‘Every Body’ review: An inspirational documentary about the struggles intersex people face
The conversations about gender identity have immensely increased over the last few years. There are still many people out there who see gender as something binary and who believe that men (he/him) only have male traits and women (she/her) have female reproductive organs. It’s for those people that we need to keep those conversations going and that we have to give documentaries like Every Body by director Julie Cohen (RBG) all the attention they deserve. In her latest work, Cohen shines the light on the ‘I’ in LGBTQIA+, which stands for ‘Intersex’; she does that in an inspirational, easy-to-understand but hard-to-watch way.
That people still see gender as something black and white (or better said, blue and pink) is being proven by the many gender reveals. Think of the pink cake, blue confetti, pink balloons or blue smoke. But what colour do you use for kids who are intersex? None; it seems they ‘don’t exist’ in society… until they do. As mentioned in the documentary, there are many types of intersex people who have an atypical chromosome structure or sex characteristics that aren’t necessarily female or male.
In Every Body, we hear the candid and vital stories of three intersex individuals from different backgrounds and races who face injustices and prejudices towards the ‘I’ every day. Sean Saifa Wall (he/him), a scholar and activist, had to live his life as a woman when his doctor decided to perform a constructive but unnecessary gonadectomy when he was thirteen. Wall was born with testes and no uterus, but because of his feminine features, people who thought they knew better urged his mum to raise him like a girl despite Wall being a boy. Queer actor/filmmaker River Gallo (they/them) was born with a penis but without testicles. To “correct” their gender, many surgeries were forced upon them at a very young age as doctors implanted artificial testicles. Just like many intersex people, political activist/lobbyist, and writer of Inverse Cowgirl, Alicia Roth Weigel (she/them) had to undergo a gonadectomy. She was born with male chromosomes (XY) and testes but also a vagina.
Cohen gives her three excellent, courageous and passionate subjects the chance to tell their incredibly moving and meaningful stories. While the stories are different, there are many similarities as well. The biggest one is, sadly, the highly negative impact of the medical professionals and their ‘advice’. Intersex people and their families are very often told that their gender, body and birth are abnormal and that they should change it. That certainly comes through in the work of Dr. John Money, a sex researcher at Johns Hopkins University, which is also included in this documentary. It’s his theory that social conditioning has a massive impact on the gender identity of an individual. He believes that intersex kids should have surgery so that their traits resemble one of the genders as closely as possible and that they should be raised according to that gender without ever knowing the truth.
That way of thinking is highly present in the medical world and undoubtedly has an immense impact on Wall, Gallo and Weigel, especially when they were younger. This resulted in a childhood full of lies, secrets and pain. Despite not having periods, teenage Weigel carried around tampons to ensure that no one knew their secret. Gallo lied about the reason why they didn’t have any testicles because they thought that once their girlfriend knew the truth, she would leave them. Losing testicles due to testicle cancer seems to be much more acceptable to the outside world than having no testicles because you were born that way. The psychological toll of the unwanted surgery on Wall is exceptionally high, too high for someone to bear.
These instances prove that the fight for equal rights for intersex people is far from over, and Gallo, Weigel, and Wall are fighting that fight in their own ways. Gallo brings the intersex and LGBTQIA+ topics to the big screen in their work, such as Ponyboi, while at the same time also organizing mass protests in America. Weigel appears many times in front of influential lawmakers and at the senate to ensure that laws and legalization are inclusive and respectful towards the LGBTQIA+ community and that discriminatory laws such as the so-called “bathroom bills” never see the light of day. As founder of the Intersex Justice Project, Wall fights together with other intersex people of colour for a ban on all unnecessary and invasive surgeries on young intersex people.
Every Body is a very stylish documentary that highlights a too-often-overlooked topic. Weigel, Wall and Gallo show us precisely what intersex people are and their daily struggles, resulting in a gripping feature packed with important insights, moving testimonials and a lot of empathy, openness and courage.
Every Body is now out in UK cinemas courtesy of Dogwoof