Our Lady J

Our Lady J is a classical pianist, television writer, and singer-songwriter. She is a writer and producer for the television series Transparent and Pose.

Our Lady J was born in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania in 1978, growing up in an Amish community. She attended Interlochen Center for the Arts from 1994 to 1996, majoring in piano during her junior and senior years of high school. In 2000, she moved to New York City, where she freelanced as an accompanist. In 2004, J became the musical director and accompanist for the Broadway performer Natalie Joy Johnson and came out as transgender. She grew to popularity in 2013 when releasing her critically acclaimed first studio album, Picture of a Man. Our Lady J has played piano at Carnegie Hall, American Ballet Theatre, and for the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

In a 2014 piece in the New York Times, Our Lady J said "I'm comfortable being a bit of both genders. Legally, I'm 100 percent woman — I changed the 'M' to 'F' on all my papers — but now I want to change it to a question mark or an 'X'." In a November 2016 video for Tinder, she said "My preferred gender is agender, no gender." However in a September 2017 interview on the podcast "LGBTQ&A", she said that was no longer accurate and she was now "gender nonconforming and gender fluid", but also a trans woman. On International Women's Day in March 2020, she tweeted about being woman-aligned and nonbinary: "Happy International Women's Day. I never take my womanhood for granted, having spent most of my life fighting to be respected and seen as a woman. But truth be told, it's not that simple for me. I am and always have been non-binary, although identifying with this term still feels foreign, given the newness of the language in comparison to the antiquity of my spirit. However, "woman" is still a protective and necessary sheath I feel I must wear for my safety in a society that feels anything other than man or woman is a danger, therefore a target of violence. This fight, I believe, is one of the many shared experiences that binds me to the female tribe. I will continue to align with the term "woman," until the day comes when splintering away from it no longer leaves me feeling prey to the verbal and physical violence I've experienced while inhabiting my space within the sacred femme."

Links

 * Website
 * Instagram