Ellen James Society was a rock band, based in Atlanta, that was fronted by Cooper Seay and Chris McGuire. Gary Held, Jan Dykes, Scott Bland, and Bryan Lilje were also members at various times. They formed in 1987 and disbanded in the early 1990s after releasing two albums on Daemon Records.
They took their name from a fictitious group of women who cut off their tongues to protest the rape of an (also fictitious) eleven-year-old girl, Ellen James, whose tongue was cut off by her attackers in order to prevent her from identifying them. The group was the creation of John Irving in his novel The World According to Garp, from which, in 1982, was made a movie adaptation starring Robin Williams and Glenn Close at her first feature, with a screenplay written by Steve Tesich.