Dean Spade

Throughout his career, Spade has written numerous articles, books, papers, and zines, and has also directed a documentary titled Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!.

• Name — Dean Spade • Born — 1977 • Education — Barnard College (BA) University of California, Los Angeles (JD) • Occupation — Lawyer, activist, writer, professor • Employer — Seattle University School of Law • Known for — Transgender activism

Spade grew up in rural Virginia, the child of a single mother who had often relied 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, getting a summer job between grades six and seven to clean and paint rental apartments for additional income. His mother died of lung cancer when he was 14. Following her death, he lived with two sets of foster parents. Spade graduated summa cum laude from Barnard College 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 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.

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. He was a staff attorney at SRLP from 2002 to 2006, when he presented testimony to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission and helped achieve a major victory for transgender youth in foster care in the Jean Doe v. Bell case. 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. 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. The campaign had shifted its focus to closing the jail once it opened in late 2019. Spade's activism in Seattle has also included working with the Seattle chapter of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA), noting that Spade identifies as a Jewish transgender activist.

Spade's academic career began when he was nominated to become the 2009–2010 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law, 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. He has also written about the limitations of the law's ability to address issues of inequity and injustice. In 2009, he received a Jesse Dukeminier Award for the article "Documenting Gender". In May 2010,The Advocate named Spade one of their "Forty Under 40". 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. 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. His second book, Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next), was published in October 2020 through Verso books. 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.

Spade has collaborated extensively in the past, including editing two special issues of Sexuality Research and Social Policy with Paisley Currah and coauthoring a guide to Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men with Dr. Nick Gorton. Spade worked frequently with Craig Willse, their collaborative projects including I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal, 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. 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.

* * * • Second expanded edition published by Duke University Press (2015). Translated to Spanish by Bellaterra Edicions. • Translated to Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, and Czech. * *