Hello, hello. I'm Brittany Luce and you're listening to It's Been a Minute from NPR,

a show about what's going on in culture and why it doesn't happen by accident.

So back in January, President Trump signed an executive order recognizing only two sexes.

The order says that, quote, sex shall refer to an individual's immutable biological classification as either male or female, and goes on to claim that it protects the public safety

of women, which could imply that trans and gender nonconforming people make women unsafe.

Now, this language isn't new, and to understand its history, we have to go back to the 1970s.

To a story about drugs.

The drugs were very, very good.

I can only imagine.

Rock and roll.

And a music engineer who pushed for a broader understanding of gender, becoming the godmother

of modern-day trans theory.

It's the late 60s in New York City.

Long hair everywhere.

Rock and roll is getting louder, basier, grittier.

And a young audio engineer named Sandy Stone was in the center of it all.

We would throw these parties at a record plant where everybody in the art music scene in New York would show up.

The Supremes, Diana Ross.

So Sandy was an engineer in the middle of this rock and roll world in the late 60s.

That's Nastia Voinovskia.

She's a reporter at KQED who interviewed Sandy for a 10-part history of San Francisco's gender diverse community.

But that's not even the most interesting part of her story.

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