Every Body

This film offers an enlightening look at the complexities, struggles, and joys of the intersex community. The filmmaker includes important historical context about medical theories and treatments, as well as the deep secrecy surrounding intersex individuals that has kept this community invisible for too long.

The three main subjects of the film each share their unique quest to fully understand and take ownership over their existence in this world. By forming connections with other members of the intersex community, these individuals have learned to harness their power and celebrate their differences.

Great movie that was assigned in a college class I was taking. Informative and proactive I admire those who have shared their intersex journey to teach others. I loved the testimony given in Austin, loved the joyful dance at the end. Loved the positivity shown despite painful life experiences. My heart went out to the people as they described the challenges they had growing up and making the decision to embrace who they are. Such incredible courage. I'm so glad this was an assignment or I probably wouldn't have heard about it. Wish there were more books and movies that describe lives of those in the LGBTQIA+ community.

I learned about this film from an episode of the Pure Nonfiction podcast. Before I was half way through, I was so intrigued I sought out the film and watched it, then finished the podcast. The film is fantastic. (So is the podcast, BTW.)

The film is beautifully crafted, with such exuberant and joyful opening and closing credits, you can't help but smile and celebrate the stars of the film, despite the tragedy that shaped their lives. They were all born with genital characteristics that made it impossible to determine their sex. Decisions were made for them by manipulative clinicians based on fraudulent research giving bad advice to frightened parents. Their anomalous sex organs were removed in childhood, depriving them of the right to let nature take its course or make their own decisions. Furthermore, they were assigned a sex and forced to live lives that contradicted who they were.

The history behind why this was the standard of treatment when they were born is told through archival footage of the charlatan John Money, M. D. (1921-2006), and his most famous victim of mistreatment, David Reimer. Director Julie Cohen films the three stars watching the archival footage first time. We see their reactions while also sharing their shock and anger at the injustice done to Reimer and the intersex community whose treatment protocols were based on this one case of bad medical research.

Besides imparting empathy for intersex individuals, the film also explains and illustrates the anatomy and genetics. I am grateful to now have a better understanding of why the spectrum of human gender and sexuality is so broad and diverse.

What I would like to see now is a sequel about intersex people who were treated correctly following enlightened medical protocols, whose sex was never a secret, whose bodies developed naturally and who made their own choices in being who they are. Please, Julie Cohen, continue the story!

The movie primarily focuses on three intersex individuals. It is estimated there are 230,000 intersex persons in the US. They have the chromosome XY, and they are not the trans population. It is a wide range of differences in the sexual anatomy of the individuals, but the bottom line is that it is complex and evolving. And their main desire is to allow the individual to make the decision of how they want to live their life as they grow up and understand who they are, and to stop the intersex surgeries of which they have no choice about just to conform to society's definition of male/female. So much of what has been in textbooks simply is wrong, and they give the example of twins, where there was a medical mistake at age 2, and he was then raised to be a girl, with devastating results, worsened by the prominent doctor who kept reporting that things were going so well. If anyone is looking for anything sordid in this movie, they need to go elsewhere. Thoughtful, informative and certainly providing a picture that most know nothing about.

The movie profiles three intersex people and describes what it means to be intersex. Prior to seeing this movie, I did not know that intersex people existed. These are people whose physical genitalia doesn't match the normal presentation for their chromosomal sex. For this reason, these are people for whom gender at birth is ambiguous, since they have biological traits of both genders.

This first great thing about this movie is that it presents cases where the phrase "gender assigned at birth" makes sense and is explained! I'm a liberal voter, but have bristled at how trans vocabulary uses "gender assigned at birth". I never got it- how could gender be "assigned"? By profiling intersex people, this movie explains cases where in fact gender is very deliberately chosen.

The second great thing about this movie is that it presents intersex conditions simply as "different bodies", people for whom a typical combination of chromosomes and genital anatomy didn't happen. I think most people can point to something that makes their body different from "normal"- intersex people just had this happen when it came to their sexual anatomy. The concept of "different bodies" really humanized intersex, and by extension, trans, people for me. You can physically see on an intersex body why gender is ambiguous. What's not to say that trans people had different sex hormones in utero, and their brains are different? In order words- trans bodies are different too- we just can't see the differences?

Finally, the third and last great thing about this movie is the story told by Alicia Roth Weigel. She is a beautiful, blond-haired, dress-wearing, very feminine looking woman. If you saw her on the street, you'd think she is a typical woman, but she has XY chromosomes! She is the perfect spokesperson to show that genital anatomy and chromosomes together don't fit perfectly into two boxes. Trans stories are often told by people whose physical look is atypical for their gender. Ms Weigel tells her story as someone who identifies as a woman and also looks very feminine.