Paisley Currah talk

I went off to hear a talk by Paisley Currah, an academic and activist who is visiting to talk about recent legal changes in New York for transgender people. He is co-editor of the book Transgender Rights, and Executive Director of CLAGS, the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies. The talk concerns work that has occurred through the Transgender Law Center.
Here's the description of the event:

For decades, New York City denied the requests to change the gender designation on the birth certificates of transgender people. At most, the city would issue birth certificates with the gender marker left blank to transgender people who could prove they had had "convertive" surgery. The explicitly stated rationale for this policy was "the public interest for protection against fraud." In 2005, the city convened a committee of transgender rights advocates, transgender health specialists, and establishment surgeons to recommend changes to the policy. The new policy removes the surgery requirement, and allows for an M or F to appear on re-issued birth certificates. The new standard, however, replaces concerns about "fraud" with tests to ensure the gender change is permanent. This paper examines the very different narratives at work in the process of transgender rights advocates, medical authorities, and officials negotiating legal gender definition in an era of heightened scrutiny of individuals' bodies and histories.

UPDATE: OK, so I wrote the talk down in the wrong spot in my calendar, and it was last week. Feh. But I can put these books on here's my summer reading list!