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

Seattle University School of Law Seattle University School of Law, or Seattle Law School, or SU Law (formerly University of Puget Sound School of Law) is the law school affiliated with Seattle University, the Northwest's largest independent university. The School is accredite ...

. In 2002, he founded the

Sylvia Rivera Law Project The Sylvia Rivera Law Project (SRLP) is a legal aid organization based in New York City at the Miss Major-Jay Toole Building for Social Justice that serves low-income or people of color who are transgender, intersex and/or gender non-conforming. ...

, a non-profit law collective in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

that provides free legal services to

transgender A transgender (often abbreviated as trans) person is someone whose gender identity or gender expression does not correspond with their sex assigned at birth. Many transgender people experience dysphoria, which they seek to alleviate through tr ...

intersex Intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals that, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "do not fit typical bina ...

and

gender non-conforming Gender variance or gender nonconformity is behavior or gender expression by an individual that does not match masculine or feminine gender norms. A gender-nonconforming person may be variant in their gender identity, being transgender or non-bina ...

people who are low-income and/or

people of color The term "person of color" ( : people of color or persons of color; abbreviated POC) is primarily used to describe any person who is not considered "white". In its current meaning, the term originated in, and is primarily associated with, the U ...

. Spade was a staff attorney at SRLP from 2002 to 2006, during which time he presented testimony to the

National Prison Rape Elimination Commission The National Prison Rape Elimination Commission (NPREC) was a U.S. bipartisan panel established by the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act. The commission was charged with studying sexual assaults in U.S. jails and prisons and presenting a report b ...

http://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 ''Utne Reader'' (also known as ''Utne'') ( ) is a digital digest that collects and reprints articles on politics, culture, and the environment, generally from alternative media sources including journals, newsletters, weeklies, zines, music, and ...

'' 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 City University of New York School of Law (CUNY School of Law) is a public law school in New York City. It was founded in 1983 as part of the City University of New York. CUNY School of Law was established as a public interest law school with ...

, the Williams Institute Law Teaching Fellow at

UCLA Law School The UCLA School of Law is one of 12 professional schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA Law has been consistently ranked by '' U.S. News & World Report'' as one of the top 20 law schools in the United States since the inception ...

and

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

, and was selected to give the 2009-2010 James A. Thomas Lecture at

Yale Law School Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...

. He received a

Jesse Dukeminier Jesse Dukeminier (August 12, 1925 – April 20, 2003) was a professor of law for 40 years at the University of California, Los Angeles, and authored or co-authored a significant number of articles and textbooks in the areas of property law, wills ...

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 Class or The Class may refer to: Common uses not otherwise categorized * Class (biology), a taxonomic rank * Class (knowledge representation), a collection of individuals or objects * Class (philosophy), an analytical concept used differently ...

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 The war on terror, officially the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT), is an ongoing international Counterterrorism, counterterrorism military campaign initiated by the United States following the September 11 attacks. The main targets of the campa ...

transgender rights A transgender person is someone whose gender identity is inconsistent or not culturally associated with the sex they were assigned at birth and also with the gender role that is associated with that sex. They may have, or may intend to establi ...

, 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 WBAI (99.5 FM) is a non-commercial, listener-supported radio station licensed to New York, New York. Its programming is a mixture of political news, talk and opinion from a left-leaning, liberal or progressive viewpoint, and eclectic music. ...

, 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 South End Press was a non-profit book publisher run on a model of participatory economics. It was founded in 1977 by Michael Albert, Lydia Sargent, Juliet Schor, among others, in Boston's South End. It published books written by political activi ...

and nominated for a 2011

Lambda Literary Award Lambda Literary Awards, also known as the "Lammys", are awarded yearly by Lambda Literary to recognize the crucial role LGBTQ writers play in shaping the world. The Lammys celebrate the very best in LGBTQ literature.The awards were instituted i ...

in the category of Transgender Nonfiction. Spade, Dean (2011). Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law.

: 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 ''Sexuality Research and Social Policy'' is a peer-reviewed academic journal and an official journal of the National Sexuality Resource Center, published by Springer Science+Business Media. The journal covers research on human sexuality, includin ...

'' 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 Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin M ...

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 The World Economic Forum (WEF) is an international non-governmental and lobbying organisation based in Cologny, canton of Geneva, Switzerland. It was founded on 24 January 1971 by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab. The foundation, ...

protests in New York City. Mimi Nguyen interviewed Spade and Willse about the experience in ''

Maximumrocknroll ''Maximumrocknroll'', often written as ''Maximum Rocknroll'' and usually abbreviated as ''MRR'', is a not-for-profit monthly zine of punk subculture. Based in San Francisco, ''MRR'' focuses on punk rock and hardcore music, and primarily featu ...

''.Interview in Maximumrocknroll
accessed 6-17-10

Works

Books

* *

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 Barnard College of Columbia University is a private women's liberal arts college in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was founded in 1889 by a group of women led by young student activist Annie Nathan Meyer, who petitioned Columbia ...

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

with a

Bachelor of Arts Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four years ...

degree in

political science Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

and

women's studies Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppress ...

, and then graduated from the

UCLA School of Law The UCLA School of Law is one of 12 professional schools at the University of California, Los Angeles. UCLA Law has been consistently ranked by '' U.S. News & World Report'' as one of the top 20 law schools in the United States since the inception ...

in 2001. He has written about seeking a

mastectomy Mastectomy is the medical term for the surgical removal of one or both breasts, partially or completely. A mastectomy is usually carried out to treat breast cancer. In some cases, women believed to be at high risk of breast cancer have the operat ...

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 Non-binary and genderqueer are umbrella terms for gender identities that are not solely male or femaleidentities that are outside the gender binary. Non-binary identities fall under the transgender umbrella, since non-binary people typicall ...

expression. Spade is

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

, 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