Allucquére Rosanne Stone, better known as Sandy Stone, has been at the center of controversy for much of her life, mostly for the act of existing. She is an artist, programmer, sound engineer, author, media creator, activist, and highly successful academic, who, at around 85 years young, is still creating. In her vast career, she has focused much on feminism, women’s rights, and advocating through music and performance art. She was there during the glory years of second wave feminism in the 1970s, and remains an active voice of the movement. She is transgender. A large part of feminist activism, education, and women’s empowerment during the ’60s and ’70s came through the arts. Sandy Stone was there in the feminist music scene, as were many of her friends and allies—although that same art scene also inspired many of those who would become her enemies. She played an essential role in discovering a new framework for those seeking to understand both womanhood and being a trans woman. As we’ll see, her fight against exclusionary gender essentialism—the idea that there is a universal biological feminine essence that defines all womanhood—in the feminist art community became the cornerstone of her desire for positive change. Sandy Stone’s acceptance into women-only spaces was hotly debated solely on the basis that she was assigned male at birth. She was harassed and “outed” by certain feminists in the ’70s who would certainly today be dubbed ‘TERFs.” Transfolk have existed for a long, long time, and there have always been people who don’t understand them and want us to not exist—usually because such an existence challenges ingrained notions of gender security. Sandy’s work can tell us a lot about how art can work as activism. She has pushed back against the long-held assumption that a trans person must medically transition and be deemed “passing” by a cisgender binary standard. She challenged the still-held notion that “true womanhood” is achieved only by a strictly defined genre of people. She continues to fight outdated ideas, as unfortunately there are still some feminist spaces maintaining that “true women” cannot be trans.

Allucquére Rosanne (Sandy) Stone is Associate Professor in the College of Communication and Department of Radio-Television-Film and director of the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab) at the University of Texas. ​ She is the author of The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age and numerous other publications. She is a senior artist at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Humanities Research Institute Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. ​ Allucquére Rosanne (Sandy) Stone pursued successful multiple careers in film, music, experimental neurology, writing, engineering, and computer programming. She is transgendered and is generally considered the founder of the academic discipline of Transgender Studies.