Sandy Stone. Transgender Feminism. 2006 1/5

http://www.egs.edu/ Allucquére Rosanne Sandy Stone, performance artist, researcher in neurology and anthropologist of the virtual world, antichrist, and transsexual talking about transgender, feminist, gay, lesbian, legal and social issues, vagina monologues, sex, coming out and giving a sneak preview of her most recent theater project . Public open video philosophy lecture for the faculty and students of the European Graduate School, Media and Communication Studies Department Program, EGS, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, 2006.

Allucquére Rosanne Stone Sandy Stone Ph.D. Wolfgang Köhler Chair at EGS, and is the Wolfgang Köhler Professor, department of Radio-TV-Film, and Director, Advanced Communication Technology Lab, University of Texas at Austin. Director of the Group for the Study of Visual Systems at the Center of Cultural Studies, University of California at Santa Cruz. Sandy Stone has has organized several international conferences on cyberspace in Santa Cruz, Austin, Banff/Canada, and Karlsruhe, Germany, between 1991-1995. Author of The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age.

In 1974 Stone settled in Santa Cruz, California, and undertook gender reassignment with the Stanford Gender Dysphoria Program in Palo Alto. During this period she published pseudonymously in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" and "Galaxy" magazine. Later she became a member of the Olivia Records collective, a popular women's music label. In 1987 Stone was accepted in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, where she studied with Donna Haraway and James Clifford. Stone wrote the seminal essay "The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto" while Haraway's student. The paper was influenced by Haraway's A Manifesto For Cyborgs (later retitled "A Cyborg Manifesto" and first published in Social Text, 1984) and by the turbulent political foment in feminism of that period, but primarily as a reaction to what Stone perceived as a transphobic strain in feminist academia exemplified by Raymond's book. "The Empire Strikes Back" later became the center of an extensive citation network of transgendered academics and a foundational work for transgendered researchers and theorists.

The central point of the essay was that transgendered persons were ill-served by hiding their status, and that coming out -- which Stone called "reading oneself aloud" -- would inevitably lead to self-empowerment. Thus Empire Strikes Back rearticulated what was at the time a radical gay-lesbian political statement into a transgendered voice. The importance of this move lay in the political circumstance of the 1980s vis-a-vis mainstream gay and lesbian political action at the national level in the United States. During this period, mainstream gay and lesbian activists generally suppressed transgender issues and visible transgendered activists, fearing that they would frighten the uncertain and still shaky liberal base during a delicate period of consolidation. At this critical juncture, and against mainstream efforts to silence fringe voices, Empire Strikes Back galvanized a largely scattered and disorganized population of young transgendered scholars and focused the attention of this demographic on the need for self-assertion within a largely reactionary institutional structure. Public open lecture with students of the European Graduate School EGS, Media and Communication Studies department program, Saas-Fee, Switzerland, Europe, Sandy Stone 2007

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[dancesteps4cats]

She is brilliant, hilarious, irreverent. The dissers below are high-schoolers who will never know what's good about the world beyond their own tininess.

[mk9000]

See ya.

[97sigalos]

i think its great that there is a whole comiunity for transexulas... trannies are beatiful people the sensivity of a woman and the balls of man

[spimpernel]

This is not true, there are many support groups. There are also films about how families deal with things: Red without Blue or She's a boy I knew.

I know that many wives stay with their partners when they transition. I also know couples where the woman transitions to male and they live as a gay male couple. Gay and lesbian couples turn into straight couples when one partner transitions. About half of the relationships survives a transition. Younger children have little problems to adapt.

[dragonfli12001]

You can't imagine the horror of living a lie your whole life. Your family should love you no matter what. It's hard to understand and wrap your mind around sure, but it's important to be yourself.

[analord]

what is a handmaiden?

[TheVeganicWitch]

She is a university lecturer and academic, have you seen them before at all? They all look like this, they are too wrapped up in their intellect to remember to brush their hair...its all about priorities.

[thejudicialbranch9]

Diethylstilbestrol (DES) [teratogen] The last remaining U.S. manufacturer of DES, Eli Lilly, stopped making and marketing DES in 1997. DES sons, are at an increased risk for non-cancerous epididymal cysts: abstinence, be faithful, use a condom, or "ABC" / Condoms, needles, and negotiation, also known as the CNN approach

[BoysForPele1989]

I WANT A TsHIRT THAT SAYS HANDMAIDEN OF THE ANTICHRIST.

[BoysForPele1989]

Oh, because you can be ugly and be a dude, because guys do not have to do any work to gain a woman's love? RID YOU FRIVOLOUS MIND OF YOUR GENDER BINARY, ASSHOLE.

[crazyfole]

Her looks are irrelevant to those who decided to commentate on that. Secondly, while I find trans gender to be slightly disturbing, I would never tell or even ask anyone to be what they do not feel they were meant to be. Each individual must make there own choices. Any individual who feels to suppress another is no better than Hitler or Stalin.

[Sanctusorium]

Or, get married with this known. Its the fact that it was hidden that is upsetting. Such a major issue should be out before marriage and its the couple's personal decision to go forward with it. If they have kids with this know, the children can be educated to be open minded enough.

Its the secrecy that is devastating. =/