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Senthorun S. Raj

@senthorun.bsky.social

4.7K followers 400 following 870 posts

A/Prof in Human Rights Law ✨ Professional Gay🦩 Books: 📕 The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms 📕 Queer Judgments 📕 The Queer Outside in Law 📕 Feeling Queer Jurisprudence Links: https://linktr.ee/senthorun (He/Him)

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · May 13

My book is published! It’s a critical take on how emotions shape conflicts about LGBT rights and repair in equality law, gender recognition, bans on conversion practices, and sex education in schools. You can download it free via @edinburghup.bsky.social: edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-emo...

Author wearing a rainbow dyed t-shirt takes a photo of them showing off their book, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law.

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 22d

At a time when some use the language of feminism to attack trans rights, it’s vital to see feminist activists and scholars counteract such attacks. Feminist Legal Studies is inviting papers for a special issue that will explore how feminist goals and trans liberation are connected. Check it out.

✊🏾🏳️‍⚧️

Feminist Legal Studies @flsjournal.bsky.social · 22d

📣🏳️‍⚧️ Call for Papers

We are inviting papers for our special issue, “Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope.” The issue will be dedicated to trans-inclusive feminist legal analysis that addresses attacks on trans rights & lives.

Details below. Please share.

Call for Papers: Special Issue of Feminist Legal Studies

Feminist Responses to the Regression of Trans Rights: Strategies, Alliances, Hope

Amidst continuing backlash against trans rights, recognition and inclusion, two recent decisions from the UK have substantially impacted not only trans people’s legal status but also legal and social narratives of sex, gender and identity. The narrative that trans inclusion has a chilling effect on the rights of others, particularly women, has been adopted uncritically by both the UK Supreme Court in For Women Scotland and the Office for Students in its finding that the University of Sussex’s trans-inclusion policy had a chilling effect on free speech. These cases highlight a backlash that has been ongoing for some time, and sparks debates and fear of what may lie in the near future for trans people and kin, as well as other gender-variant persons, not only in the UK, but across jurisdictions and in a global perspective. The discourse of the ‘gender critical’ movement is splintering both the feminist and LGBT+ movements globally, with some aligning politically with the Far- and Christian Right against trans rights, adopting their terminology of ‘gender ideology’ and potentially posing a wider threat to sexual and reproductive rights.

While this a difficult situation for trans people, kin and allies, this special issue seeks to emphasise that legal battles – including battles (temporarily) lost – are also an opportunity to seek to reinforce old alliances and to form new ones, to find new legal frontiers and imaginaries, to reinforce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of legal arguments as well as intergenerational memory of what feminist legal work is, has been and should be about. How, we ask, do these decisions (and those like them globally) reflect and reproduce structures of coloniality, heteronormativity and cisnormativity? What do these decisions add to critiques of legal feminism? What would be construct…

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 9h

“Beyond privacy concerns, being forced to disclose sex assigned at birth may also significantly increase people’s vulnerability to harassment, abuse and even violence…”

The British government has pursued the erosion of trans rights. Letting people use spaces that align to their identity is basic.

Trans people at risk of exclusion from many UK public spaces, rights expert says

European Council commissioner voices concerns after April’s supreme court ruling on legal definition of a woman

www.theguardian.com

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 20h

“She affirmed that our lives hold meaning and that we stand on the shoulders of giants like her, whose courageous love and relentless fight assured our right to live with dignity.”

RIP, Miss Major.

Miss Major Griffin-Gracy, activist since Stonewall, has died

The LGBTQ+ community — and particularly the transgender community — has lost an iconic activist.

www.advocate.com

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Amnesty International UK @amnestyuk.bsky.social · 5d

After two years of a livestreamed genocide and unimaginable loss, agreement on the first phase of a ceasefire deal that allows some humanitarian aid into Gaza and releases the hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners is overdue.

However, this cannot be another brief pause in the violence.

Image reads "Breaking, ceasefire agreed. The UK government must ensure the deal respects the human rights of the Palestinian people."

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 3d

Today is “Coming Out Day.” At a time of intensifying homo/transphobia, being visible as a queer or trans person is personally risky and political resistance. But no one is entitled to your identity or visibility. You do not have to justify your existence to others. Just keep living unapologetically.

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 5d

At a time when queer existence in universities is treated as an “ideology,” I’m proud to be on display at work being unapologetically gay.

Man takes selfie in front of a poster of them in drag.

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 5d

“I now build within a new Jewish community – one which sees Judaism as diaspora and solidarity, not unquestioning support for a state. One that resists the conscription of our symbols into violence…”

Jewish solidarity with Palestinians is powerful. Many speak out against Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

When you first heard me speak against this genocide, you heard my words as betrayal. But they were meant as love | Sarah Schwartz

Not speaking would go against everything I was taught to honour: the righteous among the nations – those who refused to be bystanders to injustice

www.theguardian.com

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 6d

Happy International Lesbian Day! ☀️

Women on a march hold up sign which says, “A day without lesbians is like a day without sunshine.”

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 7d

Thrilled to share I’ll be launching my new book in London next month. I’ll be joined by fab feminist and queer legal scholars who’ll share their thoughts on it. The launch takes place 6.30pm Tuesday 11th November in King’s College London. There will be drinks and chats. Register and come along!

🍹📖🌈

The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law | King's College London

This Queer@King’s event celebrates Dr Senthorun Raj’s new monograph, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law (Edinburgh University Press, 2025), and invites responses from esteemed femi...

www.kcl.ac.uk

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 7d

“As the first comprehensive international human rights instrument dedicated to the protection of persons with variations of sex characteristics, the Recommendation marks a historic and much-needed milestone.”

This is a very encouraging move in Europe to better protect intersex people.

Council of Europe Adopts Landmark Intersex Rights Recommendation

The Council of Europe adopts a landmark Recommendation on Equal Rights for Intersex Persons, setting a new gold standard for intersex human rights across Europe.

www.ilga-europe.org

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 8d

“Good medicine is guided by the values of the patient, not those of a clinician, politician or commentator.”

Australian researchers have clearly rejected the institutionalised transphobia of the Cass Review. Trans folks should not be ignored in political or medical decisions about their healthcare.

Australian report says UK’s Cass review should not guide transgender healthcare

QNews LGBTIQA+ News

qnews.com.au

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 8d

“The current members of the Supreme Court, ten men and two women, all of them white, seem to regard the Human Rights Act as an unwelcome remnant of a past era.”

Prof Conor Gearty’s final essay in @lrb.co.uk is a painfully clear analysis of how the UK Supreme Court is depressing human rights norms.

Conor Gearty · Unwelcome Remnant: Erasing the Human Rights Act

The Supreme Court is quietly editing the Human Rights Act out of existence. In cases where human rights cannot be...

www.lrb.co.uk

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 9d

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 9d

“To assemble, to say no, to do no, throws so much open … doing what we can, when we can, however we can, in the wear and tear, for as long as it takes.”

Just read @saranahmed.bsky.social’s energising new book on complaining as a collective task of feminist and queer world (un)building. Get a copy!

Hand holds up the book, “No Is Not A Lonely Utterance: The Art and Activism of Complaining.”

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 9d

“Police forces will be granted powers to put conditions on repeat protests…”

It’s scary that the British government is making it harder for people to protest. You can’t end one form of racism by encouraging another. The safety of minoritised groups will not be achieved by giving police more powers.

Police to get broader powers to crack down on repeated protests

Officers will be able to tell organisers to move demonstrations if protests have caused

www.bbc.co.uk

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 9d

Wish I could ask the same!

Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 10d

“This new data confirms what we already knew: there is a trans+ healthcare crisis in the UK. But the actual numbers are stark. The system of NHS gender clinics, which is failing to give people an appointment in their entire lifetime, is limiting the number of people who can transition.”

Appalling.

Some people in Scotland will never get gender clinic appointment on 224-year waitlist

Revealed waiting times of all GICs in UK: Most Trans+ people in the UK will wait more than a third of their adult life to get an appointment, and some will never receive care

www.wearequeeraf.com

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 11d

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Senthorun S. Raj @senthorun.bsky.social · 11d

A reminder: you cannot stop bigotry with more bigotry. Solidarity is key to ending all forms of institutionalised racism.

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Queer Judgments Project @queerjudgments.bsky.social · 11d

The Centre for Innovation and Research in Childhood and Youth (CIRCY) at the University of Sussex showcased chapters from our Queer Judgments edited collection that relate to children. These include matters relating to gender affirming healthcare, adoption, reproduction, parental status and consent.

Screenshot of article.

Link here: https://www.sussex.ac.uk/webteam/gateway/file.php?name=circy-annual-report-2024-25.pdf&site=387

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Na'amod @naamoduk.bsky.social · 12d

Our hearts are with the victims and their families at this terrible time.

We are heartbroken to emerge from Yom Kippur into news of the attack at Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester. No one should face violence for attending synagogue services and our hearts are with the victims and their families at this terrible time.
For many in our community, this news may only just be reaching you after a day spent in prayer, reflection, and fasting. To be confronted with such awfulness in this moment is particularly painful: please know that you are not alone.

In moments like this, it is vital that our communities - Jewish and non-Jewish alike hold one another close. Our safety and liberation depend on solidarity between all those who are marginalised and targeted, and we must not allow those who seek to divide us to succeed. Every person deserves to live, gather, and worship in safety and dignity. We condemn this act of violence unequivocally, and restate our commitment to building a world where this kind of horror is no longer possible.

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Natalie Sedacca @nataliesedacca.bsky.social · 12d

Horrified by the deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur 💔 www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Manchester synagogue attack: What we know so far

Three people have died including the suspect in a car and stabbing attack on the holiest day in the Jewish religious calendar.

www.bbc.co.uk

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Dr Tamsin Phillipa Paige @pagingdrpaige.bsky.social · 12d

Academic selfie: dinner in the Gay Village with Kay and @senthorun.bsky.social edition

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Queer Judgments Project @queerjudgments.bsky.social · 13d

The Queer Judgments Project is about queer friendship & creativity. Recently, one of our contributors, Dr Joy Twemlow, crocheted this queer flower bouquet which she gifted to one of the editors, Dr Sen Raj. This bouquet represents the beauty, innovation, kinship & flourishing of queer communities. 💐

Hand holds up a crocheted rainbow flower bouquet.

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Feminist Legal Studies @flsjournal.bsky.social · 13d

Feminist Legal Studies is pleased to offer open access to our 2025 prize-winning article by Leon Laidlaw. This powerful article examines how colonial gender norms underpin prison systems, harming trans, Indigenous, and cis women.

You can read it for free here: link.springer.com/article/10.1...

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