Andrea James
Andrea Jean James (born January 16, 1967) is an American transgender rights activist, film producer, and blogger.[1][2][3][4]
Andrea James | |
---|---|
Born | January 16, 1967 |
Education | Wabash College (BA) University of Chicago (MA) |
Occupation | Producer, writer, activist |
Website | Official website |
Education
James grew up in Franklin, Indiana,[5] and attended Wabash College, where she majored in English, Latin, and Greek. After graduating in 1989, she obtained an M.A. in English language and literature from the University of Chicago.[6]
Career
After college, James worked in advertising, first for several years at the Chicago Tribune, then for a decade at DDB Chicago. It was while working there that she transitioned.[5] She became involved in consumer activism, with an interest in medical and academic fraud.[7][8] In 1996 she created Transsexual Road Map, a consumer website for the transgender community,[9] and later set up HairFacts and HairTell, a website and discussion forum about hair removal.[10][11][12]
James moved to Los Angeles in 2003 and co-founded Deep Stealth Productions with her roommate, author and entertainer Calpernia Addams, to create content marketed to transgender people.[7][13][14] They filmed an instructional video, Finding Your Female Voice, to offer voice coaching to trans women,[15] and in 2004 produced and performed in the first all-transgender cast of The Vagina Monologues, debuting a new piece created by Eve Ensler for the occasion.[16][17] James was also a co-producer of and appeared in Beautiful Daughters, a documentary film about the event.[18]
In 2004 James founded the nonprofit GenderMedia Foundation.[19] The following year she was a script consultant for Transamerica (2005), helping actress Felicity Huffman prepare for her role as a trans woman.[20][21][22] She appeared in the HBO documentary Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She (2005), and in 2007 directed a 7-minute film, Casting Pearls.[23] She was a consulting producer for, and appeared in, the reality-dating television series Transamerican Love Story on the Logo digital channel in 2008.[24][25] In 2009 she directed another short film, Transproofed.[26]
James was appointed in 2007 to the Board of Directors of TransYouth Family Allies, a nonprofit that supports transgender youth and their families,[27][28] and in 2008 to the Board of Directors of Outfest, where she was involved in the restoration of the documentary Queens at Heart.[29][30] In 2012 she co-founded Thought Moment Media.[31] She directed the 2015 Showtime concert film Alec Mapa: Baby Daddy.[32]
Writing and activism
James writes about consumer rights, technology, pop culture, and LGBT rights. She has contributed to Boing Boing, QuackWatch, eMedicine, The Advocate, The Huffington Post and Wikipedia.[7][12][33][4]
Together with Lynn Conway and Deirdre McCloskey, James was a driving figure in protests—described in 2007 as "one of the most organized and unified examples of transgender activism seen to date"[2]—against J. Michael Bailey's book The Man Who Would Be Queen (2003). In the book, Bailey argues that there are two forms of transsexualism: one a variant of male homosexuality, and the other a male sexual interest in having a female body, a taxonomy critics see as inaccurate and damaging.[34] James argued that the book is a cure narrative, framed by one case report about a six-year-old child, that exemplifies the academic exploitation of transgender people.[35][36][37]
The dispute became heated when James posted a page on her website containing photographs of Bailey's children, alongside sexually explicit captions that quoted or parodied material in Bailey's book. Bailey accused her of harassment, as did Alice Dreger, a colleague of Bailey's at Northwestern University; Dreger tried to stop James from speaking at the campus about the controversy.[38][39][40][41] James responded that the page was intended to echo what she saw as Bailey's disrespect toward gender-variant children.[34]
See also
References
- Lam, Steven (June 20, 2006). "What's 'gay' now: we are everywhere indeed". The Advocate, June 20, 2006.
- Surkan, Kim (2007). "Transsexuals protest academic exploitation", in Lillian Faderman (ed). Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender events, 1848–2006. Ipswich, MA: Salem Press, pp. 700–702.
- Anderson-Minshall, Jacob (June 6, 2017). "Don't Forget the Long, Proud History of Transgender Activism". The Advocate.
- Nichols, James Michael (4 July 2016). "This Trans Pioneer Has Been Fighting For The Trans Community For Decades". The Huffington Post.
- Bartner, Amy (June 3, 2016). "Transgender activist amid Hollywood's transition", IndyStar.
- "Andrea James to Give Talk at Wabash". Wabash College, October 21, 2008.
- Jardin, Xeni (December 28, 2009). "Welcome to the Boing Boing guestblog, Andrea James!", Boing Boing.
- James, Gary (October 28, 2008). "Alum Shares Earned Wisdom With the Wabash Community", Wabash College.
- Garvin, Glenn (March 15, 2003). "Breaking Boundaries". The Miami Herald.
- Painter, K. (March 26, 2006). "Who qualifies to zap hairs?", USA Today.
- Grossman, A. J. (June 5, 2008). "Zapping teenage torment", The New York Times.
- Bashour, Mounir and James, Andrea (July 2, 2009). "Laser Hair Removal", eMedicine.
- Addams, Calpernia; James, Andrea (July 22, 2003). "Transformations". The Advocate, p. 12.
- Nichols, James Michael (February 28, 2016). "The Incredible Story Of Trans Showgirl, Musician And Legend Calpernia Addams", The Huffington Post.
- Hopper, Douglas (March 5, 2006). "Helping Transgender Women Find a New Voice", All Things Considered, National Public Radio.
- Ensler, Eve and Tennyson, Joyce (2005). Vagina Warriors. New York: Bulfinch Press, p. 11. ISBN 978-0-8212-6183-5
- "LesbianAlliance.com interviews DeepStealth's Andrea James", LesbianAlliance.com. Archived April 6, 2004.
- "Teaching resources: Beautiful Daughters", Feminist Teacher, 18(2), 2008, pp. 179–180. JSTOR 40546067
- Ensler, Eve, et al. (2004). "V-Day LA: Until the violence stops". Gender Media Foundation.
- Nangeroni, Nancy and MacKenzie, Gordene O. (April 15, 2006). Episode #555, gendertalk.com.
- Tucker, Duncan (2006). Transamerica: The Shooting Script. Newmarket Press, pp. 93, 133. ISBN 978-1-55704-732-8
- Keck, William (November 21, 2005). "Felicity Huffman is sitting pretty", USA Today.
- Adelman, Kim (July 18, 2007). "'Pariah' Leads The Pack of Outstanding Shorts at Outfest '07", Indiewire.
- Pozner, Jennifer L. (2010). Reality bites back: the troubling truth about guilty pleasure TV. Seal Press. ISBN 978-1-58005-265-8
- Kearns, Michael (2008). "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun". Frontiers, 26(20).
- Everleth, Mike (January 10, 2011). "Echo Park Film Center: Transgender Short Films", Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film.
- "I'm a TransYouth Family Advocate!", andreajames.com, 23 October 2007.
- James, Andrea (January 25, 2008). "Life Without Puberty", The Advocate.
- "Outfest Board of Directors", andreajames.com, 11 June 2008.
- Kelly, Shannon (March 6, 2011). "Highlighting the Outfest Legacy Project: Three Films", UCLA Film and Television Archive.
- "Partners", Thought Moment Media.
- "Alec Mapa: Baby Daddy" Archived 2015-11-27 at the Wayback Machine, Showtime.
- James, Andrea (December 18, 2007). "Don't Tick Off Trans". The Advocate.
- Carey, Benedict (August 21, 2007). "Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege", The New York Times.
- James, Andrea (June 21, 2008). "Fair Comment, Foul Play: Populist Responses to J. Michael Bailey's Exploitative Controversies", paper presented to the National Women's Studies Association (courtesy link Archived 2016-07-31 at the Wayback Machine), pp. 3–4.
- Also see "The Bailey Brouhaha", National Women's Association Conference, courtesy of YouTube, June 21, 2008.
- James, Andrea (September 2004). "A defining moment in our history: Examining disease models of gender identity" Archived 2017-10-01 at the Wayback Machine, tsroadmap.com.
- Bailey, Michael J. "Academic McCarthyism", Northwestern Chronicle, October 9, 2005.
- Dreger, Alice D. (2008). "The Controversy Surrounding the Man Who Would Be Queen: A Case History of the Politics of Science, Identity, and Sex in the Internet Age," Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37(3), pp. 366–421. PMID 18431641 PMC 3170124
- Nichols, Margaret (2008). "Dreger on the Bailey Controversy: Lost in the Drama, Missing the Big Picture", Archives of Sexual Behavior, 37(3), pp. 476–480. PMID 18431629
- Singal, Jesse (December 30, 2015). "Why Some of the Worst Attacks on Social Science Have Come From Liberals". New York Magazine.
External links
- Official website
- Andrea James on IMDb
- "Andrea James", The Huffington Post.
- James, Andrea (December 3, 2007). "Don't Tick Off Trans". The Advocate.