Dean Spade

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Dean Spade
Spade in 2015
Born1977 (age 47–48)
EducationColumbia University (BA)
University of California, Los Angeles (JD)
Occupation(s)Lawyer, activist, writer, professor
EmployerSeattle University School of Law
Known forTransgender activism
WebsiteOfficial website

Dean Spade (born 1977) is an American lawyer, transgender activist, writer, and associate professor of law at Seattle University School of Law. Since graduating from UCLA School of Law in 2001, Spade has organized a number of activist projects such as the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit providing free legal services to genderqueer marginalized groups in New York City. Spade entered academia as the 2009–2010 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law, followed by his role as the Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School. Throughout his career, Spade has written numerous articles, books, papers, and zines, and has also directed a documentary titled Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!.

Early life and education

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Spade grew up in rural Virginia, the child of a single mother who had often relied 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, getting a summer job between grades six and seven to clean and paint rental apartments for additional income.[2] His mother died of lung cancer when he was 14. 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,[4] 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.[5]

Career

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Activism

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In 2002, Spade founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP), 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.[6] He was a staff attorney at SRLP from 2002 to 2006, when he presented testimony to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission[7] and helped achieve a major victory for transgender youth in foster care in the Jean Doe v. Bell case.[8]

Spade directed the 2015 documentary Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back! about a movement in Seattle pushing back against a pinkwashing tour funded by the Israeli consulate.[9][10] Since 2012, Spade has been involved with the No New Youth Jail campaign in order to stop the building of a new jail in Seattle.[11] The campaign had shifted its focus to closing the jail once it opened in late 2019.[12] Spade's activism in Seattle has also included working with the Seattle chapter of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA),[13] noting that Spade identifies as a Jewish transgender activist.[14]

Academia

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Spade's academic career began when he was nominated to become the 2009–2010 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law,[15] the Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at the UCLA Law School and Harvard Law School, and was selected to give the 2009–2010 James A. Thomas Lecture at Yale Law School. 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 on 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] In 2009, he received a Jesse Dukeminier Award[21][22] for the article "Documenting Gender".[23] In May 2010,The Advocate named Spade one of their "Forty Under 40".[24]

Spade's 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.[25] 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 as a finalist for the 24th Lambda Literary Award in the category of Transgender Nonfiction.[26][27] His second book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), was published in October 2020 through Verso books.[28] His third book, Love in a F*cked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell Together, was published by Algonquin Books in January 2025. In the past, Spade had also written a zine titled Piss and Vinegar (2002), telling the story of his transphobic arrest along with sociologist Craig Willse during the 2002 World Economic Forum protests in New York City. Mimi Nguyen interviewed Spade and Willse about the experience in Maximumrocknroll.[29]

Collaborations

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Spade has collaborated extensively in the past, including editing two special issues of Sexuality Research and Social Policy with Paisley Currah[30] and coauthoring a guide to Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men with Dr. Nick Gorton.[31] Spade worked frequently with Craig Willse, their collaborative projects including I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal,[32] which is a manifesto and Facebook group. Willse and Spade were also the co-creators of MAKE, both a paper zine from 1999–2001 and website from 2001–2007.[33] In 2009, Utne Reader named Spade and Tyrone Boucher on their list of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" for their collaborative project Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism.[34][35]

Selected Works

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  • "Resisting medicine, re/modeling gender". Berkeley Women's Law Journal. 18 (1): 15–39. 2003.

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. ^ 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. ^ 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.
  5. ^ Dean Spade (September 2003). "Resisting Medicine, Re/modeling Gender" (PDF). Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice.
  6. ^ "SRLP (Sylvia Rivera Law Project)". SRLP (Sylvia Rivera Law Project). Retrieved 2017-10-11.
  7. ^ "NCLR: press center > 2005 > press release". www.nclrights.org. Archived from the original on 2013-04-08. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
  8. ^ "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.
  9. ^ "pinkwashingexposed". pinkwashingexposed. 2022-12-26. Retrieved 2025-11-09.
  10. ^ "Pinkwashing Exposed – Dean Spade". Retrieved 2025-11-09.
  11. ^ "No New Youth Jail – Dean Spade". Retrieved 2025-11-09.
  12. ^ "CLOSE THE YOUTH JAIL NOW!". CLOSE THE YOUTH JAIL NOW!. Retrieved 2025-11-24.
  13. ^ Natalie Oswin (ed.). "Interview with Dean Spade". Archived from the original on 2016-06-11. Retrieved 2016-08-08.
  14. ^ Dean Spade (January 15, 2016). "Creating Change: Pinkwashing ICE, Pinkwashing Israel". Retrieved April 2, 2016. As a Jewish trans activist...
  15. ^ "W. Haywood Burns Chair in Human & Civil Rights". CUNY School of Law. Retrieved 2025-11-09.
  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 - CUNY School of Law". Archived from the original on 2010-06-09. Retrieved 2010-07-03.
  22. ^ "Past Volumes - Dukeminier Awards Journal - Williams Institute". Williams Institute. Archived from the original on 2017-10-12. Retrieved 2017-10-12.
  23. ^ Dean, Spade (2008). "Documenting Gender". Hastings L.J. 59.
  24. ^ "Forty Under 40". www.advocate.com. Retrieved 2025-11-09.
  25. ^ "Dean Spade on Prison Abolition and Anti-Transgender Violence, and FIERCE Radicalizes the Creating Change Conference". outfm.org. Archived from the original on 2012-05-23. Retrieved 2025-11-25.
  26. ^ Spade, Dean (2011-03-01). Gender is Compliance: Trans Politics and Law Reform in a Neoliberal Landscape. South End Press. ISBN 978-0-89608-796-5. Archived from the original on 2010-05-16. Retrieved 2010-06-15.
  27. ^ Staff, Windy City (2012-03-20). "24th Annual Lambda Literary Award finalists announced". Windy City Times. Retrieved 2025-11-24.
  28. ^ "Mutual Aid".
  29. ^ Interview in Maximumrocknroll Archived 2010-08-07 at the Wayback Machine accessed 6-17-10
  30. ^ 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.
  31. ^ 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
  32. ^ I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal Archived 2009-12-14 at the Wayback Machine accessed 6-17-10
  33. ^ "this is what we make". makezine.enoughenough.org. Archived from the original on 2010-05-27. Retrieved 2010-06-07.
  34. ^ Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism accessed 6-17-10
  35. ^ "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World: Tyrone Boucher and Dean Spade: Cocreators, Enough." 'Utne Reader' November–December 2009.
  36. ^ Spade, Dean. "Normal Life. Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law". Duke University Press.
  37. ^ Spade, Dean. "Una "vida normal". Violencia administrativa. Políticas trans críticas y los límites del derecho". Bellaterra Ediciones.
  38. ^ Spade, Dean (2022). Apoyo mutuo. Construir solidaridad en sociedades en crisis. ISBN 978-84-124538-8-1.
  39. ^ "Mutuo appoggio – Dean Spade". Edizioni Malamente.
  40. ^ "Apoio Mútuo: construindo solidariedade durante essa crise (e a próxima) – Dean Spade". Criação Humana.
  41. ^ "Suport mutu. Construir la solidaritat en temps de crisi". Llegir en Català.
  42. ^ "Vzájemná pomoc: Jak v krizi upevňovat solidaritu". Databazeknih.cz.
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