"This is a topic where you're starting with a societal baseline knowledge that's like close to zero," Oscar-nominated filmmaker Julie Cohen said
Elisabetta Bianchini
Fri, June 30, 2023
It's estimated that about 1.7 per cent of the world's population is born with some intersex traits, but in a society full of gender reveal parties and blue or pink-themed baby showers, most people can't accurately provide a definition of what intersex means, many often only exposed to "sensationalized" depictions of intersex people.
"This is a topic where you're starting with a societal baseline knowledge that's like close to zero," Julie Cohen, director of the documentary Every Body, told Yahoo Canada.
Every Body (in theatres Friday) starts filling that gap in knowledge. As defined in the film, intersex is "any variation in a person’s sex traits with which they’re either born or they develop naturally during puberty," but much of the documentary is centred around intersex activists Alicia Roth Weigel, a political consultant, Ph.D. student Sean Saifa Wall, and actor and screenwriter River Gallo.
"We live in a society that’s so binary and so for me as an intersex person, where do I fit? Where do I belong?" Wall says in the documentary.
Cohen's work on Every Body started with looking through the NBC archives while working on a separate job for NBC News Studios. What initially grabbed her attention was the story of Canadian David Reimer.
In the 1960s Reimer's parents were advised by psychologist Dr. John Money that their son could grow up as a girl, after a circumcision injury, with surgery and if Reimer's parents never told him the truth. But as Reimer got older, he did want to live his life as a man and famously spoke about what happened to him on "Dateline," before he died by suicide in 2004.
Money's work was documented as being successful, studied by medical students and continued to be a knowledge base for paediatric surgery, even after his work on gender identity was debunked.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 11: Guest, Shana Knizhnik, River Gallo, Alicia Roth Weigel, Sean Safia Wall and guests attend the premiere of "Every Body" during 2023 Tribeca Festival at Village East Cinema on June 11, 2023 in New York City.
(Photo by John Lamparski/Getty Images for Tribeca Festival)
'One of the most interesting activist movements'
Looking at present day, Cohen highlighted that what really moved the dial for her to make Every Body was understanding the current scope of the intersex rights movement.
“This is just one of the most interesting activist movements with a whole range of educational, medical and political things that they're fighting for, that they're fighting for really vigorously, really strategically, and with a lot of dynamism,” Cohen said. “And yet, just not getting enough attention.”
For Roth Weigel, she was actually set to be featured in a different documentary years before Every Body, but she didn't have the same confidence and trust that she had with Cohen.
“The process had just ended up feeling really icky and kind of exploitive and unfortunately, those feelings are not new when it comes to media representation of the intersex movement," Roth Weigel said. "We kind of have to share a lot more about our bodies and our personal histories than most other human beings ever have to.”
“But with Julie, from the very first conversation it felt very much like she was in it to showcase what we were doing, not to try to force some narrative onto us and really wanted to lift up our own narratives. I also really liked that it was not just going to be about me, that she wanted to include multiple stories to really show the breadth and diversity of our movement. And lastly, I mean it's Julie Cohen, and she's made incredible films when it comes to gender equity and political activism. So if this was going to be the first big break for our movement, in terms of real representation on the big screen like this, she just definitely felt like the best person to entrust that to.”
Intersex activists Sean Saifa Wall, Alicia Roth Weigel and River Gallo from EVERY BODY, a Focus Features release
(FOCUS FEATURES)
'We have the surgeries as kids and then we're kind of left high and dry'
Roth Weigel, Wall and Gallo all underwent unnecessary surgery as children to have their external genitals be "consistent" with the gender they were being assigned at birth, describing the "voyeurism" and feeling like a "specimen" in front of medical professionals. They also open up about the trauma and harm caused by physicians' advice that being an intersex person shouldn't be spoken about.
Roth Weigel lives in Texas and has been a patient and on the advisory board of Texas Health Action, which has Kind Clinics providing sexual health and wellness for the LGBTQIA+ community. With Roth Weigel, Wall and Gallo now adults in their 30s and 40s, Roth Weigel explained that there is still a large gap in competent health care for intersex individuals, specifically adults who underwent these surgeries as children.
“I need to take hormones because of interventions that happened to me when I was younger, but I was always treated as if I was trans and was trying to achieve some sort of gender presentation,” Roth Weigel said. “For me, what we found out through my process of being a patient at Kind Clinic, was that I actually have early stage osteoporosis, given that I received huge health inequity and never really had doctors that were able to meet my needs.”
“There basically is no competent health care for intersex adults. … We have the surgeries as kids and then we're kind of left high and dry.”
Roth Weigel highlighted that she was among intersex activists who just launched an intersex health care offering, which will be open to new patients later this summer. But trying to pull information from the expertise of similar clinics, Roth Weigel stressed that there weren't any clinics to refer to.
“There are individual doctors in certain cities, there might be an intersex competent endocrinologist here and an intersex competent gynaecologist there, but in creating this health offering, [we] interviewed intersex Texans all across the state and found that one of them was quite literally flying to Japan to receive care,” Roth Weigel said.
"It's kind of the wild west out here. ... We're two per cent of the population and to think that there just aren't doctors that can meet our needs and treat our bodies is pretty wild."
Intersex activists Sean Saifa Wall, River Gallo and Alicia Roth Weigel from EVERY BODY, a Focus Features release.
(FOCUS FEATURES)
'We actually are joyful as our full selves. That's the whole point of this.'
Both Roth Weigel and Cohen hope that Every Body can act as a first step for people to understand the intersex community.
"We were trying to educate people to a certain extent, but there's so much that we don't get into," Cohen stressed. "The people in our film don't represent the full intersex community in terms of physical variations, we're just trying to give you a sense of what some experiences have been like."
"I kind of hope people come away feeling both really blown away by hearing what some of their fellow human beings have been through and what cool people they have emerged to be, and then just wanting to immediately run and Googling [on] their phones, ... to start learning more about about intersex people."
While Every Body is certainly informative and oftentimes sobering, there's a lot of joy and personality, and an uplifting feeling about the activist movement, and Roth Weigel, Wall and Gallo specifically. The film even ends with these three individuals and the Every Boy crew dancing around and bowing.
“I'm just a big believer that documentaries should feel like movies, not like some take your medicine, educational, ... I'm going to make my viewers suffer through the whole thing,” Cohen said. “Even telling serious stories about things that are problematic and societal things that need to change like that, it can still be a pleasure to watch.”
“I really want every documentary I work on to feel like it could be a date movie and I think this one absolutely fits in that lane. … That’s largely because of who stars in the film, not that there aren't heavy moments to it, but there's also a lot of humour there.”
“From an intersex activist perspective, if you're only seeing chopped up children mutilated on hospital tables, it's probably not going to inspire you to come out and join that community,” Roth Weigel added.
“So I really liked that Julie really focused on the intersex alliance, all the majorly awesome work that we're doing, but also showing that we actually are joyful as our full selves. That's the whole point of this.”
For any individuals wanting to be public about being intersex, but hesitant to do so, she stressed that "there is a huge community that is out here to embrace you."
"We basically have this amazing online community where, I know most of the out intersex activists everywhere from Zimbabwe to Russia, as soon as someone comes out, we kind of immediately embrace our people," Roth Weigel said.
"You probably don't know another intersex person in your town or your city, but you can find us online and through that, you never know, you might actually find some other intersex people in your town or your city. So it seems scary but for me, it's the best decision I've ever made. I feel free, and it's not going to be an easy process, but I can pretty much guarantee that it will be worthwhile."
Some organizations and resources that support the intersex community include:
Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity / @CCGSD_CCDGS
Egale Canada / @egalecanada
InterACT / @interact_adv
The Intersex Justice Project / @intersexjusticeproject
The Interface Project / @interfaceproj
Intersex Campaign for Equality / @intersex_nepal
Beautiful You MRKH Foundation / @beautifulyoumrkh
Club Intersex / @clubintersex
FedUp Fighting Eating Disorders / @fedupcollective
Gender Spectrum / @gender_spectrum
Turner Syndrome Society of the US / @turnersyndromesocietyus
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