Dean Spade | |
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 Spade in 2015 | |
| Born | 1977 (age 46–47) |
| Education | Columbia University (BA) University of California, Los Angeles (JD) |
| Occupation(s) | Lawyer, activist, author |
| Employer | Seattle University School of Law |
| Known for | Transgender activism |
| Website | Official website |
Dean Spade (born 1977) is an American lawyer, writer, trans activist, and associate professor of law at Seattle University School of Law.
Spade grew up in rural Virginia, the child of a single mother who was sometimes 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 and moved on to painting summer rentals for additional income. [2] At the age of 14, his mother died of lung cancer. 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, [3] 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. [4]
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. [5] Spade was a staff attorney at SRLP from 2002 to 2006, during which time he presented testimony to the National Prison Rape Elimination Commission [6] and helped achieve a major victory for transgender youth in foster care in the Jean Doe v. Bell case. [7] Spade was also involved with the campaign in 2009 to stop Seattle from building a new jail. [8] [9]
The Advocate named Spade one of their "Forty Under 40" in May 2010. [10] Utne Reader named Spade and Tyrone Boucher on their list of "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World" in 2009, [11] for their collaborative project Enough: The Personal Politics of Resisting Capitalism. [12]
Spade was the 2009-2010 Haywood Burns Chair at CUNY School of Law, 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 [13] [14] for the article "Documenting Gender". [15] 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. [16] [17] [18] He has also written about the limitations of the law's ability to address issues of inequity and injustice. [19] [20] 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. [21] 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. [22] [23]
Spade has collaborated extensively in the past, including editing two special issues of Sexuality Research and Social Policy with Paisley Currah [24] and coauthoring a guide to Medical Therapy and Health Maintenance for Transgender Men with Dr. Nick Gorton. [25] Spade has collaborated particularly frequently with sociologist Craig Willse. Their collaborative projects include I Still Think Marriage is the Wrong Goal, [26] 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). [27] 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 . [28]
Spade is Jewish, [29] and has worked closely with the Seattle chapter of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid (QuAIA). [30]
The Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), also known as the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, has been observed annually from its inception on November 20 to memorialize those who have been murdered as a result of transphobia. The day was founded to draw attention to the continued violence directed toward transgender people.
Stephen Thomas Whittle, is a British legal scholar and activist with the transgender activist group Press for Change. Since 2007, he has been Professor of Equalities Law in the School of Law at Manchester Metropolitan University. Between 2007 and 2009, he was president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH). Having been assigned female at birth, he is described as "a radical lesbian before his sex change and now a leading commentator on gender issues", who after the Gender Recognition Act 2004 came into force in April 2005, achieved legal recognition as a man and so was able to marry his female partner.
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. The organization was formed in August 2002 by attorney and transgender civil rights activist, Dean Spade. The project was named for Sylvia Rivera, a transgender activist and veteran of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, who died the same year that SRLP was formed.
Marsha P. Johnson was an American gay liberation activist and self-identified drag queen. Known as an outspoken advocate for gay rights, Johnson was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969.
Sylvia Rivera was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who was also a noted community worker in New York. Rivera, who identified as a drag queen for most of her life and later as a transgender person, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front.
CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies was founded in 1991 by professor Martin Duberman as the first university-based research center in the United States dedicated to the study of historical, cultural, and political issues of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals and communities. Housed at the Graduate Center, CUNY, CLAGS sponsors public programs and conferences, offers fellowships to individual scholars, and functions as a conduit of information. It also serves as a national center for the promotion of scholarship that fosters social change.
Jamison "James" Green is a prominent transgender rights activist, author, and educator focused on policy work.
The Audre Lorde Project is a Brooklyn, New York–based organization for LGBT people of color. The organization concentrates on community organizing and radical nonviolent activism around progressive issues within New York City, especially relating to LGBT communities, AIDS and HIV activism, pro-immigrant activism, prison reform and organizing among youth of color. It is named for the lesbian-feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde and was founded in 1994.
The transgender rights movement is a movement to promote the legal status of transgender people and to eliminate discrimination and violence against transgender people regarding housing, employment, public accommodations, education, and health care. A major goal of transgender activism is to allow changes to identification documents to conform with a person's current gender identity without the need for gender-affirming surgery or any medical requirements, which is known as gender self-identification. It is part of the broader LGBT rights movements.
Paisley Currah is political scientist and author, known for his work on the transgender rights movement. His book, Sex Is as Sex Does: Governing Transgender Identity examines the politics of sex classification in the United States. He is a professor of political science and women's and gender studies at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. He was born in Ontario, Canada, received a B.A. from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario and an M.A and Ph.D. in government from Cornell University. He lives in Brooklyn.
Founded in 2009, Against Equality (AE) is an online archive of writings and arts, and a series of books, by queer and trans writers that critique mainstream LGBT politics. AE has focused on issues regarding the institution of marriage, the U.S. military, and the prison-industrial complex via hate crime law.
Bali White is a researcher and writer interested in African, environmental, and gender studies. She is currently a Research Fellow at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). As trans woman, she is also a community organizer and advocate addressing transgender identity, legal, health care and social concerns at the national, state and local levels. Her research and activist work around transgender advocacy and ballroom community youth has been influential in the field of public health. She previously served on the National Advisory Board for the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health and managed the CDC-funded initiatives for young trans women and MSM in the ballroom community at the Hetrick-Martin Institute.
Transgender Awareness Week, observed November 13 to November 19, is a one-week celebration leading up to the Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDoR), which memorializes victims of transphobic violence. TDoR occurs annually on November 20, when transgender advocates raise awareness of the transgender community through education and advocacy activities.
Tiq Milan is an American writer, public speaker, activist, and strategic media consultant. He is currently a national spokesperson for GLAAD and the former senior media strategist of national news at GLAAD. Prior to his current roles, he was a mentor and teacher at the Hetrick-Martin Institute, an LGBTQ youth nonprofit organization in NYC. His advocacy, LGBTQ activism, and journalism has been recognized nationally.
Tourmaline is an American artist, filmmaker, activist, editor, and writer. She is a transgender woman who identifies as queer. Tourmaline is most notable for her work in transgender activism and economic justice, through her work with the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Critical Resistance and Queers for Economic Justice.
Chase Strangio is an American lawyer and transgender rights activist. He is the Deputy Director for Transgender Justice and staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Che Gossett is a trans femme writer, scholar, and archivist. They have written extensively on black and trans visibility, black trans aesthetics, racial capitalism, and queer, trans and black radicalism, resistance and abolition.
Homonormativity is the adoption of heteronormative ideals and constructs onto LGBT culture and identity. It is predicated on the assumption that the norms and values of heterosexuality should be replicated and performed among homosexual people. Those who assert this theory claim homonormativity selectively privileges cisgendered homosexuality as worthy of social acceptance.
As a Jewish trans activist...
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