LGBTQIA. Most people have heard the terms lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer, and even asexual. “I” is probably the least discussed letter. It stands for intersex. Who and what are intersex people? Julie Cohen’s doc gives a detailed, complicated and long overdue answer.
Broadly speaking, intersex people are individuals born with any of several sex characteristics including chromosome patterns, gonads, or genitals. Cohen’s doc gives us the story of 3 crusading intersex people: Alicia Roth Weigel, Sean Saifa Wall, and River Gallo, and their collective journeys to become the people they are today. In addition, the doc gives us the history of intersex people and how the medical profession treats them. Spoiler alert: it’s pretty terrible.
Every Body showcases the strange dichotomy intersex people have to deal with on a day to day basis. Part one: diversity. Alicia, Saifa, and River are 3 in a multitude of genetic variations on how someone can be intersex. As a result, each intersex person has a hyper personal story to tell. In some ways, that makes them wholly unique, but that also means they can be very alone, walking a path no one can really understand. Through our 3 protagonists we see how these specifics turn them into the people they are today, from the person others envisioned them early on.
Which brings us to part 2: unity. In this case, the unity is bad. Despite the extremely specific differences each intersex person has, almost universally the medical profession has done something to violate those people’s trust. Because of the binary lens society puts people in, for years, doctors would simply choose for the parents/person without telling them so they can live “normal” lives. The doc pinpoints a shift in behavior in the 1950s and Dr. John Money, now a dirty word to the community. Money became convinced that you could simply will a change in a person to either be a man or a woman if the environment around the person pushed them in one direction or another. This disproven research basically led to mutilation of at this point thousands of children without their consent, usually leading to heavy distrust of medical and parental advice, which might explain the higher suicide rates for intersex people. Though brief, Every Body’s history lesson gives the audience the emotional and societal burdens intersex people have to deal with in their day to day lives, to hopefully look past old cruel terms like “hermaphrodyte” and see these people for their honest selves.
Walking out of Every Body I was both inspired and sad. I was inspired by how much people like Alicia, Saifa, and River have gone through and yet remain beacons of light for scared intersex children looking for role models. And I was also sad, yes, for the horrors intersex people have overcome, but also because I was one of 3-4 people in the theater. Forget the theatrical run; I hope this review encourages you to learn about some people living today you may not know much about, and hopefully empathize and understand who they are as people, not just an “I” in a group.