I went to law school which is a 3-year program in the US that is focused primarily on memorizing certain doctrines and taking exams that test whether you can apply those doctrines to help prepare for the bar exam. If… — Dean Spade Copy Share Image
Because my graduate academic training at law school was not one that included most of the intellectual traditions I find useful for understanding the… — Dean Spade Copy Share
One of the concepts I was having trouble illustrating was the concept that administrative systems create narrow categories of gender and force people into… — Dean Spade Copy Share
Let’s be gentle with ourselves and each other and fierce as we fight oppression. — Dean Spade Copy Share
More conservative advocacy work often encourages portrayals of trans people as people who deserve rights. Deservingness, of course, corresponds to national racial, gender and… — Dean Spade Copy Share
Instead of focusing on what the law says about trans people, which is really what the law is saying about itself as a protector… — Dean Spade Copy Share
In addition to encouraging us to participate in narratives of "deservingness" that cast large parts of our constituencies as "undeserving," legal reform strategies encourage… — Dean Spade Copy Share
"Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all… — Dean Spade Copy Share
I am interested in recent scholarly work examining the emergence of women's studies and ethnic studies departments and the development of the neoliberal university. — Dean Spade Copy Share
Choosing an agenda that supports the apparatuses of racial violence always pays better. — Dean Spade Copy Share
My work is heavily influenced by critiques that many critical intellectual traditions, especially Critical Race Theory, have made of reform projects focused on legal… — Dean Spade Copy Share
Legal reform organizations are usually trying to portray their constituents as "hard workers," as "not criminals," as citizens, as part of normative family arrangements,… — Dean Spade Copy Share
One particular debate that I have seen play out again and again is whether trans people who have more traditional gender expressions or who… — Dean Spade Copy Share
There are sharply different, competing models of what trans advocacy looks like - those that seek to follow the path laid out by the… — Dean Spade Copy Share
Legal reform has significant dangers: changing only the window-dressing of harmful systems but leaving the violence of the systems in tact, failing to provide… — Dean Spade Copy Share
Law reforms in the US, ostensibly enacted to prohibit racism, have proven ineffective because they focus on bad intentions of individuals and fail to… — Dean Spade Copy Share
