Senthorun S. Raj

It’s official: I’ve been promoted to Professor of Legal Humanities and Human Rights at Manchester Law School. My ability to think/research/write/teach anything is only possible because of the communities that continue to nourish me. So now, I’m just going to keep on sparkling. 🌈✨

“One of his most significant acts of protest followed the 1983 police raid on Sydney’s Club 80. Twenty eight men signed statutory declarations stating they had engaged in sex with other men, challenging the enforcement of laws that criminalised their lives.” Vale, Robert French. We owe much to him.

“AI has no beliefs or personality of its own. Like the map-maker in the windowless room, it knows only what it is told. If the person describing the city holds a grudge against one neighbourhood, that grudge ends up on the map.” A timely essay by Adrian Dredge on the harms of algorithmic policing.

“One of his most significant acts of protest followed the 1983 police raid on Sydney’s Club 80. Twenty eight men signed statutory declarations stating they had engaged in sex with other men, challenging the enforcement of laws that criminalised their lives.” Vale, Robert French. We owe much to him.

“I feel so, so happy … There’s not enough room in my chest for all this joy. Lula’s victory represents so much. It means life for those who believe in love and in life…” Well done, Brazil! 🇧🇷 Here’s to more democracy, organising, and hope.

“Intersex is the word that provided me with a conceptual and interpretive framework… I went from seeing myself as a sick, abnormal and malformed person to asserting myself as a someone who embodies one of the many bodily forms of human anatomical variability.” Happy Intersex Awareness Day!

“The long-serving strongman leader of Serbia, Aleksandar Vucic, conceded defeat on Sunday in an election that pitted him and his right-wing party against a diverse student-led opposition movement that spent two years protesting his government.” Welcome news from Serbia! Well done to the youth. 🇷🇸

“The High Court has ruled that regulations banning new prescriptions of puberty blockers for young people with gender dysphoria were unlawful.” This is welcome news from NZ. We need more courts to scrutinise political decisions that undermine people’s ability to access life saving health care. 🇳🇿🏳️‍⚧️

Boyfriend and I are back being gay in Sydney.

“AI use proliferates in higher education because decades of neoliberal reforms have baked into universities a certain way of thinking, entirely compatible with algorithmic models.” The commercialisation of universities continues to erode thinking and learning. We should resist corporate automation.

“Under the new rules introduced by the Cook Labor Government, schools will no longer be allowed to fire teachers or expel students due to their sexuality…” This is welcome (and long overdue!) news from Western Australia. No school should be able to discriminate against LGBT teachers and students.

Hello folks, the very cool Prof Jackie Stacey and Dr Gareth Gavin are recruiting two people keen to do a creative PhD in trans and queer health. These projects respond to health and wellbeing needs by centring creative forms of care developed by LGBTQ+ communities in Greater Manchester. Apply/share!

We run regular reflective spaces for trans and non-binary therapy practitioners to come together. Our upcoming online spaces will focus on the ongoing impact of the Supreme Court Ruling and the EHRC's code of practice. Sign up here: https://ow.ly/rc0f50ZYQi2

“Trans people could face delays and a greater risk of ‘corridor care’ under new NHS England guidance that means they will no longer be able to use same-sex wards, according to an internal report.” The British government could act right now and amend the law to end the segregation of trans people.

“These tools have been rolled out without proper testing, quality assurance and training. This careless approach could have catastrophic consequences for those people whose future is in the hands of Home Office decision-making.” New report exposes how UK asylum decision-makers are using ChatGPT.

“Forcing trans people into spaces for our sex assigned at birth will never be the most clinically appropriate decision, and would push trans people away from accessing care.” We must continue to challenge the state mandated segregation of trans people in the UK.

“It is not just history that haunts. It is that in these institution, elite, white, British institutions, we become the ghosts, Black and brown people, reminders of what they refuse to recognise let alone to give up.” Thinking with Jason Arday, Sara Ahmed exposes the racism of/in higher education.

“There is no doubt online content can be harmful. But social media platforms cannot make decisions about public health content without adequate safeguards (such as independent accountability and appeal mechanisms) or guidance from health experts.” We need nuanced regulation of online platforms.

Journalists also used to post photos of gay families making the same degrading comments about how “sad” it was that children were being “robbed” of having a mother and a father. The regurgitated bigotry to abuse trans people is painfully pervasive across the media.

My boyfriend described my job as “professor of sexual gendered queerness.” How endearingly apt. I should get that printed on a t-shirt.

Today is National Coming Out Day. Many governments censor and police LGBTQ lives. The media caricature our existence as “ideologies.” Visibility is not easy or desirable in these circumstances. So, let’s work collectively on creating spaces where LGBTQ folk flourish without the demand to “come out.”

“Universities are revoking offers en masse made to international applicants from countries including Nigeria and Pakistan as they fear the UK government’s visa crackdown will result in a ban on their recruiting international students.” The British government trashes universities and pursues racism.

“Classrooms up and down the country need to prepare young people for the wider world – an ever complex and changing world – and that only happens if their classrooms, their learning materials and their discussions reflect the diversity of experiences in that world.” LGBT lives are not “ideologies.”

“Ranking machines based on whether they are smarter than us accepts the eugenic premise that human intelligence and worth can be measured on a single, linear scale.” We need to refuse the “AI” corporate propaganda and political nationalism.

BREAKING NEWS The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided to award the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize to Navanethem “Navi” Pillay for her efforts to promote peace and international law.

“Tokyo’s policy seems more concerned with projecting an international image of Japan as a progressive and inclusive country than with implementing substantive measures to advance those rights in practice.” Improving the lives of LGBT+ people requires much more than political claims about “respect.”

“Instead of incendiary press releases on an isolated enforcement action… the government should take steps to address the many issues in the asylum system & ensure that people fleeing persecution are treated with dignity & compassion.” Hostile asylum policy, not “bogus” claims, is the main problem.

“An AI tool used to speed up the processing of thousands of asylum cases is failing basic accuracy tests…” The idea that synthetic text generating “AI” can be a useful aid in determining refugee status is ridiculous. We should challenge the automation of decision-making and erosion of our rights.

“My lesbianism… informs the way I move and feel in my body, how I serve my community, the reasoning behind my politics.” It’s International Lesbian Day today! Check out Lydia Jupp clearly explain why lesbian and trans rights/lives are mutually reinforcing. www.starobserver.com.au/opinion/my-l...

Back to the hills of Keele University (the place I got my first lectureship after finishing my PhD!) to talk about my book.

“He likes power, and I feel like this is giving him some sort of power. It’s all about power and control in everything he does…” White supremacists who talk about “protecting women” from migrants are, unsurprisingly, violent misogynists. They do not want women’s safety — they want to control women.

“We are rendered hostile abstractions in a contradictory narrative: Trans people are not real, only our violence is real.” This is a compelling reflection by @ginagwenffrewi.bsky.social on how the British press has laundered transphobia in recent years (so much of it is just recycled homophobia).

So nice to be back on campus at Manchester Law School to teach my Equalities Law class for another term.

“Could queering offer another form of judgment, one more colourful, poetic, musical, and playful than that offered by law and legal format – judgment as discernment rather than decision?” Sean Mulcahy reviews Queer Judgments in Alternative Law Journal. Read: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10....

“They shall not pass.” 90 years ago today, as antisemitism and fascism were on the rise throughout Europe, Oswald Mosley’s racist British Union of Fascists planned a provocative march through the Jewish community of East London.

The LGBT+ Fund: Youth Joy Fund will open to applications on Wednesday 7th October at 12pm Midday and will close on Wednesday 18th November at 12pm Midday.  lgbtfund.org.uk/live-funds/y...

“Many men rape, and few seem to think that it’s a very big deal… Complicity, too, is typical, not uncommon, for responding institutions. Impunity for rapists is cast as good sense, or as responsibility; as fairness, or compassion.” We need better systems of accountability to refuse sexual violence.

The death penalty must be abolished.

“Success is measured by whether people become safer, freer and more able to organise, speak and live with dignity… That future can only be built in partnership with the communities whose lives are most directly affected.” Governments should better support local queer communities fighting to thrive.

“But taking sexual violence seriously and taking institutional responsibility are not the same thing… Fixing the future is a convenient way to avoid answering for the past.” Brenda Cossman writes painfully clearly on how institutions fail sexual assault survivors.

“Performers face opaque algorithmic management, restrictive content rules and limited autonomy. The Platform Work Directive’s reclassification mechanism could offer new rights, but many performers resist formal employment due to stigma, surveillance and legal risks.”

Boyfriend and I celebrate 5 years of frolics. 🦩🐕

"Why do we wait for those carrying the batons to confess when our bruised bodies tell the whole truth?" - Mohammed El-Kurd

“The only evidence we have that LLMs can ‘think’ comes from our ability to make sense of the synthetic text they extrude… In order to interpret text, we have to imagine a mind behind the text.” This is a good piece on how we conceive “intelligence” when it comes to that nebulous thing we call “AI.”

“Children should not be exposed to a technology whose future, effectiveness, and safety we cannot predict, and for which the evidence is mostly negative.” This open letter ask the British government to pause the roll of “AI-mediated tutors” for marginalised young people. Feel free to sign/share.

“To be silent on an issue, or to appeal to ‘both sides’ (as Sheeran did in his teleprompted apology), is itself to take a political stance – and when the issue is genocide, silence or equivocation is complicity.” A searingly simple point.

“We should stop and think about the tech we are using, or even discussing, and what it actually does.” “AI” does not think. “AI” does not feel. “AI” does not have agency. We need to stop talking about “AI” like it is a person and talk about it instead as technologies with specific functionalities.

“Instead of treating chronological ordering as the end point, we could look more closely at actively encouraging alternative open infrastructure that is resistant to future corporate capture and embodies genuine choice for community.” We need greater control over how algorithms shape our lives.

Feeling energised after spending a few days in Dublin with some cool feminist and queer scholar-activists.

“If they attack and pressure those who feel little to no sexual attraction or interest in sex, that is a gateway to attacking anyone who does have sex in any way that’s not ‘approved’ or ‘acceptable.’” Niger’s criminalising of asexuality is about enforcing patriarchal ideas of gender and sexuality.