Talking with Dean Spade about Love in a Fucked-Up World: How letting go of the Romance Myth frees us to be better lovers and activists

Today I have the pleasure of talking with Dean Spade about his new book, Love in a Fucked-up World: how to build relationships, hook up, and raise hell together. This book builds on all of Dean’s previous books, and shares their commitment to finding ways to build better movements for better worlds. Like all of his work, Love in a Fucked Up World homes in on the obstacles we face not only from repressive states and destructive ideologies, but also from our own very human weaknesses and blindspots.  This new book focuses on what Spade calls the “romance myth,” which shares so many features with, among other things, capitalism—ideas like a property, scarcity, ownership, status, power.  While showing how when romance is brought into activist spaces it can cause great harm, Dean Spade also shows that, if converted into a form which includes patience, kindness, and generosity, romance can complement and strengthen our activism at a time when it is needed the most.

Dean Spade has been working in movements for queer and trans liberation, anti-militarism, and police and prison abolition for the past 25 years. He’s the author of Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics, and the Limits of Law, and Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next) the director of the documentary “Pinkwashing Exposed: Seattle Fights Back!.” His new book is Love in a Fucked Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up and Raise Hell Together, and he is the host of a new podcast with the same name.