Abolishing Legal Sex in Britain: A study in Prefigurative Law Reform

Prefiguration has become a re-popularised political strategy of embodying in the present future-facing political goals. This talk explores its value as an academic method, where radical, future-oriented, legislative proposals are treated as if they were already worthy of serious consideration.

The focus of my exploration is the proposal to abolish legal sex and gender status in Britain – a legal move at the heart of a four-year research council funded project that ended in 2022.

In this talk, Professor Cooper explores the politics of abolishing legal status (described as decertification) – attending to its value and also to its risks as a highly controversial proposal in 21st century Britain.

She will then consider how posing a radical legal reform, like this, can advance three progressive academic objectives: analysing what is, rehearsing change, and intervening in the present.

Exploring the abolition of legal sex status illuminates everyday attachments (and anxieties) towards sex and gender categories, alongside contemporary developments taking place in the shadow of state law; it provides a legal structure for imagining, rehearsing, and prototyping change; and by building a controversial legal reform, it acts within the political struggles currently taking place.

Light refreshments will be served.