Building Love in a F*cked Up World: Dean Spade’s New Podcast Is Here

Dean Spade, gender theorist and founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, has recently produced a new podcast, “Love in a F*cked Up World.”

A follow up to his book “Love in a Fucked-Up World: How to Build Relationships, Hook Up, and Raise Hell, Together,” the podcast is a response to the questions: Why do so many of us act our worst in relationships? How can we hold on to our liberatory values even when strong feelings are involved? Dean and his guests offer concrete tools for building and sustaining strong relationships, built on the belief that our connections to each other are the building blocks of our resistance.

In the first episode, Dean and guest adrienne maree brown explore the practice of of anarchy. Dean shares his journey towards becoming an anarchist. “I didn't come to my politics through an anarchist subculture. I came to it through like subcultures, political cultures, most influenced by like women of color feminisms that I think are also overlapping in your work. And those are very critical of institutionalization, you know, heavily critical of the nonprofit industrial complex, the hospital, the school. Like seeing not just the quote unquote bad parts of government, like the cops and the military, but also the controlling nature of the welfare system, the family policing system. So that's how I landed on anarchism. I was like, Oh, all the parts of the state are violent and racist and patriarchal and capitalist. And, then also through those same genealogies, I was learning about creating groups that were flat, you know, collectives rather than groups where somebody is the boss.”

adrienne responds, “One of the things that's been so fascinating to me is the less I am a part of existing institutions, the more I'm able to do all that institutional work in my own life day to day, right? Like I fix things myself. I grow things. I cook things. Like, I'm in relationship with people who help me tend land and tend place. So I think for a lot of people, while we're still in capitalism, trying to keep our heads above water, I think it's very hard for people to imagine taking on the labor of living beyond the state.”

Dean will release new episodes every two weeks for the next few months. He says, “Look out for conversations with Tourmaline, Mariame Kaba, Weyam Ghadbian, Prentis Hemphill, and Shira Hassan. And Morgan Bassichis and I recorded six mini-episodes focusing on tools for addressing specific problems and tangles, like long distance dating, deciding whether to stay or leave a relationship, dealing with hard feelings like jealousy and possessiveness, and how to de-escalate a crush when you want to.”

Love in a F*cked Up World is available wherever you get your podcasts:
Listen on Spotify | Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on YouTube