Dr Sen Raj explains how love, hate, rage, fear and disgust shape our political claims. Law is not solely comprised of logic and reason, but is replete with emotion. Disgust is mobilised in cases about queer sex; hate crime legislation assumes transphobia and racism are individual aberrations rather than institutional problems; anti-discrimination laws only protect certain identities; and refugee laws seek performances of authentic queerness that are intelligible to white decision-makers.

For Trans Awareness Week, Teddy Cook talks us through developments in peer-led policy, research and law reform. Teddy introduces new findings from the largest Australian sexual health survey for trans and gender diverse people, explains recent reforms in changing identity documents, advocates for appropriate questions in data collection, rejects deficit-based, pathologizing gatekeeper models and argues that we should be talking about gender euphoria instead of gender dysphoria.

In Episode 6, Jessica Ison discusses intersections of queer liberation and animal liberation. Tracing back Mardi Gras’ transition from a protest to a parade where police, military and banks now march alongside LGBTIQA+ communities, Jess warns of the dangers of homonormativity and explains why queers should resist marriage. She critiques the exclusion of Animal Liberation floats in a context where meat and livestock industries market dead animal products wrapped in rainbow flags in the name of ‘pride’.

In Episode 5 of Thinking Justice, Dr Dinesh Wadiwel talks us through different theoretical perspectives on justice. We focus on the work of critical race theorists, disability theorists, feminist scholars and anti-capitalist thinkers and ask what history tells us about the material realities of domination, oppression and violence. How should we respond to the fundamentally unjust societies in which we live? How do we imagine what justice looks like?

In this episode we are joined by Zaahir Edries, former President of the Muslim Legal Network NSW, to discuss the broadening of police powers, erosion of civil liberties and diminishing human rights under the name of counter-terrorism. In the wake of the Christchurch Shootings, we consider how Islamophobia has been enshrined in Australia’s public policies over two decades to prime the conditions for terror attacks by white supremacists.

With the Animal Justice Party recently elected, we are joined by Dr Siobhan O’Sullivan to consider opportunities for animal advocates in Parliament. We discuss the push to recognise animals as having legal personhood (rather than property status), ‘ag-gag’ laws which prevent whistle-blowers from exposing cruelty by prohibiting undercover filming, and the inconsistent definitions of terms like ‘free range’, ‘organic’ or ‘grain-fed’ in labelling practices.

This week Dr Emma A. Jane and Dr Nicole A. Vincent explore the escalation of online misogyny and gendered cyberhate, including trolling, doxing, ‘revenge porn’, deep fakes and sextortion. We discuss Gamergate, the targeting of women in media, politics and tech, and how perpetrators are not deterred by decreasing online anonymity. Facing a lack of legal remedies, we discuss the role of technology and individual ‘digilante’ tactics (naming and shaming) in capturing, tracking and bringing accountabilit

In the first episode of Thinking Justice we explore the history of homosexual conversion therapy. Conjoint Professor Ivan Crozier, a historian of sexuality and psychiatry, discusses the legacies of sexology and medicine, the criminalisation of sexual perversions, corrective treatments in Australia's gay prisons, and the risks of current regulatory responses.