Dean Spade
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.
Dean Spade

The Laura Flanders Show · YouTube: https– View/save archived versions on archive.org · CC BY 3.0
- Name
- Dean Spade
- Born
- 1977
- Education
- Barnard College (BA) University of California, Los Angeles (JD)
- Occupation
- Lawyer, activist, writer, professor
- Known for
- Transgender activism
VALÉORINE Encyclopedia
VALÉORINE documentary reading
Documentary summary
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.
Admitted source layer · organised and presented by VALÉORINE
Note VALÉORINE
No house-authored Note is published until its assertions and sources pass the VALÉORINE evidence contract. The documentary article remains available in full while that enrichment is being consolidated.
Documentary enrichment in progress · no unsupported statement published
Reference Check
Propose documentary evidence for Dean Spade. A contribution is never written directly as fact: identity, source, rights and evidence gates still decide.
Sign in to contribute
Documentary evidence
Evidence Panel
not yet certified
- Identity
- unresolved
- Independent source families
- 0
- Admitted assertions
- 0
- Open conflicts
- 0
Authority files
wikidata · Q5246478 · wikipedia · Dean Spade
In this article
Biography
Biography
Throughout his career, Spade has written numerous articles, books, papers, and zines, and has also directed a documentary titled Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!.

Lawyer and writer
Vannprfrs29
Key facts
Key facts
• 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
Early life and education
Early life and education
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.
Activism
Activism
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.
Academia
Academia
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.
Collaborations
Collaborations
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.
Selected Works
Selected Works
* * * • Second expanded edition published by Duke University Press (2015). Translated to Spanish by Bellaterra Edicions. • Translated to Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Catalan, and Czech. * *
Notes from the source article
Cited by Wikipedia
Notes from the source article
These works are cited by the source article, in its own numbering. They are recorded as its citations, not as sources VALÉORINE has verified.
- 1.Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism: Who We Are. Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism.
- 2.Dean Spade. BE PROFESSIONAL!. Harvard Journal of Law & Gender. Winter 2010.
- 3.Cynthia Lee. Transgender lawyer's appeal for justice. UCLA Today. May 22, 2007.
- 4.Dean Spade. Resisting Medicine, Re/modeling Gender. Berkeley Journal of Gender, Law & Justice. September 2003.
- 5.SRLP (Sylvia Rivera Law Project).
- 6.NCLR: press center > 2005 > press release. www.nclrights.org.
- 7.Landmark Foster Care Case: Jean Doe vs. Bell. SRLP (Sylvia Rivera Law Project). 2012-09-26.
- 8.pinkwashingexposed. 2022-12-26.
- 9.Pinkwashing Exposed – Dean Spade.
- 10.No New Youth Jail – Dean Spade.
- 11.CLOSE THE YOUTH JAIL NOW!.
- 12.Natalie Oswin. Interview with Dean Spade.
- 13.Dean Spade. Creating Change: Pinkwashing ICE, Pinkwashing Israel. January 15, 2016.
- 14.W. Haywood Burns Chair in Human & Civil Rights. CUNY School of Law.
- 15.Spade, Dean. Be Professional. Harvard Journal of Law and Gender. Winter 2010.
- 16.Spade, Dean. 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. Winter 2011.
- 17.the dirty details of my new salary Enough. www.enoughenough.org. 26 April 2009.
- 18.Spade, Dean. Intersectional Resistance and Law Reform. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society. 38. 4. 1031–1055. Summer 2013. 10.1086/669574.
- 19.Spade, Dean. For Those Considering Law School. Harvard Unbound. 6. 2010.
- 20.Dean Spade - CUNY School of Law.
- 21.Past Volumes - Dukeminier Awards Journal - Williams Institute. Williams Institute.
- 22.Dean, Spade. Documenting Gender. Hastings L.J. 59. 2008.
- 23.Forty Under 40. www.advocate.com.
- 24.Dean Spade on Prison Abolition and Anti-Transgender Violence, and FIERCE Radicalizes the Creating Change Conference. outfm.org.
- 25.Spade, Dean. Gender is Compliance: Trans Politics and Law Reform in a Neoliberal Landscape. South End Press. 2011-03-01. 978-0-89608-796-5.
- 26.Staff, Windy City. 24th Annual Lambda Literary Award finalists announced. Windy City Times. 2012-03-20.
- 27.Mutual Aid.
- 28.Interview in Maximumrocknroll accessed 6-17-10
- 29.Spade, Dean. The state we're in: Locations of coercion and resistance in trans policy, part 1. Sexuality Research and Social Policy: Journal of National Sexuality Research Center. 5. 1. 1–4. 2008-03-01. 1553-6610.
- 30.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, California. 2005.
- 31.I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal accessed 6-17-10
- 32.this is what we make. makezine.enoughenough.org.
- 33."50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World: Tyrone Boucher and Dean Spade: Cocreators, Enough." 'Utne Reader' November–December 2009.
- 34.Spade, Dean. Normal Life. Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law. Duke University Press.
- 35.Spade, Dean. Una "vida normal". Violencia administrativa. Políticas trans críticas y los límites del derecho. Bellaterra Ediciones.
- 36.Spade, Dean. Apoyo mutuo. Construir solidaridad en sociedades en crisis. 2022. 978-84-124538-8-1.
- 37.Mutuo appoggio – Dean Spade. Edizioni Malamente.
- 38.Apoio Mútuo: construindo solidariedade durante essa crise (e a próxima) – Dean Spade. Criação Humana.
- 39.Suport mutu. Construir la solidaritat en temps de crisi. Llegir en Català.
- 40.Vzájemná pomoc: Jak v krizi upevňovat solidaritu. Databazeknih.cz.
References
Citations
References
Each reference names the institution holding it, so a reader may go to the document itself.
reference work
Partially resolvedreference work
Partially resolved
The Encyclopedia exists whether or not anything is for sale. Corrections are recorded rather than overwritten, and every version of this record is kept. Published 25 August 2026.
Elsewhere in Books
39,285 published records in this field, each with its sources named.
- Deacon BerdaksiAuthor
- Dead HistoryTerminology
- Dean KoontzAuthor
- Dean LoreyAuthor
- Debbie FordAuthor
- Debiprasad ChattopadhyayAuthor
- Debito ArudouAuthor
- Debora GregerAuthor
Best supported in this field
For owners
Own a work by Dean Spade?
A specialist will read what you send and tell you what the house can establish, what it cannot, and whether the object is suited to sale. There is no charge and no obligation. The object stays with you throughout; nothing is shipped to us unless it is arranged in writing beforehand.