Calpernia Addams

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Calpernia Sarah Addams (born 20 February 1971, birth name unknown[1]) is an American author, actress and activist for issues regarding transsexual people.

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[edit] Biography

Addams was born and raised as a boy in Nashville, Tennessee in a strict Christian fundamentalist household. Addams enlisted in the United States Navy as a teenager and served four years as a field medical combat specialist. She was stationed first in the Middle East during the Gulf War and later at Adak, Alaska.

Afterward, Addams returned to Nashville and began performing in a drag burlesque revue. She also began to compete in pageants for drag performers. During that time she also began to live full-time as a woman. Having played fiddle since childhood, she played fiddle in various celtic and traditional music bands, some of which was published on compact disc.

[edit] Film

The 2003 film Soldier's Girl is based on a tragic event in Addams' life. In 1999, Calpernia Addams began dating an Army private named Barry Winchell who was training at the nearby military base in Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Winchell was harassed by fellow soldiers when rumors of his amorous relationship with Calpernia Addams began to circulate around the army base.

After various soldiers taunted and pressured Winchell about his relationship with Addams, two soldiers conspired, and one of them murdered Winchell in his sleep on the Fourth of July, 1999. Private Calvin Glover pled guilty to murdering Barry Winchell.

Winchell was apparently murdered because Glover and fellow soldier Specialist Justin R. Fisher detested Winchell's romantic relationship with Calpernia Addams. Glover was court-martialed and sentenced to life in prison. Fisher reached a plea agreement on lesser military charges and was sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

Addams was thrown into the national spotlight after Barry Winchell was murdered. Some political groups attempted to make his murder an issue about the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding sexual orientation. However, both Winchell and Addams appear to have considered their relationship heterosexual.

The New York Times article title 'Inconvenient Woman' refers to the manner in which some political groups attempted to portray the relationship between Calpernia Addams and Barry Winchell as "homosexual", so they could exploit Winchell's murder in order to protest U.S. military policies.

In the Times article, Calpernia Addams said of the affair:

"I do feel like I was an awkward element for everybody involved. I didn't want to be anybody's anything, really, except Barry's girlfriend. And that was already taken away from me."[2]

[edit] Career

The media scrutiny Addams endured because of her romantic relationship with Barry Winchell convinced her to become an activist for more positive portrayals of transsexual women. The irony of Winchell's murder is that the consequent media and political sensation and exploitation gave Calpernia Addams celebrity and provided opportunities for her to pursue a media related career.

In 2002, after briefly living and working in Chicago, Addams moved to Los Angeles, California (Hollywood). During the same year she also received vaginoplasty surgery. She and her friend Andrea James, who she met in Chicago and is also a well known activist, co-founded Deep Stealth Productions.

The media production company is devoted to the creation of educational materials for transsexual women. Deep Stealth Productions also engages in general cinema production, activism for positive and accurate portrayals of transsexual women and men in cinema, television, and other media.

Addams is also an actress, who has garnered some small roles and consulting engagements in various mainstream films and television. She was a script consultant for the 2005 film Transamerica and also appeared in a small role in the film, playing the fiddle. Addams has also been honored with various awards for her activist work, toward eliminating violence and discrimination against the LGBT population.

Her 2002 autobiographical book, Mark 947, was excerpted for an anthology of notable transsexual autobiographies in 2005.

[edit] References

  1. ^ David France (2005-05-29). [http://www.calpernia.com/diary/index.php/weblog/comments/new_york_times_sunday_magazine/ In order to turn the murdered soldier Barry Winchell into a martyr for gay rights, activists first had to turn his girlfriend, Calpernia Addams, back into a man]. New York Times Sunday Magazine. calpernia.com. Retrieved on 2007-01-30. “She will not reveal her birth name, which she legally changed, and, estranged from her parents, she would not put me in contact with them.”
  2. ^ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9902E5DB1E3AF93BA15756C0A9669C8B63&sec=health&spon=&pagewanted=1

[edit] External links

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