When we think of the history of transgender activism in the United States, certain names immediately come to mind, trailblazers whose courage and visibility have shaped the movement for decades. But some heroes, paradoxically, are those who worked tirelessly behind the scenes, orchestrating change with a quiet determination that is easy to overlook. Sarah Fox is one of those rare figures: a strategist, a mentor, and, as she wryly admits, the “benevolent autocrat” who built the democratic scaffolding for the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition (NTAC) while deliberately keeping herself out of the spotlight. In this conversation, Sarah reflects on decades of activism, from the smoky motel rooms of early support groups to the halls of power in Washington, navigating both the exhilaration of political victories and the deeply personal costs of speaking out.
Her story reminds us that progress is rarely linear, that victories can be fragile, and that the arc of social justice often bends in cycles rather than straight lines. Witty, candid, and deeply thoughtful, Sarah brings a historian’s eye, a scientist’s rigor, and an activist’s unflinching courage to this interview. She offers not only a window into the battles fought and the lessons learned, but also a rare glimpse of what it truly takes to transform a community from chaos into a force capable of shaping national policy. As you read her words, you will find yourself laughing, reflecting, and, above all, appreciating the quiet but formidable power of a woman who understood that sometimes the most radical thing you can do is to step back, and let the movement take flight on its own.
Monika: To start, I just want to say a heartfelt thank you for agreeing to chat with me. I completely understand why so many transgender women prefer to keep a low profile, so I really appreciate your willingness to share your story.
Sarah: You’re quite welcome. I really appreciate your efforts to document the history of trans activism.
Monika: You’re the third NTAC board member I’ve interviewed, after Vanessa Edwards Foster and Cathy Platine. Like them, you served on the National Transgender Advocacy Coalition, a federal lobbying organization founded in 1999 to protect the civil rights of transgender and gender-variant people. But here’s the difference: while researching for this interview, I found plenty of information about Vanessa and Cathy, yet almost nothing about you. Was that a deliberate choice on your part?
Sarah: Yes, it was deliberate and marked the end of a long chapter in my life. My role in NTAC isn’t really understood or remembered correctly, oddly enough, even by some of my closest friends. I was never a board member, nor did I ask or want to be. At that time, I had reached a level of local, state, and national prominence that brought personal attacks on me and my family. It seemed like a good time to retire and pass the baton to a new tranche of activists. NTAC was that baton. My entire interest in NTAC was to help organize it, make it transparent, impart a democratic structure, and set it free to do good for our people. Above all, I wanted our new organization to resist the corrupting forces that had neutralized prior national organizations. Many people asked me to be a board member, but they understood the personal hits I’d recently taken and accepted my “no.”
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Jessica Redman, Monica Roberts, Vanessa Edwads Foster, and Sarah Fox. Photo by Mariette Pathy Allen. |
Monika: So if you weren’t a board member, how exactly did you fit into the picture?
Sarah: Well, the beginnings of NTAC were very chaotic. We had dozens of head-strong activists who saw the need for a new national organization, but there were sharp differences of opinion about who should lead the organization, how it should be run, and what the details of its mission would be. So, because I was on my way out, I could insert myself as a sort of benevolent autocrat who would force a system of democratic rule on the fledgling organization, before leaving it entirely. The fact that I did not want to be a board member - or even a member at large - was the only reason my neutrality was trusted. By some miracle, I brought enough order to dozens of bickering, strong-willed voices so we could hold votes and decide how to move forward.
Monika: That sounds like a huge challenge. Did you ever doubt you could pull it off?
Sarah: I did. It was a bit of a miracle for two reasons. First, it’s extremely difficult to organize a democracy from scratch. I didn’t appreciate it until I’d done it, and now I have a deep respect for what our nation’s founders pulled off. Second, I’m a lousy leader. I’m soft-spoken, not much of a people person, and terrible with names and faces. I joke that I couldn’t lead someone out of a burning theater. Most of my work has been behind the scenes and behind closed doors, wonky stuff people usually don’t think about.
It was probably my most unlikely feat as an activist: to figuratively bang a gavel and call a virtual room of dozens of strong-willed activists to order, organizing a transparent democratic process. But it was self-sacrificing. Having made myself a benevolent autocrat, I couldn’t stay in the fledgling organization, my presence might have left an “original sin.” It truly required my departure to remain pure.
Monika: There is a persistent myth that transgender activism has always been linear, steadily progressing forward. From your perspective, how cyclical or fragile has progress actually been?
Sarah: That’s a really good question. As a JFK-era baby, all I had seen throughout my life was social progress. It all seemed very linear, like constructing a building, brick by brick. Even when there were little setbacks, the overall movement was forward. I had faith in the words of MLK, that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice,” but now I think he was wrong.
Monika: Oh, really? How so?
Sarah: History tells us that social justice runs in cycles or waves. In recent memory, one need only look back to the days of Germany’s Weimar Republic. Berlin was an incredibly diverse, liberal, enlightened society, with some tolerance for people who broke gender and sexuality norms. But then came Hitler, and the entire landscape changed. Allied forces eventually defeated Hitler, thanks in no small measure to Alan Turing, who was gay. While he was busy cracking the Enigma Code and inventing computing, he was still punished for his homosexuality.
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| Monica Roberts, Cathy Platine, and Sarah Fox in 1999. |
Sarah: It is. Then after the war, we had the Red Scare and then the Lavender Scare here in the US. The lives and livelihoods of LGBTQ people were destroyed. Fast forward to America’s Black civil rights movement in the ’50s and ’60s, and we see that one key architect of MLK’s nonviolent methods was Bayard Rustin, whose homosexuality was seen as a liability. While his contributions were crucial, he was kept hidden as something shameful.
Monika: Wow, it really shows how interconnected struggles for justice can be.
Sarah: Indeed. Now fast forward to Stonewall and the “Gay Rights Movement.” Trans people like Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson literally started that movement, were briefly celebrated, and then erased just a few years later. And even once recognized again in this century, they were erased by the Trump Administration, which remembered them as “gay men” and removed all references to trans people from the Stonewall national monument on Christopher Street.
Monika: It sounds like progress keeps getting interrupted.
Sarah: Yeah. Just this century, we’ve made enormous strides in visibility, and we’ve fought for, and won, civil rights in many states. I was honored to be part of the failed legislative efforts in 20th Century Ohio, but also the successful efforts in 2020 Virginia. The bills we got passed still stand. However, we’ve suffered other profound losses in the past decade at the state and federal levels. The wrecking balls of the Trump Administration and the religious right are destroying much of what took so long to build.
Monika: So is there anything that gives you hope in all of this?
Sarah: There is. I think one semi-linear element is our visibility. Only about 30% of Americans personally know a trans person. The remaining 70% know us mostly through hate propaganda, which paints us as repulsive caricatures. It’s easy to get them to believe almost anything. But when they meet a real trans person, those scary tropes are often instantly shattered.
We are definitely making progress. When I transitioned in 1996, almost nobody had any idea what a trans person was, let alone met one. It took years before someone said to me, “Yeah, I have a cousin who’s doing that.” Now, about a third of people I talk to tell me about someone they know. If we keep expanding that 30%, it’ll become much harder to lie about us and paint us as villains.
Monika: Transition is such an intense process, consuming so much energy and time, focused mostly on ourselves. How did you find your way into transgender activism?
Sarah: First, I guess I would say I’ve always tended to be an activist. I got that from my mom.
When I first joined my local transgender support group, it was a somewhat sad experience. The members were holed up in a dimly lit motel room with cheap paneling, reeking of cigarette smoke, with tobacco-yellow curtains pulled. It was frankly depressing and demoralizing, and I wanted to help change that.
Monika: Yikes, that does sound grim. How did things get better?
Sarah: Well, our next meeting was the annual Christmas dinner, held at a UU church, as I recall. That’s where I met my longtime friend Cathy Platine. That event was more open and cheerful, less cloaked in secrecy and shame. I felt that’s what the organization should become all year.
At that time, the leadership was turning over. The incumbent officers had been worn out, and it was time for someone new to take up the slack. I think Cathy and I had the same sorts of ideas for transforming the organization to something more joyous and uplifting. She said she would toss her hat in the ring for president if I would write the newsletter. I agreed, and I also somehow ended up as VP.
Monika: So you two basically became the dream team for change?
Sarah: Well, depending on who you talk to, of course! We instantly went to work sourcing less depressing meeting spaces and eventually found a new home at a beautiful old Presbyterian church. I fleshed out the newsletter and put it on a new website hosted on Mary Ann Horton’s server, and it soon started gaining some degree of national prominence. This helped greatly with our outreach and expanded our membership.
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| Visiting sisters in Texas. |
Before long, Cathy suggested we go to Washington together to lobby for transgender inclusion in ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, under the banner of GenderPAC. She said she would go if I did it with her. It sounded like a needed political action and a good road trip, so I agreed. That’s where I met some truly amazing activists, like my dear friend Vanessa Foster.
Anyway, that’s how I stepped first into the local, and then the national, scene: Cathy dragged/pushed/catapulted me there.
Monika: Coming back to your activism, so Cathy really kicked off your national activism journey. What happened after that?
Sarah: Eventually several of us founded a state political organization, It’s Time Ohio!, a chapter of It’s Time America! Cofounders included Cathy, Sue Davis and Maryanne Horton. Later, as the first trans board member of Stonewall Columbus, I became involved with the Equality Begins at Home LGBTQ lobbying effort, originally orchestrated by Executive Director Jeff Redfield.
And honestly, everything we did in that era felt like activism - even going through the steps of transition. We had to build our own infrastructure. It’s like driving across the country today: you can just get in a car and drive from New York to Los Angeles. But back then, doing that meant building the road, or laying the railroad. Resources for trans people were scarce.
Monika: Scarce how?
Sarah: Well, there was fortunately one psychologist in our area practicing in the field, soon joined by a couple others. But medical resources were much more limited. We had to beat the bushes to find physicians willing to treat us. And we weren’t just their patients, we were also their teachers.
For instance, I found the first endocrinologist in our area willing to treat us. He was a professor with a small practice on the side. As fellow academics, we were able to trust each other, and most importantly, he trusted my knowledge and research. Perhaps our strangest moment was when I dictated both the spelling and dosage of the newly approved antiandrogen I thought most appropriate to take.
I similarly found the first urologist willing to do orchiectomies, and I educated him on how to make his procedure most compatible with later SRS. I also found a loophole in Ohio administrative code that allowed this to suffice as the “genital surgery” needed to change the gender marker on a driver’s license, and I worked with the urologist to write a surgery letter that others could also use for gender marker purposes.
Monika: So all of that work wasn’t just for yourself, right?
Sarah: Exactly. Whenever we developed a new resource, we did it not only for ourselves, but also for our friends, sisters, and brothers who followed.
Monika: NTAC was unapologetically political, federal, and strategic, at a time when much of the community preferred staying local or invisible. What made you believe that Washington was a battlefield worth entering?
Sarah: Well, to be clear, NTAC wasn’t our first unapologetically political national trans organization! As I said before, I cut my teeth with GenderPAC’s lobby days in 1996, organized by Riki Wilchins and Dana Priessing. The main issue at the time was ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, for which we were first included and then excluded by the bill sponsor, Barney Frank.
Monika: Wait, included and then excluded? That sounds frustrating.
Sarah: The reason we stepped into the national arena was simple: that’s where the fight was raging. Employment discrimination was huge for trans people back then, and still is. It was literally a battle for survival.
ENDA never ceased to be an issue for us, nor did the Hate Crimes Protection Act. After a couple of years of lobbying under the GenderPAC banner, we began to get some odd vibes. When we compared notes the following year, we discovered that the GenderPAC leadership had not been transparent with us.
They were sending us to lobby for trans inclusion in ENDA while knowing that only shortly beforehand, they had gone on pre-lobbying trips with HRC lobbyists. The goal was to tell lawmakers to listen to our stories but stand firm on excluding us from ENDA. They said they would work on another bill just for trans people, something that none of us believed.
Monika: That must have felt like a betrayal.
Sarah:
It did. That precipitated a rebellion among newer activists on the
national scene. We collaborated in secret to develop countermeasures to
this “pre-lobbying” problem.
We
decided to signal our participation in lobbying missions we wouldn’t
ultimately attend, to draw out any activists working against us and
damage their credibility. Then we would go in on an unannounced lobbying
effort and have the first word for once.
END OF PART 1
The photo by Mariettee Pathy Allen: courtesy of Vanessa Edwards Foster.
The other photos: courtesy of Sarah Fox.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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