Big thanks to Robert Nichols for interviewing me for Upping the Anti: A Journal of Theory and Action.
New Law Review Article about Queer & Trans Prisoners and Safety
The Circuit, which is the online journal of the California Law Review, just published a response piece I wrote. I responded to an article that Prof. Russell Robinson wrote about the K6G unit at the Los Angeles County Jail, which is a unit designated for trans women and queer men. In my response, I suggest that the K6G unit, which was developed after a lawsuit brought on behalf of queer prisoners but has utterly failed to protect them, is a clear example of why we need prison abolition scholarship and politics in order to sufficiently analyze and confront the violence faced by queer and trans prisoners.
The Only Way to End Racialized Gender Violence in Prisons is to End Prisons
I wrote “The Only Way to End Racialized Gender Violence in Prisons is to End Prisons: A Response to Russell Robinson’s Masculinity As Prison,” published by California Law Review Circuit in December 2012. You can read it here.
The New Transgender Movement: Race, Poverty, Gender, Policing, and Pinkwashing
New Review of Normal Life, Captive Genders and Criminal Intimacy
GLQ recently published a review of Nat Smith and Eric Stanley’s Captive Genders, Regina Kunzel’s Criminal Intimacy, and my book Normal Life. Thanks to Eli Vitulli for writing the review! You can read it here.
Lovers & Fighters in Polish, and the World Social Forum Free Palestine
I’m writing from Brazil, where I have traveled to attend the World Social Forum Free Palestine and specifically to participate in the Queer Visions gathering and public panels here focused on anti-pinkwashing work. The Queer Visions meetings were convened by the wonderful activists from Pinkwatching Israel who gathered 16 international activists doing anti-pinkwashing work in their own contexts. Here is a video from the Assembly that ended the Forum of anti-pinkwashers presenting a resolution. Below are some pictures from the march in Porto Alegre–the one with lots of purple is a feminist/women’s solidarity contingent that had beautiful quilted signs. I also wanted to share the sweet news that Wania and Ewe have translated my 2004 essay, For Lovers and Fighters, into Polish! You can grab it in Polish here.
New Video, Book Reviews and Recommended Reading
A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of joining Laura Whitehorn in the Radical Book Tent at the Baltimore Book Festival, organized by the wonderful people at Red Emma’s.
In other news, I’ve added a bunch of reviews of Normal Life to the writing page on this site, in case they interest you.
Also, I want to recommend an exciting new book, The Collection: Short Fiction from the Transgender Vanguard. You can order a copy to be sent to a prisoner when you order your own on the Topside Press website. Please do!
Dean Spade and Laura Whitehorn on the Prison Industrial Complex
Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer
The new Against Equality book, Prisons Will Not Protect You, has been published! I wrote an introduction for it called “Their Laws Will Never Make Us Safer” about why hate crime laws don’t help queer and trans people, but do build up a police state that targets us.
Learn more about the anthology from Against Equality.
Notes Toward Racial and Gender Justice Ally Practice in Legal Academia
I wrote “Notes Toward Racial and Gender Justice Ally Practice in Legal Academia,” in Presumed Incompetent: The Intersections of Race and Class for Women in Academia, edited by Gabriella Gutierrez y Muhs, Angela P. Harris, Carmen Gonzalez and Yolanda Niemann, and published by Utah University Press in 2012. You can read it here.
