Sam Caslin
@moderndecorum.bsky.social
3.3K followers 630 following 110 posts
Historian at the Uni of Liverpool. They/she. 🏳️‍⚧️📚
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moderndecorum.bsky.social
This looks so good! I'll share it with my students!
Reposted by Sam Caslin
emilybrand.bsky.social
Feels a bit early in the day to be posting this, but if I'm spending the morning with 18th-century sex therapist & supposed 'Prince of the Quacks' Dr James Graham then so can you 🍆
Detail from an 18th-century print depicting bewigged James Graham riding astride a large phallic instrument labelled 'Largest in the World' as a little duck says 'quack quack quack' at his feet
Reposted by Sam Caslin
annacusack.bsky.social
If anyone needs a freelance researcher in London (or across the UK), I'm your person!
I've reasonable rates, lots of archive experience & great recommendations from academics globally. I'm only teaching 1 module this term, as the job market is what it is. Therefore, I'm open to all work. DM me!
moderndecorum.bsky.social
Thanks so much! That is so kind. I may well take you up on that at some point!
moderndecorum.bsky.social
The details about the 'gentleman publishers', and the ways they were all interconnected, are also really fun to discuss too!
moderndecorum.bsky.social
I ran this seminar with students last year, too. Your work is a core text! We use your article to discuss the overlaps between early sexology and erotic print cultures. Your work is so useful for demonstrating how things weren't always so simple as medical text vs erotic text.
moderndecorum.bsky.social
This week, some of my classes are going to be thinking about @sarahebull.bsky.social's 2021 research on adult entertainment and early sexology. I highly recommend this article to anyone interested in the topic. journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
Sage Journals: Discover world-class research
Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.
journals.sagepub.com
Reposted by Sam Caslin
ian.mckellar.org
Trump has strong opinions on your fanfic.
factpostnews.bsky.social
Trump: I'm not a fan of some of the ships you do. I'm a very aesthetic person and I don't like some of the ships you're doing, aesthetically.
Reposted by Sam Caslin
flsjournal.bsky.social
📣🏳️‍⚧️ 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…
Reposted by Sam Caslin
julialaite.bsky.social
This is, I believe, the first official word from the Government on what happened yesterday in London. Not only inaction in the face of violence and hate, but a celebration of it. I passed through London twice yesterday with my two kids & what Labour seem to be missing is that people aren't just...
'Scale of unite the kingdom march shows free speech alive and well in UK, says minister
Reposted by Sam Caslin
tressiemcphd.bsky.social
This is class solidarity.

In case you’re at all confused.
Reposted by Sam Caslin
donmoyn.bsky.social
The professor has been fired and senior administrators removed from their post. No mention of this in the New York Times, The Free Press, The Atlantic or other outlets who drove the campus speech moral panic.
houstonchronicle.com
Texas A&M University System orders audit of all courses after gender identity lesson goes viral

Details: bit.ly/42jauQZ
Reposted by Sam Caslin
dsquareddigest.bsky.social
Dear me, "students need to be exposed to challenging beliefs" season is over already
houstonchronicle.com
Texas A&M University System orders audit of all courses after gender identity lesson goes viral

Details: bit.ly/42jauQZ
Reposted by Sam Caslin
urbaneprofessor.bsky.social
This frontispiece in my book just made me laugh a lot. Is this Buddhist reincarnation, or some other form of afterlife?
Bram Stoker
1847-1912
A PENGUIN SINCE 1979
moderndecorum.bsky.social
This is a timely article on the broader significance of trans-exclusionary writers for contemporary anti-trans politics.
moderndecorum.bsky.social
People would have said The Thick of It had jumped the shark if they had Peter Mannion doing a Robert Palmer-style number.
ukshane.bsky.social
Extraordinary scenes at Reform UK conference as Greater Lincolnshire Mayor Andrea Jenkyns arrives on stage singing her rock song 'Insomnia'
Reposted by Sam Caslin
punkacademic.bsky.social
Starmer's Britain.

A place where peaceful protest is criminalised, the right to use a gender-appropriate toilet is prohibited, people persecuting refugees are told they have 'legitimate concerns', and the state backs a genocide.

Some legacy that for the 'human rights lawyer'.
Reposted by Sam Caslin
goatsarah.org
I want to explain a few things and then it might be clearer why UK trans people are upset.
In 2001 I married my wife, Sylvia.
In 2005 I started medical transition. (1/13)
Reposted by Sam Caslin
echomikeromeo.bsky.social
I reviewed Eli Erlick's new book Before Gender for @womenshistoryrev.bsky.social: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

This was the smoothest production process of all time and I'm grateful to see a venerable women's history journal making space for trans history!
Before Gender: Lost stories from trans history 1850–1950
Published in Women's History Review (Ahead of Print, 2025)
www.tandfonline.com
Reposted by Sam Caslin
morganmpage.bsky.social
Trans people have been prosecuted for non-disclosure in the UK since the 90s - but this is the first case I have heard of in which a trans woman is being charged, it’s usually transmasculine ppl. The UK is the only country that charges trans people for this, and it’s difficult to prove innocence.
Reposted by Sam Caslin
Reposted by Sam Caslin
cemurphy.bsky.social
I recently learned about Russian painter Ivan Aivazosky and I may never recover. I don't think I've ever seen water done like he does it. I don't think I've ever felt an artist loved water as much as I feel he must have. It's so incredible I could vomit.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Ai...
Ivan Aivazovsky's painting "Ship on Stormy Seas" depicts a wildly canting sailing ship in the middle distance of a storm-ridden sea. In the foreground, a wave of flawless translucent blue forms, and it's so incredibly depicted I could just vomit.