@allisonmckim.bsky.social
Sociologist of gender, punishment & society, welfare state, law, drugs. Professor at Bard College. Author of Addicted to Rehab: Race, Gender, and Drugs in the Era of Mass Incarceration.
Under a new policy released Thursday, the Trump Administration will test conversion therapy on trans people in prisons. It explicitly states that it aims to help trans people “recover,” all the while forcibly detransitioning them both medically and socially.
transitics.substack.com/p/the-trump-...
I have said this before, but eliminating programs that teach a lot of students but don’t have many majors is like a restaurant not buying flour in its grocery delivery because people aren’t ordering flour on the menu.
24.06.2025 23:47 — 👍 1502 🔁 425 💬 17 📌 16These are “low enrollment” majors but the classes are regularly at capacity. They changed the funding structure a few years ago here, switching the allocation from course enrollments to majors then blamed these departments for a structural, top-down change. This is entirely a political choice.
26.02.2026 02:50 — 👍 2848 🔁 920 💬 37 📌 45
It seems all Kansas-issued trans drivers' licenses are invalid, effective tomorrow
It is now illegal for trans people to drive a car until they surrender their license at a DMV (that most will need to drive to) and have it reissued with the wrong gender marker
This was never about woman's sports
The president of St. John's University's announcement that the school will no longer recognize its two faculty unions is a shameful union-busting move. SJU faculty have been working for 236 days without a contract.
Please sign the petition below to demand a return to the bargaining table.
The Trump administration is warehousing pregnant child rape victims in a Texas facility, away from adequate medical care, in a state with one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the US, so that these child rape victims won’t be able to get abortions.
www.throughline.news/p/the-trump-
What does Epstein’s household economy reveal about the billionaire far-right? Melinda Cooper traces the disturbing logic connecting primal patriarchy, transhumanism, and the rule of masters over servants.
www.equator.org/articles/eps...
State of Florida's new mandate for public college Intro Sociology curriculum:
"The following should not be included in any course content...
"Discussions arguing a causal association between institutional sexism and unequal outcomes between men and women"
Indoctrination, not education nor science
Surveys that have dropped gender identity items include: General Social Survey, Monitoring the Future, National Crime Victimization Survey, National Health Interview Survey, National Survey of Children’s Health, National Survey of Family Growth and Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.
19.02.2026 00:36 — 👍 15 🔁 15 💬 2 📌 1
Mia Valentina Paz Faria A 7-year-old from Venezuela who was living in Austin, Texas Detained for 70 days “I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”
UPDATE: Staff at the ICE concentration camp in Dilley, Texas have begun raiding the dormitories of kids and their parents to confiscate and destroy letters from the children. This is in response to the ace reporting by @micarosenberg et al for ProPublica:
“I don’t want to be in this place I want to go to my school.”
- 7 year old imprisoned by ICE for 70 days in a concentration camp in Texas.
Today, after @propublica.org published this story, the camp was raided to confiscate letters from the children.
www.propublica.org/article/ice-...
If you are wondering what words the all-male Congress found so "blasphemous" that they felt compelled to literally scrape them off the monument, they were: ''Woman, first denied a soul, then called mindless, now arisen, declared herself an entity to be reckoned.''
16.02.2026 16:35 — 👍 4723 🔁 1902 💬 42 📌 29
Gender studies courses are shutting down across the US. The Epstein files reveal why | Joan Wallach Scott
13.02.2026 11:34 — 👍 281 🔁 143 💬 11 📌 23There are so many much worse things to accurately call her. But the sexism, that’s the go to…
12.02.2026 04:13 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
🌟 Sex workers at Sheri’s Ranch, a legal brothel in Pahrump, Nevada, are unionizing with the Communications Workers of America @cwaunion.bsky.social
Last week, management fired several pro-union workers—including the union’s primary organizer, Jupiter Jetson
thenevadaindependent.com/article/sex-...
Epstein was not ostracised for his crimes. To some powerful men, he became even more appealing | Moira Donegan
09.02.2026 12:18 — 👍 325 🔁 151 💬 21 📌 11
“I’m mad I can’t understand Bad Bunny’s lyrics because they’re not in English”
my brother millions of metalheads around the world have been happily listening to incomprehensible Finnish shrieks and Japanese death grunts since we were teens, you’re just boring and racist
Disturbingly detailed analysis of my first rewatch incoming
09.02.2026 02:30 — 👍 6009 🔁 1788 💬 107 📌 926
Sarah Brayne, Sarah Lageson
and Karen Levy have a nice paper on “surveillance deputies.” Ring wants to deputize your pet dog. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...
The Board of Governors decided, unilaterally, that no published textbook in the field of sociology could be used in compliance with the law for an Intro to Sociology class. None. Victor: There's not a single existing textbook on the market that could be used that would qualify under state law? Zachary: Correct. Victor: I'm sorry, that's kind of funny. Like, the absurdity of not a single sociology textbook getting past the censors. I mean, it makes me kind of proud of our colleagues, but...
I do want to shout-out my fellow sociologists, who have collectively created a discipline so woke that not a single one of our introductory textbooks can make it past Florida's censors.
Great work everyone.
Black beer can with piano keys pattern at bottom. In red, near the top: "Creature Comforts + Ale Sharpton". In larger white letters: "Piano Keys". A teku-style beer glass forms the negative space of the "a" in "piano".
My friend Ale Sharpton, a beer writer from Atlanta, has partnered with Creature Comforts for the latest edition of Piano Keys, a chocolate vanilla Imperial Stout celebrating and promoting racial diversity and equity in beer. He previously worked with New Belgium for an earlier version. 🧵
30.01.2026 15:02 — 👍 2 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0![Though these situations may be factually distinct, we cannot cast them aside in our “obvious clarity” analysis. Where precedent injects such uncertainty, it does not follow logically that the complained of offense “so obviously violates th[e] [C]onstitution.” Mercado v. City of Orlando, 407 F.3d 1152, 1159 (11th Cir. 2005). Indeed, when caselaw indicates that a certain type of conduct does not rise to the level of a constitutional violation, officials cannot possibly be on notice that the conduct is a constitutional violation—and certainly not with obvious clarity. See Hope, 536 U.S. at 741; al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741. The existence of this caselaw casting doubt on the “obvious clarity” of Moss’s claimed right—and, indeed, disclaiming such a right altogether—necessarily means that the right was not clearly established at the time of the violation. To be sure, similar out-of-circuit cases have reached the opposite conclusion. For example, as the district court noted in its order, in Browder v. City of Albuquerque, the Tenth Circuit concluded that a police officer’s misuse of a squad car resulting in a fatal collision could give rise to a claim under the Fourteenth Amendment. 787 F.3d 1076, 1083 (10th Cir. 2015).](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:24vva42nxim6zbcmnozegoef/bafkreidebqwemly2zfgozo4wrt56vrpcdotmda42nxhtve6vdvv256uso4@jpeg)
Though these situations may be factually distinct, we cannot cast them aside in our “obvious clarity” analysis. Where precedent injects such uncertainty, it does not follow logically that the complained of offense “so obviously violates th[e] [C]onstitution.” Mercado v. City of Orlando, 407 F.3d 1152, 1159 (11th Cir. 2005). Indeed, when caselaw indicates that a certain type of conduct does not rise to the level of a constitutional violation, officials cannot possibly be on notice that the conduct is a constitutional violation—and certainly not with obvious clarity. See Hope, 536 U.S. at 741; al-Kidd, 563 U.S. at 741. The existence of this caselaw casting doubt on the “obvious clarity” of Moss’s claimed right—and, indeed, disclaiming such a right altogether—necessarily means that the right was not clearly established at the time of the violation. To be sure, similar out-of-circuit cases have reached the opposite conclusion. For example, as the district court noted in its order, in Browder v. City of Albuquerque, the Tenth Circuit concluded that a police officer’s misuse of a squad car resulting in a fatal collision could give rise to a claim under the Fourteenth Amendment. 787 F.3d 1076, 1083 (10th Cir. 2015).
11th Cir., 2-1, holds that it was not clearly established that it would violate a person's right to bodily integrity for sheriff's deputy to drive drunk at night without lights, hit the person's car, and then flee leaving person to die.
QI for deputy.
media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub...
I will simply never recover from reading this sentence:
"Since Georgia implemented work requirements in 2020, they have spent twice as much on Deloitte consultants and administrative costs as on healthcare for people."
As sociologist of crime and punishment, I wish they asked people with real expertise in crime patterns... This is so depressing. Violent crime has been in decline for a long time, this is part of that trend, and there is a lot of research about why that could be reported on.
23.01.2026 23:37 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
"It makes my benefits less special when everyone can receive them. How am I supposed to enjoy my taxpayer-funded healthcare knowing a two-month-old infant is getting the same?"
www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/now...
NEW: Lab practices at the drug testing company Averhealth have been faulted by its own accreditor, and the company has been targeted in lawsuits and dropped by two child welfare agencies, a ProPublica investigation found.
20.01.2026 14:00 — 👍 368 🔁 139 💬 6 📌 2Dr. West was a student of Dr. Louise Stokes Hunter, UVA’s first Black woman graduate, and I got to know Dr. West in my time researching Dr. Hunter. If you ever use GPS, thank this amazing woman!
20.01.2026 00:27 — 👍 400 🔁 137 💬 3 📌 1
John Birch Society having a totally normal moment.
20.01.2026 03:27 — 👍 6039 🔁 938 💬 212 📌 119Sounds fun!
18.01.2026 04:53 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I need more “libertine 'expressive conduct'” in my life, please!
18.01.2026 04:52 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0