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Synopsis

Gender Is Compliance is the highly anticipated debut book by Dean Spade, heralded as a deeply influential voice on trans and queer liberation struggles. Setting forth a politic that goes beyond the quest for mere legal inclusion, Spade illustrates how and why we must seek nothing less than the radical transformations justice and liberation require.

The average lifespan of a transgender person is twenty–three years. Most of the shockingly early deaths are due to violence in its many forms: from police brutality and outright murder to the seemingly banal administration of various state and legal frameworks that invisibly and often perniciously define the most basic contours of our lives. In this structure, which deems trans people an "impossible" category, what guarantees can anti–discrimination, equal access, or equal protection laws actually deliver? This question is particularly critical in the current neoliberal context, where popular social movements are paradoxically centered on appeals for "equality" by the most privileged within marginalized communities. But in the struggle for comprehensive justice, we must make urgently needed interventions into dangerous intersectional systems of repression—and demand the most essential of legal reforms—while remaining steadfast on the path toward liberation.