{"id":27697,"date":"2024-06-28T05:30:18","date_gmt":"2024-06-28T09:30:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=27697"},"modified":"2024-06-19T09:34:54","modified_gmt":"2024-06-19T13:34:54","slug":"welcome-to-girl-island-the-odyssey-of-sandy-stone-part-3-of-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/28\/welcome-to-girl-island-the-odyssey-of-sandy-stone-part-3-of-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Girl Island: The Odyssey of Sandy Stone (Part 3 of 3)"},"content":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two<\/a>…<\/i><\/p>\n

Academia and Beyond<\/b>
\nWhile she had long ago soured on higher education, by the early \u201880s Stone had reconsidered. \u201cMaybe I should give it a try again,\u201d she thought. She met scholar Donna Haraway, a professor at the University of California\u2019s History of Consciousness program. Stone applied for a spot in the teacher\u2019s assistant program, and landed the job. In between her commitments as a TA, she would \u201cgo to the library and do rogue research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stone discovered that she had to play the game to get along. \u201cFaculty members began saying things like, \u2018If you want to get into this program, we need to become less afraid of you. Go to parties. Hang out.\u2019\u201d So she did. \u201cI learned to talk like an academic, and a year later, I got accepted into the program.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Stone became friends with seminar instructor Gloria Anzald\u00faa, who would go on to acclaim as a leading scholar of Chicana feminism and queer theory. Stone says she bonded with Anzald\u00faa in part because she saw both of them as individuals \u201chidden away in the interstices of what\u2019s going on, [people] who are there but don\u2019t really fit.\u201d<\/p>\n

One summer day in Santa Cruz, Stone passed by the popular Porter Squiggle sculpture affectionately known as the \u201cflying IUD.\u201d And at that moment, she had a vision. \u201cI saw in front of me a circus train, and each car was painted to represent one of my careers,\u201d she recalls. \u201cAt the back of the caboose, there was a clown with a red nose, and he was waving at me.\u201d To Stone, the vision represented all of her previous careers going away. It was then that she realized that she was where she belonged. \u201cI don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever belonged<\/i> before,\u201d she says. \u201cAnd that\u2019s how I became an academic.\u201d<\/p>\n

While working on her doctorate, Stone authored a groundbreaking essay (and pointed response to Raymond) titled \u201cThe Empire<\/i> Strikes Back: A Posttransexual Manifesto.\u201d Stone\u2019s time in academia had its ups and down: she would be called upon to provide a syllabus for a women\u2019s studies program, only to find that her grant had been withdrawn. The turmoil took its toll. \u201cI was so unhappy at that time that I found a way to cry that nobody would know about,\u201d she says. She would cry her heart out while on a slow elevator on campus, and then steel herself before the doors opened.<\/p>\n

Almost immediately after being fired from an academic position in San Diego, Stone was \u201cheadhunted\u201d away to the University of Texas. She recalls marveling to herself, \u201cYou\u2019re being offered a tenure-line job in a department that wants you to start a new line of study.\u201d She took the job in Austin. In 1993 she launched a New Media program called ACTLab (Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory). The program would become a leading light in the nexus of the arts and new media.<\/p>\n

In 1995, Stone married author and researcher Jeffrey Prothero (Cynbe ru Taben). Years after gaining tenure, Stone retired from the position in 2010, continuing as Professor Emerita. Her spouse passed away from cancer in 2016.<\/p>\n

Radio Days, an Award and a Film<\/b>
\nIn recent years, Sandy Stone has come full circle. Her current endeavors draw upon all of her myriad skills, feed her passions and interests, and contribute to the greater good. \u201cOf course I\u2019ve always been interested in technology,\u201d she explains. \u201cWhen I had originally transitioned in the \u201870s, there was a new radio station starting in town, KUSP.\u201d Stone says that the station was established upon \u201cthese wonderful 1970s freaky, techy, geeky principles of, \u2018We\u2019re going to provide a voice for the community and we\u2019re going to change the world through music.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

The 21st<\/sup> century successor to that community radio station is KSQD. Several of the KUSP staffers banded together to launch the station, and when Stone retired, they reached out to her. At loose ends and still grieving from the 2016 death of her husband, she agreed to get involved as the station\u2019s chief engineer. \u201cI physically built the station,\u201d she says. According to a KSQD press release, today Stone \u2013 who celebrated her 80th<\/sup> birthday several years ago \u2013 continues to provide technical and organizational expertise to the station.<\/p>\n

Dr. Sandy Stone is pleased to have received the recent honor from the Women\u2019s Hall of Fame. (The ceremony was telecast on Oprah Winfrey\u2019s OWN Network). \u201cIt\u2019s a great honor for me as a woman, as a person,\u201d she says. \u201cBut it\u2019s complicated.\u201d She notes that her acceptance speech focused upon the ways in which the concerns of trans women and non-trans women coincide.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe all agree on a number of very important things,\u201d she emphasizes. \u201cWe\u2019re together fighting hatred and bigotry and venality.\u201d But she says that trans women bring an important perspective to those discussions. \u201cAs trans, we have a particular vision. We see beneath the smooth surface of the world to the way the guts are put together.\u201d She believes that her perspective is about unscrewing that metaphorical lid, and putting the world back together in a more just fashion. The challenge, she says, \u201cis to be able to implement that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Artist, first-time filmmaker and longtime friend of Dr. Stone, Marjorie Vecchio launched a Kickstarter campaign a few years ago. More than 400 backers pledged funds to help make her documentary a reality. Due in 2025, Girl Island: The Sandy Stone Story<\/i> is, in Vecchio\u2019s words, the tale of \u201cAmerica\u2019s most modest rebel.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sandy Stone\u2019s journey so far has been a remarkable one, as inspiring as it is instructional. She has lived through eras in which matters of gender identity weren\u2019t discussed openly, yet she has triumphed in turn at each endeavor to which she has applied herself: engineer, author, academician.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a nice plaque,\u201d Dr. Stone says with a smile. \u201cI am greatly honored by it. But that\u2019s as far as it goes. It makes no change in the world other than what we bring to it. But I want that change, so I\u2019m going to use it for whatever leverage I can.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Continued from Part Two… Academia and Beyond While she had long ago soured on higher education, by the early \u201880s Stone had reconsidered. \u201cMaybe I should give it a try […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":27710,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,3668],"tags":[5446],"class_list":["post-27697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-music-business","tag-sandy-stone","cat-41-id","cat-3668-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27697"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27697\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27711,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27697\/revisions\/27711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27710"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}