have been publishing more about us than our own newspapers for 3+ years.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Feb 11

CFP for a special issue on the global politics of anti-trans moral panics from transfeminist perspectives. Timely and necessary. www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandg...

Global Politics and Anti-Trans Moral Panics: Transfeminist Perspectives
Academic Editor(s): Charlotte Galpin (University of Birmingham), Gina Gwenffrewi (University of Edinburgh), and Ash Stokoe (University of Birmingham)

Submission of Abstracts: 1-15 March 2026
Submission of Full Papers: 15-31 August 2026
Publication of the Issue: January/June 2027

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jan 19

We become the people capable of changing the world by acting as if we already are. Seems like Minnesotans are doing this. From an essay by Amia Srinivasan. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

But organising rests on the insight – which was also Aristotle’s rejoinder to Plato – that the psyche can flow from action, that what is sometimes needed to become the sort of subject who feels empowered to stand up to the boss or the police or the state, is simply to act, in some small way, as if you already were that sort of subject. To stand up, and find yourself standing with others, find yourself winning with others. And then to find yourself a subject with a greater measure of freedom and power, and more desire too, than you ever knew.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jan 15

Oxford University Press description:
Real Men on Top
How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality
Robin Dembroff

A paradigm-shifting book by a rising public philosopher—lucid, expansive, and deeply relevant

Shows that patriarchy isn't just about men over women—it's a system of reality control that shapes what we feel is real, possible, and right

Expands feminist thinking by showing how patriarchy targets women, children, and animals—and uses those identities to degrade and control

Shows how biology is used to justify social hierarchies, and how patriarchy weaponizes "nature" to enforce inequality

Takes a hard look at masculinity—and how the myths men are sold end up isolating and exploiting them

Blends philosophy, history, and personal insight to explore how we absorb the world's worst rules—and how we might start to break them

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jan 15

Just saw the exciting news that Robin Dembroff's eagerly anticipated book will be coming out in April. global.oup.com/academic/pro...

Book cover. Robin Dembroff, Real Men on Top: How Patriarchy Shapes Our Reality

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Nov 9

And is a short piece condensing the argument: static1.squarespace.com/static/6160c...

Screenshot of a web page: The New York Review, "What Sex Does," by Paisley Currah.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Nov 6

Headline change from this morning, I see. Probably meant what they said the first time. Liberal feminism doesn't really work as a euphemism for women.

Picture of a Times oped: Interesting Times, Did Women Ruin the Workplace? And if so, can conservative feminism fix it? November 6, 2025

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Oct 16

Or, as @lornab.bsky.social put it, don't let UT Austin succeed in its bid to become the University of Austin

UT Austin wants to eliminate its Black Studies, Latino Studies, and Gender Studies Departments. Tell them you won't stand for it. President Jim Davis: president@utexas.edu; Provost, William Inboden, provost@utexas.edu; Interim Liberal Arts Dean David Sosa: david_sosa@austin.utexas.edu #EducationalLIberty #SaveUT

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jul 5

Good morning Brooklyn.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jun 18

Didn’t realize someone on Bluesky could get ratioed so badly so quickly.

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jun 17

Today, I'm on a Zoom panel about the Trump 2.0. English and Spanish translation available. Short presentations and group discussions. bit.ly/dialogos-pendientes-emergentes-1706

The New World Disorder: Meanings and Impacts of Trump 2.0, June 17m 2025, 6:00 p.m. Argentina, 5:00 p.m. New York, 4:00 p.m. Colombia/Perú. Diálogos Pendientes y Emergentes

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jun 9

This book will make you see the debate over women's sports in a very different light--it unlocks the history of sex testing in Olympic sports, and it's not what you thought. For NYC people, I'm doing an event with Michael Waters to mark the paperback release of this fabulous book--Wed. June 11th

image of text that says 'Michael Waters (THE OTHER OLYMPIANS: Fascism, Queerness, and the Making of Modern Sports) with with Paisley Currah Wednesday, June 11, 2025 7:00M 8:00PM Barnes & Noble- Upper West Side 2289 Broadway, New York, NY, 10024

Paisley Currah@paisleycurrah· Jun 2

New York friends--I am doing at event with Jamie Lauren Keiles, Whit Washington, and Joanna Wuest on Wednesday at 6:30 at the McNally Jackson store at South Street Seaport. The event is sold out but I have a few free tickets, if anyone is interested--DM me.