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Dean Spade

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Dean Spade
Spade in 2015
Born1977 (age 46–47)
EducationColumbia University (BA)
University of California, Los Angeles (JD)
Occupation(s)Lawyer, activist, author
EmployerSeattle University School of Law
Known forTransgender activism
WebsiteOfficial website

Dean Spade (born 1977) is an American lawyer, writer, trans activist, and associate professor of law at Seattle University School of Law.

Early life and education

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Spade grew up in rural Virginia, the child of a single mother who was sometimes on welfare.[1] At the age of 9, he joined his mother and sister in cleaning houses and offices to make money. Two years later, he started cleaning by himself and moved on to painting summer rentals for additional income.[2] When he was 14 his mother died of lung cancer. Following her death, he lived with two sets of foster parents.[3]

Spade graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and women's studies,[3] and then graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 2001. He has written about seeking a mastectomy for gender-affirming surgery in Los Angeles during this time period, and how the reliance on a mental-health/disability model to gain access to such surgery did not fit a person with a non-binary gender expression.[4]

Career

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In 2002, he founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective in New York City that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color.[5] Spade was a staff attorney at SRLP from 2002 to 2006, during which time he presented testimony to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission[6] and helped achieve a major victory for transgender youth in foster care in the Jean Doe v. Bell case.[7] Spade was also involved with the campaign in 2009 to stop Seattle from building a new jail.[8][9]

The Advocate named Spade one of their "Forty Under 40" in May 2010.[10] Utne Reader named Spade and Tyrone Boucher on their list of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" in 2009,[11] for their collaborative project Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism.[12]

Spade was the 2009-2010 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law, the Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School, and was selected to give the 2009-2010 James A. Thomas Lecture at Yale Law School. He received a Jesse Dukeminier Award[13][14] for the article "Documenting Gender".[15] Spade has written extensively about his personal experience as a trans law professor and student. This includes writings on transphobia in higher education as well as the class privilege of being a professor.[16][17][18] He has also written about the limitations of the law's ability to address issues of inequity and injustice.[19][20] His research interests have included the impact of the War on Terror on transgender rights, the bureaucratization of trans identities, models of non-profit governance in social movements, and the limits of enhanced hate crime penalties.[21] His first book, Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, was released in January 2012 from South End Press and nominated for a 2011 Lambda Literary Award in the category of Transgender Nonfiction.[22][23] His second book Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) was published in October 2020 through Verso books. [24]

Spade has collaborated extensively in the past, including editing two special issues of Sexuality Research and Social Policy with Paisley Currah[25] and coauthoring a guide to Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men with Dr. Nick Gorton.[26] Spade has collaborated particularly frequently with sociologist Craig Willse. Their collaborative projects include I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal,[27] a manifesto and Facebook group. Willse and Spade were also the co-creators of MAKE, "propaganda for activist agitation", a paper zine (1999–2001) and website (2001–2007).[28] In the past, Spade has written other zines including Piss and Vinegar (2002), telling the story of his transphobic arrest during the 2002 World Economic Forum protests in New York City. Mimi Nguyen interviewed Spade and Willse about the experience in Maximumrocknroll.[29]

Political affiliations

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Spade is Jewish,[30] and has worked closely with the Seattle chapter of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA).[31]

Works

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  • Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. New York: South End Press. 2011. ISBN 9780896087965. OCLC 601132754. Second expanded edition published by Duke University Press (2015).[32] Translated to Spanish by Bellaterra Edicions.[33]
  • Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During this Crisis (and the next). New York: Verso Books. 2020. ISBN 9781839762123. Translated to Spanish,[34] Italian,[35] Portuguese,[36] Catalan,[37] and Czech.[38]

References

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  1. ^ "Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism: Who We Are". Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism.
  2. ^ Dean Spade (Winter 2010). "BE PROFESSIONAL!" (PDF). Harvard Journal of Law & Gender.
  3. ^ a b Cynthia Lee (May 22, 2007). "Transgender lawyer's appeal for justice". UCLA Today. Archived from the original on September 17, 2016. Retrieved August 8, 2016.
  4. ^ Dean Spade (September 2003). "Resisting Medicine, Re/modeling Gender" (PDF). Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice.
  5. ^ "SRLP (Sylvia Rivera Law Project)". SRLP (Sylvia Rivera Law Project). Retrieved 2017-10-11.
  6. ^ http://www.nclrights.org/site/PageServer?pagename=press_pr_prison_release_081905 Archived 2011-07-18 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 7-2-10
  7. ^ "Landmark Foster Care Case: Jean Doe vs. Bell". SRLP (Sylvia Rivera Law Project). 2012-09-26. Archived from the original on 2017-10-12. Retrieved 2017-10-11.
  8. ^ Holt, Emily (2/6/09). "Activists oppose new Seattle jail proposal" Archived 2009-10-04 at the Wayback Machine. The Spectator.
  9. ^ http://srlp.org/seattle Archived 2009-06-20 at the Wayback Machine, accessed 7-2-10
  10. ^ "Forty Under 40." 'The Advocate' May 2010.
  11. ^ "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World: Tyrone Boucher and Dean Spade: Cocreators, Enough." 'Utne Reader' November–December 2009.
  12. ^ Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism accessed 6-17-10
  13. ^ "Dean Spade - CUNY School of Law". Archived from the original on 2010-06-09. Retrieved 2010-07-03.
  14. ^ "Past Volumes - Dukeminier Awards Journal - Williams Institute". Williams Institute. Archived from the original on 2017-10-12. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  15. ^ Dean, Spade (2008). "Documenting Gender". Hastings L.J. 59.
  16. ^ Spade, Dean (Winter 2010). "Be Professional" (PDF). Harvard Journal of Law and Gender.
  17. ^ Spade, Dean (Winter 2011). "Some Very Basic Tips for Making Higher Education More Accessible to Trans Students and Rethinking How We Talk about Gendered Bodies". Radical Teacher. 92: 57–62 – via EBSCOHost.
  18. ^ "the dirty details of my new salary | Enough". www.enoughenough.org. 26 April 2009. Retrieved 2017-10-11.
  19. ^ Spade, Dean (Summer 2013). "Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 38 (4): 1031–1055. doi:10.1086/669574. S2CID 146177405.
  20. ^ Spade, Dean (2010). "For Those Considering Law School". Harvard Unbound. 6 – via EBSCOHost.
  21. ^ "Dean Spade on Prison Abolition and Anti-Transgender Violence", Out FM on WBAI, 1/30/12 Archived 2012-02-08 at the Wayback Machine accessed 2-20-12
  22. ^ Spade, Dean (2011). Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. South End Press: New York. ISBN 978-0-89608-796-5 [1] Archived 2010-05-16 at the Wayback Machine
  23. ^ "24th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced." 'Entertainment Weekly' March 2012 accessed 3-25-12
  24. ^ https://www.versobooks.com/products/2722-mutual-aid?srsltid=AfmBOooRbaabHKv0X55WfBUFiwptp-LWNweawqdaAyLlRtz_63KSs4iZ
  25. ^ Spade, Dean; Currah, Paisley (2008-03-01). "The state we're in: Locations of coercion and resistance in trans policy, part 1" (PDF). Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of National Sexuality Research Center. 5 (1): 1–4. doi:10.1525/srsp.2008.5.1.1. ISSN 1553-6610.
  26. ^ Gorton N, Buth J, and Spade D. Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men: A Guide For Health Care Providers Archived 2021-05-01 at the Wayback Machine Lyon-Martin Women's Health Services. San Francisco, California. 2005. ISBN 0-9773250-0-8
  27. ^ I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal Archived 2009-12-14 at the Wayback Machine accessed 6-17-10
  28. ^ MAKE zine archives Archived 2010-05-27 at the Wayback Machine accessed 6-17-10
  29. ^ Interview in Maximumrocknroll Archived 2010-08-07 at the Wayback Machine accessed 6-17-10
  30. ^ Dean Spade (January 15, 2016). "Creating Change: Pinkwashing ICE, Pinkwashing Israel". Retrieved April 2, 2016. As a Jewish trans activist...
  31. ^ Natalie Oswin (ed.). "Interview with Dean Spade". Archived from the original on 2016-06-11. Retrieved 2016-08-08.
  32. ^ Spade, Dean. "Normal Life. Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law". Duke University Press.
  33. ^ Spade, Dean. "Una "vida normal". Violencia administrativa. Políticas trans críticas y los límites del derecho". Bellaterra Ediciones.
  34. ^ Spade, Dean (23 April 2024). Apoyo mutuo. Construir solidaridad en sociedades en crisis. {{cite book}}: |website= ignored (help)
  35. ^ "Mutuo appoggio – Dean Spade". Edizioni Malamente.
  36. ^ "Apoio Mútuo: construindo solidariedade durante essa crise (e a próxima) – Dean Spade". Criação Humana.
  37. ^ "Suport mutu. Construir la solidaritat en temps de crisi". Llegir en Català.
  38. ^ "Vzájemná pomoc: Jak v krizi upevňovat solidaritu". Databazeknih.cz.
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