Andrea James
| Andrea James | |
|---|---|
 |
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| Born | January 16, 1967 |
| Occupation | Producer, writer, activist |
| Website | |
| andreajames.com | |
Andrea Jean James (born January 16, 1967) is an American producer, writer, director and LGBT rights activist.[1]
Contents |
Life and career
James grew up in Indiana and attended Wabash College, where she majored in Latin and Greek.[2] She then attained a Master's degree in English from the University of Chicago. After graduating, she wrote ads at Chicago advertising agencies.[3]
In 2003, James co-founded Deep Stealth Productions with author and entertainer Calpernia Addams, to create content by and for transgender people.[4] James is the host of the instructional program Finding Your Female Voice.[5]
For a 2004 V-Day benefit performance, James produced and performed in the first all-transgender cast of The Vagina Monologues, debuting a new piece created by Eve Ensler for the event.[6][7] She also consulted on and appeared in Beautiful Daughters, a documentary film about the event.[8]
James was a script consultant for the 2005 film Transamerica and consulted with actress Felicity Huffman for her role in the film.[9][10][11] James appeared in the 2005 HBO documentary Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She. In 2007, James directed the short film "Casting Pearls."[12] She was a consulting producer and appeared in the 2008 Logo reality dating television series Transamerican Love Story.[13][14] In 2009 she directed the short film "Transproofed."[15]
Writing and activism
James writes on consumer rights, technology, pop culture, and LGBT rights. She is a contributor to Boing Boing,[16] QuackWatch, eMedicine,[17] and The Advocate.[18] She also created HairFacts, a consumer website on hair removal,[19] and HairTell, a companion discussion forum.[20]
James founded the nonprofit GenderMedia Foundation in 2004.[21] In 2007, she was appointed to the Board of Directors of TransYouth Family Allies, a nonprofit that supports transgender youth and their families.[22] In 2008, she was appointed to the Board of Directors of Outfest, where she was involved in the restoration of the documentary Queens at Heart.[23]
In 1996, James created Transsexual Road Map, a consumer website for transgender people.[24] One section of the site criticizes a transsexualism typology promoted by psychologist Ray Blanchard and others, including psychologist J. Michael Bailey in his 2003 book The Man Who Would Be Queen.[25][26] Critics of James' tone and tactics accused her of personal harassment that went beyond the limits of civil discourse, and they said her efforts had a chilling effect on academic freedom.[27] James characterized Bailey's book as a "cure narrative" which harmed transgender children and said the case report which frames the book has never been independently confirmed.[28] Bailey denied James' characterization of his work and has provided his own account of the controversy.[29] In 2008 Alice D. Dreger, a professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine published a paper in the Archives of Sexual Behavior discussing the controversy over Bailey's book in detail. Dr. Dreger writes that James "used the Web to publicly harass Bailey’s children, his ex-wife, his girlfriend, and his friends." Dreger writes that she was contacted by a "surprisingly large number of transgendered women" who, in the main, disagreed with Bailey's conclusions but who "wrote to tell me that they had been harassed and threatened by James for daring to speak anything other than the standard 'I’m a woman trapped in a man’s body' story."[30] A 2007 New York Times article on the criticism of Bailey's work and the disputes surrounding it says that "Ms. James downloaded images from Dr. Bailey’s Web site of his children, taken when they were in middle and elementary school, and posted them on her own site, with sexually explicit captions that she provided... Ms. James said in an e-mail message that Dr. Bailey’s work exploited vulnerable people, especially children, and that her response echoed his disrespect."[31]
References
- ^ Lam, Steven (June 20, 2006). What's "gay" now: we are everywhere indeed. The Advocate
- ^ Wabash College (October 21, 2008). Andrea James to Give Talk at Wabash.
- ^ James, Gary (October 28, 2008). Alum Shares Earned Wisdom With the Wabash Community.
- ^ Addams, Calpernia and Andrea James (July 22, 2003). Transformations. The Advocate
- ^ Hopper, Douglas (March 5, 2006). Helping Transgender Women Find a New Voice. All Things Considered National Public Radio
- ^ "LesbianAlliance.com interviews DeepStealth's Andrea James". http://web.archive.org/web/20040406130759/http://www.lesbianalliance.com/content.cfm?cat=entertainment&sub=events&file=interview.
- ^ Tennyson, Joyce (2005). Vagina Warriors. Bulfinch Press, ISBN 9780821261835
- ^ Teaching resources: Beautiful Daughters. Feminist Teacher Vol. 18 #2 (2008) p. 179-180
- ^ Nangeroni, Nancy and Gordene MacKenzie (2006). GenderTalk Episode #555
- ^ Keck, William (November 21, 2005). Felicity Huffman is sitting pretty. USA Today
- ^ Tucker, Duncan (2006). Transamerica: the shooting script. Newmarket Press, ISBN 9781557047328
- ^ 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 9781580052658
- ^ Kearns, Michael (2008). Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. Frontiers Vol. 26 # 20
- ^ Everleth, Mike (January 10, 2011). Echo Park Film Center: Transgender Short Films. Bad Lit: The Journal of Underground Film
- ^ Jardin, Xeni (December 28, 2009). Welcome to the Boing Boing guestblog, Andrea James! Boing Boing
- ^ Bashour, Mounir and Andrea James (July 2, 2009). Laser Hair Removal eMedicine
- ^ James, Andrea (December 18, 2007). Don't Tick Off Trans. The Advocate
- ^ Painter, K (2006-03-26). "Who qualifies to zap hairs?". USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/yourhealth/2006-03-26-hair-removal_x.htm.
- ^ Grossman, AJ (2008-06-05). "Zapping teenage torment". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/05/fashion/05SKIN.html.
- ^ Ensler, Eve et. al (2004). V-Day LA: Until the violence stops
- ^ James, Andrea (February 2008). Life Without Puberty: Hormone blockers for minors, the trans movement's new frontier. The Advocate
- ^ Kelly, Shannon (March 6, 2011). Highlighting the Outfest Legacy Project: Three Films. UCLA Film and Television Archive
- ^ Garvin, Glenn (2003-03-15). "Breaking Boundaries". The Miami Herald. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/columnists/glenn_garvin//story/212020.html.
- ^ James, Andrea (2006). A defining moment in our history: Examining disease models of gender identity. Gender Medicine, 3:56 ISSN 15508579 Full text via tsroadmap.com
- ^ Faderman L (2007). "Transsexuals Protest Academic Exploitation". Great events from history: Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender events, 1848-2006. Salem Press. pp. 700-702. ISBN 978-1-58765-265-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=z0EOAQAAMAAJ.
- ^ Bailey JM, Triea K (2007). What many transgender activists don't want you to know: and why you should know it anyway. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Autumn;50(4):521-34.
- ^ James, Andrea (2008) Fair comment, foul play. National Women's Studies Association conference.
- ^ Bailey, J. Michael (October 9, 2005). "Academic McCarthyism". http://www.chron.org/tools/viewart.php?artid=1248. Retrieved 2007-05-15.
- ^ Dreger, A. 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): 366–421. doi:10.1007/s10508-007-9301-1. PMC 3170124. PMID 18431641. http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?tool=pmcentrez&artid=3170124.
- ^ Criticism of a Gender Theory, and a Scientist Under Siege, Benedict Carey, The New York Times, Aug. 21 2007
