New Books In Gender Studies

In this episode of High Theory, Saronik talks to Senthorun Raj about the Emotions of LGBT Rights. Emotions from disgust and fear to love and joy shape the legal frameworks that attempt to govern human sexual behavior around the world. Sen cautions against dividing emotions into good and bad, but instead asks us to take a critical stance on all emotions, to understand how they shape our policies. In the episode, we talk about Sara Ahmed, the Stonewall Riots, conversion therapy, and efforts to mandate for and against inclusive sex education. The transcript lives here as a WordDoc and here as a PDF. Sen’s book, The Emotions of LGBT Rights and Reforms: Repairing Law (Edinburgh University Press 2025) uses emotion as a novel analytic lens to understand, analyse, and critique the relationship between individual, interpersonal, and institutional conflicts over LGBT rights. Emotions are central to the pursuit, organisation, and contestation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights in law. Drawing fro