Quotes from 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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