Allucquére Rosanne “Sandy” Stone was born in New York City on June 1st, 1954. Sandy and her sister grew up in a conservative Jewish family who enjoyed making each other laugh even through their struggles with money. Her father was a crusading attorney who helped poor people get out of jail, while her mother was a homemaker and teacher. 

At five years old, Sandy became aware that she thought of herself as a girl. With no real role models or support systems in her life, she formed an imaginary world in her mind called “Girl Island,” a comforting adventureland where she could be her true self. At 10 years old, after suffering relentless bullying, she wrote a letter to Leopold Stokowski, the great conductor of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, looking for encouragement. Stokowski responded, “My advice to you is to keep working at it and never ever give up,” which struck Sandy so strongly that it became a mantra for her. 

Sandy’s mythical “Girl Island” ultimately became a reality throughout her life. She was a member of Amazon Nine, a lesbian group devoted to outdoor activities. She was also a prolific sound engineer, working with name artists like Jimi Hendrix. She eventually came to work at Olivia Records, an all women-led recording company, which became a found family to her for many years. However, after a woman named Janice Raymond attacked Sandy in her book The Transsexual Empire in 1979, Sandy had to step down because of the death threats and transphobic hate she and the record company were receiving.

While Sandy was studying History of Consciousness at the University of California Santa Cruz in 1987, she responded to Raymond’s book with an essay titled, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” which was so influential, it contributed to the founding of transgender studies programs in academia. She then became a member of faculty at UC San Diego, where she taught in seemingly every department – anthropology, sociology, history, political science, English, and more. 

She eventually moved on to the University of Texas at Austin in 1992, where she developed the Advanced Communication Technologies Laboratory (ACTLab), a pioneering endeavor in the world of early software programming. Conservative faculty fought to oust her, but she ultimately received tenure despite their efforts. After retiring from UT Austin in 2010, she moved back to California, where she became a Humanities Research Institute Fellow at UC Irvine. 

Sandy identifies with a “multiplicity” of queer orientations, including lesbian, asexual, and pansexual. She was with a gender-ambiguous partner named Cynbe for 20 years until Cynbe’s death from cancer in 2016; together, Sandy and Cynbe enjoyed playing both into and against heteronormative power dynamics. Today, Sandy is part of a gender-bending throuple who enjoys comparing book lists and drinking tea. Sandy is also the proud mother of her daughter Tani, whom she raised with Darcy Thole, Sandy’s previous partner from Amazon Nine. Sandy cites Tani’s birth as her proudest moment; these days, Tani lives with Sandy, along with Tani’s partner Leslie and son Naio. Sandy says, “This is a family that I did not expect and it’s quite wonderful.”