Andrea James

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Andrea James

Born: January 16, 1967
Occupation: film producer
Website: Personal Site

Andrea Jean James (born January 16, 1967), (neé James E. Mead), is an American transsexual woman, film producer, screenwriter, actress, LGBT rights activist, and consumer activist.

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[edit] Early life

Near her high school hometown, in Crawfordsville, Indiana, James attended Wabash College, a liberal arts college for men, where she majored in Latin and Greek and initially planned to teach English. She then attained her Master's degree in English from the University of Chicago. She is also a member of Phi Beta Kappa.

[edit] Transition

Beginning in 1996, James underwent a series of facial feminization surgery procedures performed by Douglas Ousterhout, MD. James then posted before and after photographs on her then relatively new TS Roadmap web site and wrote an extensive web diary about her experience, which helped give notability to facial feminization surgery. The facial surgery modified her chin, jaw, nose, forehead, eye bones, and hairline. On January 9, 1998, she changed her name from James E. Mead to Andrea Jean James. Later that year, on June 16, 1998, in Portland, Oregon, James received vaginoplasty surgery from Toby Meltzer, MD.

[edit] Career

After graduating, James worked for nearly a decade at various Chicago advertising agencies, including DDB Worldwide, where she wrote print, radio, and television advertisements for high-profile clients, some of which aired during Super Bowl broadcasts.[1]

In 2003, she co-founded Deep Stealth Productions with her business partner Calpernia Addams, to create educational materials for transsexual women, to raise awareness about the epidemic of violence perpetrated against transpeople and to combat the poor image of transpeople in the media.[2] James is the host of the Deep Stealth Productions instructional film Finding Your Female Voice.

On 21 February, 2004, James was a member of the first all-transgender cast, as well as a producer, of The Vagina Monologues, performed on V-Day in Los Angeles. She gave the welcome alongside Calpernia Addams, and performed the monologues "The Woman Who Liked to Make Vaginas Happy" and "They Beat the Girl Out of My Boy - Or So They Tried 04", and took part in the introduction of the Vagina Warriors, along with Addams and Monologues writer Eve Ensler. [3] She has also consulted for the production of a documentary film project about the 2004 V-Day performance entitled Beautiful Daughters and appeared in this film.[4]

James was a script consultant for the 2005 film Transamerica[5], and also consulted with actress Felicity Huffman for her role in the film. She also made a brief appearance, in an excerpt from her voice video, shown at the opening of the movie.[6]

James appeared in the HBO production Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She[7], which aired on 6 December, 2005.

[edit] Transsexual activism

She also operates the free TS Roadmap website, an exhaustive source of information for transsexuals, concerning physical, social, and legal aspects of transition. The section of TS Roadmap on hair removal proved so popular that James spun it off into its own site, Hair Facts, with a companion discussion forum called Hair Tell.

One section of TS Roadmap criticizes the controversial work of psychology professor J. Michael Bailey dealing with biology and sexual orientation as scientifically unsound, outdated, and defaming of transsexual people.[8] The section includes attacks on Bailey himself, one of which [9] - now removed - followed with James issuing an apology, though the apology includes further personal accusations.[10]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Wolfman Productions: Biography of Andrea James. Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
  2. ^ LesbianAlliance.com interviews DeepStealth's Andrea James. Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
  3. ^ V-Day: Until the Violence Stops - cast. Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
  4. ^ Beautiful Daughters at the Internet Movie Database
  5. ^ Transamerica at the Internet Movie Database
  6. ^ James, Andrea. Transamerica with Felicity Huffman. Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
  7. ^ Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She at the Internet Movie Database
  8. ^ James, Andrea. Categorically wrong? - A Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence clearinghouse. Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
  9. ^ Bailey, J. Michael. Andrea James took pictures of my children off of my website (pdf). Retrieved on 2007-03-07.
  10. ^ Though James does state, "in retrospect, I see the error of my ways," the article further accuses Bailey of, among other accusations, "abandon[ing] his wife and children" and exploiting his children to promote his work, without offering evidence for either statement. [1] (See that article for a brief summary of Bailey's responding criticism.)

[edit] External links

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