Interview with Sandy Stone

Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone is an American academic, media theorist, author, and performance artist whose influence reaches far beyond any single discipline. Born in Jersey City around 1936 to a Jewish family of European immigrants, she grew up with a curiosity for knowledge that thrived outside conventional classrooms. After graduating early from high school, she audited courses with professors she admired, took classes at MIT, and worked at Bell Telephone Laboratories on early touch-tone telephone technology before earning a degree from St. John’s College in 1965. From the start, her path defied expectations, weaving together science, technology, and the arts in ways that would later define her career. In the late 1960s, Stone moved to New York City and began working as a recording engineer at the Record Plant, where she collaborated with some of the most iconic musicians of the era, including Mississippi John Hurt, The Byrds, Van Morrison, Graham Nash, and Jimi Hendrix. She often published under pseudonyms such as Sandy Fisher or Doc Storch. At the same time, she was publishing science fiction stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction and Galaxy Science Fiction. In the 1970s, after relocating to California and publicly beginning her gender transition, she became the sound engineer for Olivia Records, the pioneering women’s music label. It was during this time that she faced public attacks from Janice Raymond, whose book The Transsexual Empire targeted Stone by name and accused her of threatening feminist spaces, a controversy that would later shape Stone’s role as a central figure in transgender theory. 

 

Despite hostility and even death threats, Stone persevered and moved into new fields. She became an accomplished computer programmer, taught herself coding, and eventually turned to academia. In the 1980s she studied in the History of Consciousness program at UC Santa Cruz under the mentorship of Donna Haraway. There, she wrote her landmark essay The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto, first presented in 1988 and published in 1991, which insisted on the necessity of visibility and self-definition for transgender people. This groundbreaking work is now recognized as the founding text of transgender studies and has been translated into more than two dozen languages. Her academic career flourished when she joined the University of Texas at Austin in 1992, where she established the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) in the Radio-Television-Film department. The ACTLab became internationally renowned for blending art, science, performance, and new media in radical, experimental ways. Even when conservative faculty members tried to deny her contributions or erase her work, she remained committed to fostering a model of education that valued creativity and interdisciplinary thinking. She later expanded the ACTLab approach to other institutions, including the European Graduate School in Switzerland, and her pedagogical framework continues to inspire programs worldwide. Alongside her academic work, Stone also became known for her “theoryperformances,” stage works that merged storytelling, theory, and personal experience.

 

She appeared in Monika Treut’s 1999 documentary Gendernauts: A Journey Through Shifting Identities and later toured with her performance piece The Neovagina Monologues. Her published work, including The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age (1995), further explored the intersections of identity, technology, and culture. Today, she is celebrated not only as a founder of transgender studies but also as a thinker and creator whose work continues to illuminate and inspire across generations.

 

Monika: Today I have the great pleasure and honor of speaking with Sandy Stone, a pioneering academic theorist, writer, performance artist, and widely recognized founder of the field of transgender studies. She is Associate Professor Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin, where she established the groundbreaking Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) and the New Media Initiative in the Department of Radio-Television-Film. Hello, Sandy!

Sandy: Hi Monika! I am delighted to be here and look forward to our conversation.

The cover via thranesen.dk

Monika: What kinds of projects and activities are keeping you busy these days? 

Sandy: Teaching. Writing. Building a recording studio. Making robots. Creating art. Spending time with my grandkid. Hanging out with my family. Performing, lecturing. Discoursing with Cynbe. Living life. Having a hell of a good time.

Monika: Your work with Olivia Records from 1974 to 1978, a collective founded to record and promote women’s music, seems to have been a life-changing experience. How did you first become involved with the lesbian feminist culture there?

Sandy: The Olivia Collective identified publicly as lesbian feminist and internally as lesbian separatist. I had no idea what lesbian separatism was until they told me. They already knew I was trans when they approached me, but I didn’t know they knew, so I told them. They said they had no problem with that, and we got down to business. I didn’t have a contract with them; I joined the collective and became part of it, which involved a long vetting period during which we looked each other over very carefully to be sure we were a good match. I did an album with them as part of that vetting period, and after we mutually agreed it was a good idea, I left my home and friends in Santa Cruz and moved in with the collective, which at that point was about seven women and eventually grew to around thirteen.

Monika: What made being part of Olivia feel like the right fit for you at that time?

Sandy: Being involved with Olivia was absolutely right for me at the time. We were making music and politics at the same time; in fact, our music was our politics. It was important to me that I work for political change in a way that engaged my strengths and skills in the best possible manner. So Olivia felt like a good fit to me, and I to them.

Monika: In 1979, the lesbian feminist scholar Janice Raymond attacked you in The Transsexual Empire: The Making of the She-Male, claiming that your “male energy” was threatening the Olivia Records collective and womanhood. Looking back, how do you perceive that conflict?

Sandy: I don’t think my opinion has changed much over the years from what the collective said internally at the time. Publicly, we made some reasoned responses. Internally, the general reaction was that an ignorant bigot had sent us a hate letter, we should answer politely because we answered every letter we received, and that would be the end of it.

Monika: Did you see Raymond’s letter as a real threat to your work or to the collective?

Sandy: We didn’t see Raymond’s letter as dangerous, just as somewhat deranged, from a kind of parallel universe that had no resonance with anything in our day-to-day reality. Remember, the acronym TERF didn’t exist yet.

Monika: What struck you as particularly unusual about her ideas?

Sandy: What was so strange about Raymond’s ideas was her implicit sense of disempowerment. In Raymond’s universe, women were always victims. Men disrupted women’s groups and appropriated their work while women looked on helplessly. She wrote as if strong women simply didn’t exist. It made no sense to us. Certainly, women could be outshouted or outgunned, but the women I knew were feisty, intelligent, and assertive. They were strong. They stood up for what they thought was right. When necessary, they stood up to men. They drew strength from each other. They loved fiercely. I wanted to be like them.

Monika: How did your own sense of identity and early experiences shape your perspective on this conflict?

Sandy: Since I was five years old, I had thought of myself as a girl and later as a woman. But even at a young age, the peer group I imagined for myself was not what one might call feminine. I dreamed of climbing cliffs, shooting rapids, and stalking wild animals, and in my dreams, my companions in the adventure were other women.

At the same time, what the real world offered were the stereotypical feminine role models of the 1950s. When eventually I met the women I’d dreamed were out there, I realized I’d come home. So when Janice Raymond unveiled her paranoid and extremely disempowering vision of men disrupting women’s affairs, it was little more than risible to the women I knew. Of course, we now understand that hatemongers frequently look like buffoons in their early years before they build their political base.
Monika: At the time, did it ever occur to you that your work and presence might make you a transgender icon?

Sandy: I know I’ve been called things that are more or less suggestive of “icon,” like, for example, “lightning rod,” but I don’t think of myself in that way.

 

Lecture on Flesh, Gender, and Technology for European
Graduate School (YouTube)

 

Monika: During the 1980s and 1990s, you returned to academia, earned your doctorate, and established the UT Austin ACTLab, a New Media program that helped shape the field of New Media Art. How did you experience that period of your career?

Sandy: We went on for twenty years pushing the boundaries of a good many disciplines and having the time of our lives. My personal view was that I was put on this earth to use whatever abilities I have as a force for change and that if I have anything at all to teach, it is that it’s the same for everyone. We can be strong, and we can make a difference, if not in the large, then certainly in our immediate vicinity. That’s what the ACTLab was about.

Monika: In the mid-1990s, you faced considerable criticism after several highly publicized interviews in which you suggested that the traditional model of academic scholarship was coming to an end. How do you reflect on that controversy today?

Sandy: It was controversial then, it’s mainstream today. Now we need to craft a workable successor institution going forward, and that is not at all a simple thing.
Monika: How would you describe the current stance of feminism toward transgender issues?

Sandy: I would say there is no such thing as “feminism.” There are many feminisms, and each one has its own stance vis-à-vis transgender. So that question has no simple answer.

Monika: What should be the main focus or direction of transgender studies today?

Sandy: Transgender Studies is whatever transgender scholars do. I have no preconceived notion of a direction the field should go. From time to time I see trends emerge, and they are invariably exciting to me, and they shift and change. That just means the discipline is alive and vital. Different scholars will find the focus that empowers them, articulate it, and move on.

Monika: In your view, how has the Internet shaped the progress of the transgender community?

Sandy: If there is a transgender cause, it’s simply to be able to live our lives in peace. Anything that enhances social communication can be an organizing tool toward that end. That’s true not only for the trans communities but for any community. Online we have discussion groups, resources, things as simple as letting someone who is isolated in a hostile social pocket know there are others out there to talk with. Sometimes just knowing you are not alone can be enough.

Monika: Recently, the media have focused heavily on Caitlyn Jenner, generating both attention and controversy. How do you feel about her visibility and the portrayal of transgender people in films, newspapers, and books?

Sandy: I’ll take any positive representation I can get. They’re all problematic and they’re all good, just like real life.

Monika: More broadly, what is your perspective on the current situation of transgender women in American society?

Sandy: Trans women are more readily accepted than ever before, but, as the virulence of TERF hate groups and the suicide and murder rates for trans people, especially trans women of color, show, we have a long, long way to go.

Monika: At what age did you transition, and what was that experience like for you?

Sandy: I transitioned in my 30s, and I had the luxury of being able to choose the way I transitioned and the community in which I did so. Nevertheless, getting to the point at which that supportive environment was in place required long and excruciating work. By its nature, I don’t think transition can be easy for anyone.

Monika: What were some of the unexpected challenges you faced during your transition?

Sandy: When you decide to proceed with transition, metaphorically speaking, they issue you a ticket with everything you need to know and do written out on it. The joke is that you can never know everything that’s on the ticket. There are always critical things that you didn’t know were there, and suddenly they jump up and bite you. You learn that people you counted on to stay with you through transition, and who promised they would, suddenly abandon you, or worse, betray you in ways that catch you off balance and unprepared, while others whom you were sure would leave without a second glance wind up becoming defenders, companions, and friends. The chemical and emotional changes are unpredictable, unpleasant, and occasionally cataclysmic.

 

Lecture on Transgender Feminism for European
Graduate School (YouTube)

 

Monika: Were there also positive aspects or rewards from this process?

Sandy: On the other hand, the rewards are spectacular. Still, as with puberty, I was profoundly glad when it was over so I could get on with life.

Monika: During that period, did you have any transgender role models you looked up to or followed?

Sandy: No. I knew of Christine Jorgensen, but she was not a role model. She was tall and willowy and blonde, and I was short, kind of clumsy, and brunette.
Monika: Are there any figures in the U.S. transgender community whose activism you would compare to what Harvey Milk accomplished for gay rights in the 1960s and 1970s? Are there transgender women today whom you particularly admire or respect?

Sandy: There are many. Kate Bornstein. Susan Stryker. Too many others to name. You’ll get a different answer from each trans person you ask.

Monika: The transgender cause is usually represented alongside other LGBT communities. Being the last letter in the abbreviation, is the transgender community able to advocate for its own issues within the broader LGBT movement?

Sandy: There is no unitary transgender community, just as there is no one unitary LGBT group. There are organizations that claim to speak for the majority of those communities, and they do good work. Individual trans groups promote their causes in local LGBT communities, and those may be different in different locales. In general, though, trans issues are still the tail of the distribution and will be dropped first before other interests when it is convenient to do so. Needless to say, this needs work.

Monika: Are you personally active in politics? Do you participate in lobbying campaigns, and do you think transgender women can make a difference in political life?

Sandy: Politics is not how I choose to apply myself to furthering trans issues. On the other hand, though, in my ontology, all acts are political acts. When I teach, I’m doing politics. When I make art, the same thing applies.

Monika: Could you tell me about the role of love in your life?

Sandy: I happen to love and be loved, and I consider that the greatest gift and blessing I could have. But it was not always so. I am profoundly grateful and try my best to give as good as I receive. Corinthians 13:13.

Monika: Many transgender women write memoirs. Have you ever considered writing a book about your own experiences?

Sandy: Sometimes after ten beers or so, but I punch myself in the face a few times and the feeling goes away.

Monika: What advice would you give to transgender girls struggling with gender dysphoria?

Sandy: Nothing I know would be applicable to all transgender girls or women. The closest I could come might be the last lines of my novel Ktahmet: “And to you who still wait, looking for the opportunity or the courage or the awakening, we say: Whenever you are truly ready, then will we be there; whenever you begin your own Remembering, then will we be at your side. —And in the time of waiting, we say to you: ‘Alana, Ktahmet, moy senyo nui hgytah —’ Beloved sister, the warriors return, return to thee in love and power!”

Monika: Sandy, thank you so much for sharing your time and thoughts with us.

Sandy: You’re welcome!

Main photo: courtesy of Sandy Stone.

© 2015 - Monika Kowalska

 

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