Andrea James

News

Synopsis: Middle Sexes

middle-sexes

by Jason Buchanan

Acclaimed author Gore Vidal narrates this international exploration of blurring gender roles in a documentary that seeks to open a constructive dialogue regarding the social roadblocks and family problems faced by transgender, intersexual, and bisexual men and women from a variety of cultures. From the United States to Europe, Asia, and South America, filmmakers speak with both the people who have experienced these prejudices firsthand and the scientific and academic experts who seek to take into account the entire spectrum of sexual behavior in hopes of using education to promote tolerance and diversity.

  • Title: Middle Sexes: Redefining He and She
  • Running Time: 74 Minutes
  • Country: UK, USA
  • Genre: Biography, Gender Issues
  • Directed by: Antony Thomas
By Andrea James | November 14, 2005 | Middle Sexes |

Huffman and Macy Display Talents in 'Transamerica'

 

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May 16, 2005

TERRY GROSS
Husband and wife actors Felicity Huffman and William H. Macy have collaborated on the new offbeat feature Transamerica. Macy is the executive producer on the project, which features Huffman as a male-to-female transsexual who is contacted by the son she never knew she fathered.
Felicity Huffman was kind enough to mention our work together at 5:30 onward.

Listen now:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4653450

By Andrea James | May 16, 2005 | Film and media news, Transamerica |

Film Focus: Transamerica

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Manoush Zomorodi

May 3rd 2005

Thanks to Duncan Tucker for the shout-out in this video interview!

Read the rest

http://www.bbcworld.com/content/talkingmovies_archive_18_2005.asp?pageid=665&co_pageid=3

By Andrea James | May 3, 2005 | Film and media news, Transamerica |

Our favorite housewife

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REBECCA TRAISTER

APR 23, 2005

What kind of research did you do?

Well, the first thing I did when I talked to Duncan was I told him how excited I was and then proceeded to [try to] talk him out of casting me and casting a man instead. I was saying, “You’ve got to cast a man in this role, otherwise the inherent drama is robbed, it’s hollow! Everybody knows what I’ve got under my skirt!” I’m really glad he didn’t listen to me. He very wisely said, “Look, the drama is not about what’s under your skirt. There have been a lot of movies about men playing women; I believe there are two Academy Awards for them. And this is not a movie about what’s under your skirt.”

It’s actually very smart. The backdrop is that she’s a transgendered woman. But it’s a movie about your heart breaking open. It’s about someone who feels so alienated from herself and from society and feels that people don’t really know her, who feels that her family hasn’t accepted who she really is. I think many people can relate to some of those feelings. Certainly I could. So once I started to understand the emotional through-line, and where this woman was coming from, then I had to tackle the outside.

What did that entail?

I met with Andrea James and Calpernia Addams who run a production company called Deep Stealth Productions. They really helped me with the internal truth of the project and they also helped me with the external.

Read the rest

http://www.salon.com/2005/04/23/huffman/

By Andrea James | April 23, 2005 | Film and media news, Transamerica |

Vagina Warriors

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by Eve Ensler

Photography by Joyce Tenneson

VAGINA WARRIORS is a unique collaboration between playwright/activist/V-Day founder Eve Ensler, creator of the international hit The Vagina Monologues, and world-renowned photographer Joyce Tenneson, whose Wise Women changed the way people look at women and aging. The book features Ensler’s essays alongside Tenneson’s portraits of V-Day activists, many of them well-known celebrities, with powerful statements and quotations from the subjects. Ensler has dubbed these women and men, who are committed to ending violence against women and girls throughout the world, Vagina Warriors. The celebrities featured include Glenn Close, Salma Hayek, Gloria Steinem, Isabella Rossellini, Jane Fonda, and numerous others.

Link:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0821261835/andreajames00-20

By Andrea James | February 2, 2005 | Activism |

Campaign 2004: Now What?

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Calpernia Addams & Andrea James

December 7, 2004

We can change hearts and minds through the media

In our work to improve roles available to transgender actors in Hollywood, we’ve learned not to take occasional rejection personally. Overcoming occasional rejection is a job requirement in Hollywood. Unfortunately, the 2004 election was personal. The LGBT community was used as a wedge to divide America. Our families are the new American folk demon in this moral panic about marriage.

The political record of this administration foretells a bleak legal future for already marginalized trans people–and not just in family and employment laws, challenges we share with gays and lesbians. Legal and political recognition of gender affects our everyday existence, such as the ability to use a public restroom or to get a government ID that reflects who we are. Our most basic quality of life is at stake.

Several state supreme courts, including Bush family strongholds Florida and Texas, have recently ruled that we do not have the legal right to be recognized as the sex we know we are. The federal Department of Homeland Security changed U.S. immigration policy in April to forbid recognition of any marriage  in which one or both applicants are transsexual. Under this ruling, transsexuals seeking citizenship for their families cannot be legally married to anyone.

And if you thought constitutional amendments narrowly defining marriage were fun, look out for new laws that define and limit the two sexes.

Still, because many of the issues that affect transgender people will probably not be resolved in our lifetimes, we tend to take the long view. People will in time come to understand and accept what we can teach them from our unique vantage point.

Meanwhile, as the legal battles are fought, we will continue to work on changing hearts and minds through positive portrayals in the media. We all still have much to do, but we will prevail, despite setbacks, despite outrages, despite challenges. We will endure.

Addams (pictured) and James cofounded Los Angeles-based Deep Stealth Productions.

https://books.google.com/books?id=FmUEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA30

By Andrea James | December 7, 2004 | Activism, Writing |

GenderTalk #477, September 13, 2004

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hosted by
 Nancy Nangeroni & Gordene O. MacKenzie

A theory of transgender desire and motivation created by Ray Blanchard at the Clark Institute in Toronto has been the focus of a controversy that’s been tearing at the heart of the transgender community. Called “autogynephilia”, this theory reduces trasngender etiology to one of two mechanisms, ignoring more comprehensive considerations and the actual diversity of individual transgender evolution. Andrea James, a trans author, activist and outspoken opponent of this philosophy, talks about her newly published analysis and refutation of the thinking behind autogynephilia.

Andrea James is an author and activist who runs tsroadmap.com. Last year, she spoke on GenderTalk about the controversy surrounding the book “The Man Who Would Be Queen” by Northwestern University psychologist J. Michael Bailey. Bailey’s book caused an unprecedented mobilization within academic and activist circles. Even people who had not gotten involved before helped with an investigation started by Lynn Conway. One of the most disturbing findings to emerge from that investigation was the eugenic ideology that informs Bailey’s book. Bailey restates claims previously made by Ray Blanchard and Anne Lawrence that gender variance is a type of sex-fueled disease. The Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence disease model of gender identity will be part of the upcoming fight on the place of gender identity in the revised Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

Andrea has just written an essay that attempts to synthesize and contextualize the Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence model and its place in the history of systems of thought. The essay is called “A defining moment in our history: examining disease models of gender identity,” and it’s available online here.

Read the rest

http://www.gendertalk.com/radio/programs/450/gt477.shtml

By Andrea James | September 13, 2004 | Activism, Interviews |

All-Transsexual Production of The Vagina Monologues

Transgender Tapestry #106 (Spring 2004), p. 37

by Katharine Coleman

photo by Mariette Pathy Allen

By Andrea James | April 2, 2004 | Uncategorized |

Vagina History

Transgender Tapestry #106 Spring 2004 pp. 29-31.

by Christine Beatty

Photos by Mariette Pathy Allen

About the first all-transgender performance of The Vagina Monologues.

https://archive.org/details/transgendertapes1062unse/page/28

By Andrea James | April 2, 2004 | Uncategorized |

GenderTalk #448, February 16, 2004

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hosted by
 Nancy Nangeroni & Gordene O. MacKenzie

Eve Ensler’s play “The Vagina Monologues” will soon be performed worldwide to benefit the international anti-violence movement, and for the Los Angeles performance, she’s she’s adding something a little different to her lineup: an all-transgender cast. Andrea James & Calpernia Adams, trans activists and artists, talk about the upcoming performance in LA, where their audience of Hollywood insiders could significantly change the way that transgender persons are depicted on the big screen in the future.

Read the rest

http://www.gendertalk.com/radio/programs/400/gt448.shtml

By Andrea James | February 16, 2004 | Activism, Events and Appearances, Interviews |