How to Make the U.S. Safe for Transgender People

CUNY Graduate Center

Imagine being identified as a male on your driver’s license but a female on your birth certificate. That’s the Kafkaesque experience of many transgender individuals including scholar and author Paisley Currah, whose important new book, Sex Is as Sex Does, examines how sex functions as a tool of government. Currah, a professor of Political Science and Women’s and Gender Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center and Brooklyn College, joins The Thought Project to talk about his book and why the state should stop regulating gender identity. He emphasizes that ending the policing of sex is an important step toward eradicating misogyny and unequal power structures that are based on gender. “Women still do all this care work,” he says, citing one example. Marriage is another. “Gender is always about hierarchy,” he says. He makes the case for moving beyond identity politics to make the U.S. a more humane place for trans and queer people through broad policies that promote equality. These include implementing national health care, abolishing prisons, and attacking income inequality. Listen in to hear more about his groundbreaking book and his vision for true gender equality.