Susan Stryker is an esteemed author and professor of gender and women’s studies. In this interview, she discusses growing up in Oklahoma, while also spending time in Germany and Hawaii as part of her father’s military service. After attending college in Oklahoma, Susan moved to San Francisco—a place she has dubbed “gay Paris”—to study US history. There, she became involved in union organizing on campus and the SF BDSM scene. Susan also details her time working for Transgender Nation and the GLBT Historical Society, as well as the challenges she has faced as a trans woman attempting to find employment and establish trans studies as an institutionalized presence in academia.