Quotes by Dean Spade

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.

Gay

Rights

Understanding

“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.

Top Down

Writing

Xenophobia

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.

Influence

Way

White

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.

Reading

School

Writing

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

Agendas

Pay

Support

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.

Law

Race

White

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.

Ideas

Race

Reality

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.

Men

People

Risk

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.

Hate

Mistake

Winning

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.

Development

Scholarly

Study

Follow The Behaviour University in order to get the greatest quotes from the greatest people of all time so that you can tap into your own greatness.

Agendas

America

Attachment

Black

Book

Brain

Circles

Colonialism

Commitment

Community

Conservative

Daily Life

Development

Different

Doctrine

Expression

Facts

Feminist

Fierce

Fighting

Focus

Gay

Goal

Groups

Hard Work

Hate

Heart

Hopeful

Ideas

Influence

Intellectual

Introducing

Issues

Jobs

Justice

Knowing

Law

Leaving

Love Is

Matter

Mean

Men

Military

Mind

Mistake

Movement

Moving

Names

Narrative

Needs

The Future Blueprint

Tool

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

Tool

The Autobiography

Tool

The Behaviour Diary

Tool

The Dating Diary

Tool

The Relationship Therapist

Tool

Quotes by Dean Spade

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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Topics by Dean Spade

Popular Tools

The Future Blueprint

The Home Therapist: Anti Anxiety

The Autobiography

The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

The Relationship Therapist

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