Sandy Stone (artist)

In the transsexual's erased history we can find a story disruptive to the accepted discourses of gender.

Sandy Stone is an American academic theorist, media theorist, author, and performance artist.

Quotes

“The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto” (1991)

in Body Politics: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, edited by Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (1991), pp. 280–304.

• It is difficult to generate a counterdiscourse if one is programmed to disappear. The highest purpose of the [medically defined] transsexual is to erase h/erself, to fade into the "normal" population as soon as possible. Part of this process is known as constructing a plausible history--learning to lie effectively about one's past. What is gained is acceptability in society. ... In the transsexual's erased history we can find a story disruptive to the accepted discourses of gender.

• To attempt to occupy a place as speaking subject within the traditional gender frame is to become complicit in the discourse which one wishes to deconstruct.

• Transsexuals for whom gender identity is something different from and perhaps irrelevant to physical genitalia are occulted by those for whom the power of the medical/psychological establishments, and their ability to act as gatekeepers for cultural norms, is the final authority for what counts as a culturally intelligible body.