Sex Is as Sex Does

[Currah's] approach leads to a set of urgent and surprising conclusions for transgender rights advocates, and indeed for anyone invested in a more just society in which states do not take an interest in our gender identities. ~The New York Review of Books

Marvelously inventive. ~The Baffler

This volume will change the way we think, talk about and work for (trans)gender policy and justice. ~Ms. Magazine

A model for scholar-activists across disciplines. Sex Is as Sex Does disentangles the contradictions of liberal transgender rights legal advocacy and reconnects trans issues to the feminist movement. ~Dissent Magazine

Vital analysis of the current state of trans politics. ~them.

In Sex is as Sex Does, Paisley Currah shifts our focus from what sex is to how it is crafted by the state - and to what effect. It's arguably one of the most important trans studies books to come out in the last five years. ~The New Inquiry

Paisley Currah has written a clear-eyed and provocative book that places Trans Studies and histories of state power in a remarkably revealing dialogue. Sex Is as Sex Does has reshaped my understanding of governmentality, gender identity, and the complex relationship between the modern self and state institutions. It is a remarkable and unfailingly thoughtful book and a true pleasure to read. ~Robert O. Self, author of All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s

Paisley Currah's Sex is as Sex Does is a fascinating investigation into the work that sex classifications do in structuring politics and policy. The book brilliantly moves away from a simple identification of transphobia as a cause of discriminatory policies. Instead, Currah asks 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. From his answers to these questions, we 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. ~Julie Novkov, co-author of American by Birth: Wong Kim Ark and the Battle for Citizenship

In this astute, powerful, and long-awaited work, Paisley Currah shows how sex-classification functions as a malleable instrument of governmentality, achieving different ends in different contexts. In doing so, he highlights the debt contemporary transgender activism owes to feminist efforts to overturn sex-classification as a means to deny rights to women. This is an important book for anyone who cares about gender, justice and social transformation. ~Susan Stryker, author of Transgender History

With scintillating intelligence and expertise, Paisley Currah makes the case that states' designations of 'sex' on birth certificates, drivers' licenses, Social Security cards and so on, today create and stabilize rather than simply register sex classifications— and should be gone. His book takes the reader on a heady sojourn into trans issues and political theory, always crediting feminism along the way. Sex Is as Sex Does is wonderfully valuable for novice and scholar alike to think with and learn from. ~Nancy F. Cott, Jonathan Trumbull Research Professor of American History, Harvard University

Hands down, the best book on the history and function of sex classifications—and the injustices that they produce—that has ever been written. ~Sonia K. Katyal, co-author of Property Outlaws: How Squatters, Pirates, and Protesters Improve the Law of Ownership

Finally, a work that up-ends current debates pinning transgender existence on competing definitions of sex and gender! Through trenchant and always engaging analysis of key policy-saturated sites such as marriage, carceral systems, and identity documents, Currah centers not what sex is but instead, what sex does for state and community interests. Zeroing in on the contradictions and inconsistencies of sex classification and reclassification policies, he illuminates sex as a powerful and mobile technology of governance, simultaneously shedding new light on contemporary investments in how transgender is understood. ~Finn Enke, author of Finding the Movement: Sexuality, Contested Space, and Feminist Activism

Beautifully written and argued, Sex Is as Sex Does should be read by anyone who wants to understand why narrow attempts to include marginalized groups in various rights and recognition frameworks will not generate the liberation we so badly want and need. Paisley Currah’s work is immensely sophisticated, challenging many widely held assumptions about the relationships between trans people and law, but at the same time argued with such clarity that it is a pleasure to read. ~Dean Spade, author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the Next)

Currah directs us away from these messy, interdisciplinary arguments (where no one side ever persuades the other) to look at what sex does each time it appears on a document. Reading Currah feels much like having someone come up and move your binoculars ever so gently to the left so that you suddenly see both the forest and the trees. When I see the terrifying arguments used by lawmakers to pass anti-trans legislation, I am convinced that Currah—for whom gender and sex are necessary to consider and understood to be complicated—[is] among our best feminist thinkers. ~LIBER: A Feminist Review

This book is essential reading, especially in the current political moment. Paisley astutely breaks down the complexity of sex and governance with immense intellectual and moral clarity. His core premise -- that to understand what sex *is* in terms of governance one must first step back and examine, with particularity, what sex *does* in certain settings -- is not only persuasively argued, but effectively framed as a crucial prerequisite to deep interrogation of how sex is used (and thus, in turn, what an emancipatory politics of sex really means). Profound in content, yet accessible in form, Sex Is as Sex Does is a monumental achievement, a joy to read, and an urgent political intervention. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. ~Joshua Sealy-Harrington, Lincoln Alexander School of Law at Toronto Metropolitan University

Currah’s discussions about identity politics are especially cogent and caring; he usefully distinguishes between strategies to ensure state recognition (e.g., of one’s identity, even within problematic systems) and state redistribution (reforming the state to ensure that everyone has the resources they need to thrive, including trans people), and their interconnected stakes. ~Psychology of Women Quarterly

Currah persuasively shows that the impetus behind state actors’ definitions of sex at any given juncture is not some ontological belief about what sex is but a much more pragmatic set of considerations about the specific governance projects that sex classification is being used to further in each context. This is the insight captured in the book’s title: sex is as sex does. ~Perspectives on Politics

In the face of the present moment’s relentless culture-war legislation against transgender people, Sex Is as Sex Does is a gift to educators who want to teach transgender studies from a political science perspective. This book is accessible and clearly written in a way that makes it especially suitable for undergraduate students as well as people outside of academia who want to deepen their understanding of transgender politics. ~WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly

Sex classification shapes everyone’s access to a host of resources and institutions, including travel documents, welfare programs, drug treatment centers, homeless shelters, and, yes, bathrooms. It also influences one’s fate in the more explicitly punitive corners of the state—at immigration facilities and in prisons... As right-wing politicians and their shock troops attempt to redefine sex in increasingly coordinated, narrow, and punitive ways, we must keep saying for ourselves who and what we are. ~The Nation

Moving forward, gender galaxies may be the next theoretical framework to help us think about the meaning, performing, and future of sex/gender. At least, this is what Currah encourages us to do upon completion of this thought-provoking, rich text. While asking readers to open their imaginative boundaries surrounding the concept of sex/gender, Currah does not discount the lived utility of these bounded gender identity forms that construct new citizen-subjects. ~Politics & Gender

The book’s hyper-readable — dare I say fun? — prose artfully navigates an archive of governmentally… An essential, course-correcting contribution to the field of trans and gender studies, as well as feminist, social, and political theory, Currah’s book serves as an extra point for those not particularly versed in these interdisciplines. ~TSQ, Transgender Studies Quarterly