Dean Spade

Dean Spade (born 1977) is an American lawyer, writer, trans activist, and associate professor of law at Seattle University School of Law. 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. Spade was a staff attorney at SRLP from 2002 to 2006, during which time he presented testimony to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commissionhttp://www.nclrights.org/site/PageServer?pagename=press_pr_prison_release_081905 , accessed 7-2-10 and helped achieve a major victory for transgender youth in foster care in the ''Jean Doe v. Bell'' case. Spade was also involved with the campaign in 2009 to stop Seattle from building a new jail.Holt, Emily (2/6/09)
"Activists oppose new Seattle jail proposal"
. ''The Spectator''.http://srlp.org/seattle , accessed 7-2-10

''The Advocate'' named Spade one of their "Forty Under 40" in May 2010."Forty Under 40."
'The Advocate' May 2010. ''Utne Reader'' named Spade and Tyrone Boucher on their list of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" in 2009,"50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World: Tyrone Boucher and Dean Spade: Cocreators, Enough."
'Utne Reader' November–December 2009. for their collaborative project ''Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism''.Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism
accessed 6-17-10

Spade was the 2009-2010 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY Law School, 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 for the article "Documenting Gender". 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. He has also written about the limitations of the law's ability to address issues of inequity and injustice. 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."Dean Spade on Prison Abolition and Anti-Transgender Violence"
Out FM on WBAI, 1/30/12 accessed 2-20-12 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.
Spade, Dean (2011). Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. South End Press: New York.


"24th Annual Lambda Literary Award Finalists Announced."
'Entertainment Weekly' March 2012 accessed 3-25-12

Spade has collaborated extensively in the past, including editing two special issues of '' Sexuality Research and Social Policy'' with Paisley CurrahCurrah, Paisley and Dean Spade, guest co-editors. (2007). "The State We're In: Locations of Coercion and Resistance in Trans Policy, Part I." Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of National Sexuality Resource Center IV (iv). Articles in PDF available online a

/ref> and coauthoring a guide to Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men with Dr. Nick Gorton.Gorton N, Buth J, and Spade D
Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men: A Guide For Health Care Providers
Lyon-Martin Women's Health Services. San Francisco, CA. 2005. Spade has collaborated particularly frequently with sociologist Craig Willse. Their collaborative projects include ''I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal'',
accessed 6-17-10 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).MAKE zine archives
accessed 6-17-10 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''.Interview in Maximumrocknroll
accessed 6-17-10

Works

Books

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*

Anthologies

* "Out of time: from gay liberation to prison abolition: Building an abolitionist trans & queer movement with everything we've got" (with Morgan Bassichis & Alexander Lee), in ''Captive Genders : Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex'', eds Nat Smith & Eric A. Stanley (Oakland, CA : AK Press, 2011.)
* "Fighting to win", in ''That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation'', ed. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Brooklyn : Soft Skull Press : Distributed by Publishers Group West, 2008.)
* "Compliance is gendered: struggling for gender self-determination in a hostile economy", in ''Transgender Rights'', ed. Paisley Currah (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006.)
* "Undermining gender regulation", in ''Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity'', ed. Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (Emeryville, CA: Seal Press, 2006.)
*Afterword in ''Exile & Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation'' by Eli Clare (1999)

Personal life

Spade grew up in rural Virginia, the child of a single mother who was sometimes on welfare. 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. At the age of 14 his mother died of lung cancer. Following her death he lived with two sets of foster parents.

Spade graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College of Columbia University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and women's studies, and then graduated from the UCLA School of Law in 2001. He has written about seeking a mastectomy for sex-reassignment 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.

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

References

External links

*

Dean Spade: Seattle University School of Law

{{DEFAULTSORT:Spade, Dean
1977 births
American civil rights activists
Barnard College alumni
City University of New York faculty
Harvard Law School faculty
Jewish American writers
Jewish anti-Zionism in the United States
LGBT Jews
LGBT people from New York (state)
LGBT people from Virginia
LGBT rights activists from the United States
American LGBT writers
Living people
New York (state) lawyers
Prison abolitionists
Seattle University faculty
Transgender law in the United States
LGBT lawyers
Transgender men
Transgender Jews
Transgender rights activists
Transgender writers
UCLA School of Law faculty
Transgender academics
Transgender studies academics
21st-century American Jews
21st-century LGBT people