For her exceptional life of accomplishment, there is no better LGBTQIA+ representative than American transgender pioneer Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone. In March of this year, Sandy Stone was inducted into the prestigious National Women’s Hall of Fame in Seneca Falls, New York, the birthplace of women’s rights in America. As its first and only transgender woman, she was so honored for her significant contributions as an author, academic, media theorist, performance artist, educator, and programmer. During the 1960s and 70s, Stone was the sought-after sound engineer for such musical giants as Jimi Hendrix, the Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, and Crosby, Stills & Nash. Assigned male at birth, she transitioned very publicly in the 1970s and established herself as a staunch advocate and feminist, helping many to understand womanhood and being a transgender woman. From 1976 to 1978, she was the sound engineer at Olivia Records, the legendary lesbian musical collective that combined activism, sexuality identity, and music., but she resigned when controversy increased over her working for a lesbian-identified business as a transgender woman. A graduate of St. John’s College in Maryland, Stone wrote the seminal 1987 essay “The Empire Strikes Back: A Post-transexual Manifesto,” which was such a powerful call to action for both research and the creation of space spaces for her community that she is now considered a founder of the academic discipline called Transgender Studies. She was also a computer science pioneer and founder of the multidisciplinary ACTLab (Advanced Communications Technologies Laboratory) in 1993 at the University of Texas at Autin, where she continues teaching as an Associate Professor. She is also an internationally acclaimed digital media theorist and artist who has helped to forge the field of New Media Art and Theory, fostering artworks produced and designed by means of electronic media technologies. As if all these accomplishments were not enough, Stone has also written numerous science fiction tales under the pen name of “Sandy Fisher” for science fiction magazines and has collaborated on a number of interactive performance art pieces and installations that explored the impact of technology on society and identity. At age 88, Stone continues to fight bigotry and inspire new, expansive forms of thinking and creativity.
“At some point, I said, I’ve got to do something about becoming who I am.” Sandy Stone
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