Dean Spade Quotes

“Burnout is the combination of resentment, exhaustion, shame, and frustration that make us lose connection to pleasure and passion in the work, and instead encounter difficult feelings like avoidance, compulsion, control, and anxiety. If it were just exhaustion we could take a break and rest and go back. But people who feel burnt out often feel they cannot return to the work or that the group or work they were part of is toxic.”

Work Rest Burnout

Book:Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis

Source: Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis

“Sometimes while I ride the subway I try to look at each person and imagine what they look like to someone who is totally in love with them. I think everyone has had someone look at them that way, whether it was a lover, or a parent, or a friend, whether they know it or not. It's a wonderful thing, to look at someone to whom I would never be attracted and think about what looking at them feels like to someone who is devouring every part of their image, who has invisible strings that are connected to this person tied to every part of their body. I think this fun pastime is a way of cultivating compassion. It feels good to think about people that way, and to use that part of my mind that I think is traditionally reserved for a tiny portion of people I'll meet in my life to appreciate the general public. I wish I thought about people like this more often. I think it's the opposite of what our culture teaches us to do. We prefer to pick people apart to find their flaws. Cultivating these feelings of love or appreciation for random people, and even for people I don't like, makes me a more forgiving and appreciative person toward myself and people I love. Also, it's just a really excellent pastime.”

Love Compassion

Author:Dean Spade

“When we feel bad, we often automatically decide that either we are bad or another person is bad. Both of these moves cause damage and distort the truth, which is that we are all navigating difficult conditions the best we can, and we all have a lot to learn and unlearn.”

Compassion Self Compassion Dialectics Cognitive Distortions

Book:Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis

Source: Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity in This Crisis

“My work is heavily influenced by critiques that many critical intellectual traditions, especially Critical Race Theory, have made of reform projects focused on legal equality.”

Made Race Theory Projects Intellectual Tradition Critical Focused Reform Critique

Author:Dean Spade

“'Normal Life' looks at the current moment in trans politics, understanding that it is often assumed that trans resistance strategies should mimic the lesbian and gay legal rights frameworks that have become so visible in recent decades.”

Should Looks Moments Understanding Rights Gay Normal Strategy Currents Decades Resistance Visible Framework Trans Normal Life Legal Rights

Author:Dean Spade

“I argue that legal equality has failed resistance movements aimed at transforming material conditions of violence, and that trans activists should take a decidedly different approach.”

Should Different Violence Conditions Movement Materials Approach Arguing Resistance Activist Transforming Trans Different Approach

Author:Dean Spade

“Critical Race Theory offers of discrimination frameworks as ways of understanding and eradicating racism. The focus on "discrimination" as the way to understand racism in the US has meant that racism is considered a question of discriminatory intentions - whether or not somebody intentionally left someone out or did something harmful because of their biased feelings about a person's race. This focus on individual racists with bad ideas hides the reality that racism exists wherever conditions of racialized maldistribution exist.”

Way Persons Ideas Feelings Reality Individual Left Understanding Race Focus Conditions Theory Offers Racism Intention Critical Discrimination Racist Framework Bad Ideas Biased

Author:Dean Spade

“Law reforms in the US, ostensibly enacted to prohibit racism, have proven ineffective because they focus on bad intentions of individuals and fail to comprehend population-level conditions.”

Law Individual Levels Focus Failing Conditions Racism Intention Population Reform Proven Bad Intentions

Author:Dean Spade

“Legal doctrine requiring a showing of evidence of racist intent and a narrow chain of causation has made it very difficult to prove in court that a person or group is experiencing racism because the standards are too narrow and too focused on individual intentions.”

Persons Made Individual Difficult Groups Prove Racism Standards Evidence Court Intention Focused Doctrine Chains Made It Racist Causation

Author:Dean Spade

“I am arguing that it is a mistake for trans activists to focus our resources and attention on winning inclusion in legal equality frameworks, such as anti-discrimination laws and hate crimes laws, that will not provide relief from the life-shortening conditions trans populations are facing. Winning legal equality - getting the law to cast us as victims of discrimination who the state will protect - will not support our survival.”

“Instead of focusing on what the law says about trans people, which is really what the law is saying about itself as a protector of trans people, we should be focused on what systems of law and administration do to trans people and our interventions should aim to dismantle harmful, violent systems such as criminal punishment and immigration enforcement.”

People Should Law Aim Focused Criminals Punishment Violent Immigration Administration Enforcement Intervention Trans Protector

Author:Dean Spade

“Critical Race Theory offers a critique of how law and certain law reform strategies misunderstand the actual operation of life-shortening state violence, and how that has produced a set of reforms that fail to actually transform material conditions of white supremacy. These critiques redirect our attention to the conditions we aim to transform.”

States Law Certain White Race Attention Violence Failing Conditions Materials Theory Offers Aim Strategy Critical Reform Operations White Supremacy Critique Supremacy

Author:Dean Spade

“When social movements engage in legal reform, they often mobilize images of people from their constituent population who most match national norms about what "deserving citizens" are like, and use those people as spokespeople and as lead plaintiffs in legal cases. This strategy requires that people who are experiencing intersectional harm - who are vulnerable through multiple vectors of demonization and marginalization - be further marginalized and disappeared by the advocacy.”

“Legal reform organizations are usually trying to portray their constituents as "hard workers," as "not criminals," as citizens, as part of normative family arrangements, and as conforming to white norms as much as possible. When these strategies are used, the most dangerous conditions and the people who are most vulnerable cannot be discussed or addressed.”

People Trying Hard Used White Conditions Dangerous Hard Work Citizens Organization Strategy Workers Criminals Vulnerable Reform Arrangements Conform Norm Constituents Hard Worker

Author:Dean Spade

“In addition to encouraging us to participate in narratives of "deservingness" that cast large parts of our constituencies as "undeserving," legal reform strategies encourage us to valorize harmful systems that our movements should be seeking to dismantle.”

Should Movement Strategy Casts Seeking Reform Narrative Undeserving

Author:Dean Spade

“We have seen the most well-funded gay and lesbian rights organizations valorize the US military in their work seeking inclusion in military service.”

Wells Rights Military Gay Organization Seeking Inclusion Military Service Us Military

Author:Dean Spade

“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 actual relief for those facing the worst conditions, and legitimizing or expanding systems of harm.”

Violence Failing Worst Conditions Danger Window Leaving Harm Significant Reform Relief Dressings Expanding Tact Window Dressing

Author:Dean Spade

“I am not arguing that we should never use legal reform as a tactic. Instead, I argue that it should not be a goal.”

Should Use Goal Arguing Reform Tactics

Author:Dean Spade

“We should understand that in the context of the US, where our legal system is based in settler colonialism, capitalism and white supremacy, changing laws will never sufficiently change the conditions of harm and violence our movements seek to transform.”

Should Law White Violence Conditions Movement Capitalism Harm Colonialism White Supremacy Supremacy Legal System Settlers

Author:Dean Spade

“We should interact with legal reform tactically, knowing that it will not meet our ultimate goals but asking whether there are ways that engaging with particular reforms might benefit our work and help reduce certain harms or dangers.”

Way Should Helping Might Certain Goal Knowing Danger Particular Benefits Ultimate Asking Harm Reform Engaging Ultimate Goal

Author:Dean Spade

“When we approach legal reform work, we can ask questions like: Will this provide actual relief to people facing violence or harm or will it primarily be a symbolic change? Will this divide our constituency by offering relief only to people with certain privileged statuses (such as people with lawful immigration status, people with jobs, married people, etc.)?”

People Jobs Certain Asks Violence Approach Married Harm Immigration Reform Relief Etc Divides Offering Privileged Symbolic

Author:Dean Spade

“We must experiment, fail, and try again, but beginning with a critique of legal reform and a commitment to center the most vulnerable moves us away from some of the most common, obvious pitfalls of neoliberal social movement strategies.”

Trying Moving Social Common Failing Movement Commitment Strategy Obvious Experiments Vulnerable Reform Critique Try Again Pitfalls Social Movements

Author:Dean Spade

“Over the past decade I have watched many friends go through graduate school and write dissertations. Through that process, I have seen how they are guided by mentors to understand particular norms within their disciplines and to learn about what they can and cannot, should and should not say, and which ideas can go together and which cannot. I never went through this process.”

Should Writing Ideas School Together Past Process Particular Discipline Decades Graduates Mentor Norm Over The Past Many Friends Graduate School Dissertation

Author:Dean Spade

“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 you are lucky, you get a few classes where you are encouraged to think more critically and read critical texts rather than just casebooks, and perhaps write a paper that is not a legal memo or brief.”

Ifs Thinking Writing Years Helping School Law Certain Class Lucky Paper Program Tests Critical Focused Bars Doctrine Where You Are Exam Law School Lucky You Memorizing Memos Bar Exam

Author:Dean Spade

“Because my graduate academic training at law school was not one that included most of the intellectual traditions I find useful for understanding the conditions and problems that most concern me - anti-colonial theories, Foucault, critical disability studies, prison studies and the like are rarely seen in standard US Law School curricula, where students are still fighting on many campuses to get a single class on race or poverty offered - I developed most of my thinking about these topics through activist reading groups and collaborative writing projects with other activist scholars.”

“Intellectual traditions emerging from populations that have always been the constitutive other in the development of the properly free citizen - indigenous people, populations labeled physically or mentally unfit, black people, migrants, women, prisoners - have always produced robust critiques of the what Dylan Rodriguez calls "white bourgeois freedom."”

People Black White Development Citizens Intellectual Tradition Population Prisoner Black People Dylan Indigenous Emerging Critique Bourgeois Robust Migrants Indigenous People

Author:Dean Spade

“I wrote Normal Life using concepts that have been helpful to me, and hoping to offer those as accessible tools for thinking differently about the pitfalls trans resistance faces, in particular the temptation to focus on legal equality and the limitations of that approach, and the alternative approaches being taken by racial and economic justice focused trans activists.”

“I often notice how students can gain the capacity to use certain critical methodologies through engaging with very different texts - how a graphic novel about gentrification and an anthology about Hurricane Katrina and a journalistic account of war profiteering might all lead to very similar classroom conversations and critical engagement. I'm particularly interested in this when teaching law students who often resist reading interdisciplinary materials or materials they interpret as too theoretical.”

“I strive to find materials that will engage students, expand their capacities as critical readers and thinkers, and feel immediately relevant to their daily lives and future work in court and social service systems.”

Feels Social Students Materials Reader Capacity Court Strive Critical Daily Life Thinker Relevant Social Service Future Work

Author:Dean Spade

“I see the concepts spatially in my mind. I see the boxes and corrals and grids into which administrative systems require people, things and information to be fit in order to be legible, made to live, or in order to facilitate death and abandonment.”

People Mind Made Order Information Fit Concepts Boxes Abandonment Facilitate Administrative Grids

Author:Dean Spade

“I am often talking about the ideas collected in Normal Life in contexts that are not academic, or that are full of people who are not primarily engaging as theorists or theory-readers. Being able to make ideas visual, especially critical ideas about movements that can be difficult to hear because of attachments we have to certain national narratives, or because of ways that we see ourselves, is especially useful.”

People Way Ideas Able Certain Difficult Talking Movement Theory Reader Normal Critical Narrative Visuals Attachment Academic Engaging Normal Life Theorists

Author:Dean Spade

“In recent years I have become more interested in making the critical ideas that I love teaching and talking about available in more forms, because many people prefer to engage with ideas in films, infographics, comics and other forms that are not traditional books or articles.”

People Years Book Ideas Film Form Talking Teaching Available Critical Traditional Articles Love Teaching

Author:Dean Spade

“One of the concepts I was having trouble illustrating was the concept that administrative systems create narrow categories of gender and force people into them in order to get their basic needs met - what I call "administrative violence." I had images of forms with gender boxes and ID cards with gender markers, but I also wanted an image that would capture how basic services like shelters are gender segregated.”

People Needs Wanted Form Order Force Violence Trouble Mets Concepts Boxes Gender Cards Categories Capture Shelter Administrative Markers Basic Needs Illustrating

Author:Dean Spade

“Gender segregated shelters are inaccessible to many trans people, and trans women in particular are often forced to choose between going into a men's shelter where they face enormous danger, or remaining street homeless and facing the violence, harassment, arrest, and exposure risks of that.”

People Men Faces Violence Risk Streets Danger Particular Gender Enormous Shelter Homeless Exposure Trans Harassment Inaccessible

Author:Dean Spade

“Making my work more visual is something I am increasingly excited about. I am hopeful that it will broaden access to some of the ideas being engaged in activist and scholarly communities of which I am part.”

Ideas Community Excited Access Engaged Visuals Hopeful Activist Scholarly

Author:Dean Spade

“I am thoughtful about introducing terms that tend to be in circulation primarily in academic circles. "Homonormativity" and "homonationalism" are by no means solely academic terms, and in fact circulate in important ways in many activist circles, but in general I find them to be terms that most people I meet are not familiar with.”

People Way Mean Important Facts Term Circles Familiar Thoughtful Activist Academic Introducing Circulation

Author:Dean Spade

“I have deliberated carefully about which of the terms that are unfamiliar to many of my readers I wanted to take time to introduce and explain, and which terms I would not introduce, despite the fact that I find them useful in my other work, in teaching, or in other activist contexts.”

Facts Wanted Term Teaching Reader Despite Activist Introducing Take Time Unfamiliar

Author:Dean Spade

“"Oppression" or "systems of oppression" operate as a shorthand terms in much writing and speaking so that we do not have to list all these systems of meaning and control each time (i.e. racism, ableism, xenophobia, etc.). I needed a term like that, but "oppression" implies a kind of top-down understanding of power that is at odds with the Foucaultian model I rely on in my work.”

Writing Kind Understanding Term Needed Models Racism Lists Oppression Rely Etc Odds Xenophobia Top Down Shorthand

Author:Dean Spade

“Many people who are drawn to work about racism and transphobia may be new to thinking deeply about colonialism and indigenous resistance in their North America.”

People Thinking May America Racism Resistance Colonialism Indigenous North America Thinking Deeply

Author:Dean Spade

“There are sharply different, competing models of what trans advocacy looks like - those that seek to follow the path laid out by the most visible and well-funded lesbian and gay rights organizations in the US and those that seek to use grassroots strategies, center issues of race and poverty, and aim to dismantle harmful institutions and conditions to redistribute life chances.”

Wells Looks Different Use Chance Race Poverty Path Issues Rights Conditions Gay Models Organization Aim Institutions Strategy Visible Competing Trans Gay Rights Advocacy Grassroots

Author:Dean Spade

“Choosing an agenda that supports the apparatuses of racial violence always pays better.”

Pay Support Violence Agendas

Author:Dean Spade

“Military inclusion has never been a central demand from trans populations, who consistently name criminalization, immigration enforcement, poverty and joblessness as top priorities.”

Names Poverty Military Demand Population Priorities Immigration Inclusion Consistently Enforcement Joblessness Trans Top Priorities

Author:Dean Spade

“As trans advocacy has institutionalized and developed, the context of the undemocratic nature of US non-profits and the ways that white, wealthy individuals can intensely influence the directions of advocacy have increasingly come to the surface for trans activists.”

Way Individual White Influence Profit Surface Wealthy Activist Trans Advocacy Non Profit

Author:Dean Spade

“Trans activism in the US has most frequently been grassroots, centered on poverty and criminalization, and often oppositional to the exclusionary "mainstreaming" threads in gay and lesbian politics and feminist politics.”

Poverty Gay Feminist Activism Thread Trans Grassroots

Author:Dean Spade

“Trans rights formation that mimics the models and strategies of the lesbian and gay rights framework is growing, and there are many significant strategy disagreements between those building that work and those doing racial and economic justice centered trans work.”

Justice Growing Rights Economic Building Gay Models Strategy Significant Framework Disagreement Formation Trans Gay Rights Economic Justice

Author:Dean Spade

“More conservative advocacy work often encourages portrayals of trans people as people who deserve rights. Deservingness, of course, corresponds to national racial, gender and ability norms.”

People Courses Ability Rights Deserve Conservative Gender Norm Trans Advocacy Portrayal

Author:Dean Spade

“One particular debate that I have seen play out again and again is whether trans people who have more traditional gender expressions or who "pass" more should be the ones who are represented. A recent advocacy guide focused on advocating around trans health care access produced by the largest trans advocacy organization in the US instructs readers that advocacy will be more successful if the message is delivered by people who pass as non-trans men and women.”

“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.”

Study Development University Department Examining Emergence Scholarly

Author:Dean Spade

“It feels like every person is using their whole brain and heart to figure out these nearly impossible dilemmas about how we do our work, with our principles, in the current conditions. And it feels like the thing we know to be true about working collectively - that we have better ideas together than we do individually.”

Knows Feels Heart Persons Ideas Whole Together Brain Principles Impossible Conditions Figures Currents Being True Dilemma Heart And Brain

Author:Dean Spade

“The point for me is to create relationships based on deeper and more real notions of trust. So that love becomes defined not by sexual exclusivity, but by actual respect, concern, commitment to act with kind intentions, accountability for our actions, and a desire for mutual growth.”

Kind Real Action Desire Growth Love Is Commitment Concern Intention Notion Deeper Defined Accountability Mutual Our Actions Exclusivity

Author:Dean Spade

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