Every Body
Julie Cohen's documentary answers everything you wanted to know about intersex issues but were afraid to ask.
I only know the work of the documentarian director Julie Cohen from 2018’s RBG, that fine piece about the late Ruth Bader Ginsburg. In that instance, Cohen was working with her frequent collaborator Betsy West but this new feature finds Cohen going it alone. Being a biopic, RBG readily found an effective shape by viewing Ginsburg’s life for the most part chronologically whereas in Every Body the material does not really lend itself to that. But if a certain shapelessness is apparent here it is not too important for this is a documentary that achieves an impact that stems directly from the importance of its subject matter. The film’s aim is to promote discussion around the issue of people who are born intersex and to speak out for laws that will prevent doctors from carrying out surgery on such children before they reach an age when they can decide for themselves whether or not any such procedure is what they really need.
I suspect that I am not alone in knowing virtually nothing about people who find themselves in this group and I was startled to learn at the start of this film that 1.7% of the world’s population fall into this category. Three such people are at the heart of Julie Cohen’s welcome and informative film: they are 31-year-old Alicia Roth Weigel, a political consultant and writer from Austin Texas, 43-year-old Sean Saifa Wall, a PhD student, and River Gallo who was born in New Jersey and now works in Hollywood but whose parents come from El Salvador. All three suffered surgery at a tender age on the advice of doctors but now regret it and are anxious to speak out in public in the hope of bringing about a change of attitude.
What quickly becomes apparent here is that until recently social expectations and medical opinion went hand-in-hand in adopting a binary stance over the need for all children to be registered as born categorically male or female. Because of that attitude anybody whose body contained features of both sexes (such as being born with a vagina but no womb or when a child has a penis but no testicles) led to immediate pressure being applied to pick a sex and to use surgery to eliminate signs of the alternative. Sharing the viewpoint of the three central interviewees, Every Body makes the case for a middle way in such gender issues. While arguing that parents should never be encouraged to approve of surgery on young intersex children and that to carry it out should be banned, the film asserts that only in later years if the child desires it should such surgery proceed. Furthermore, it argues the case that to be true to themselves many who are intersex need to resist the idea of surgery altogether.
Julie Cohen sometimes acts as an off-screen interviewer of the three who are seen sitting together. But each of them contributes individually to tell their stories albeit not in separate distinct episodes but in an interwoven way. Similarly other striking material is introduced at intervals, not least heart-breaking scenes previously filmed and telling the story of David Reiner. Although Reiner was not intersex, what happened to him has had repercussions that have encouraged the kind of surgery that this film deplores. Reiner himself was interviewed and that footage challenges medical views that had prevailed and had been encouraged by Dr John Money at New York’s Johns Hopkins University. David Reiner’s penis had been burned during circumcision and because at that time it could not be reformed his parents were encouraged to bring him up as a girl. As time passed Dr Money quoted this case as positive evidence that a child born male could satisfactorily be brought up as a girl but Reiner’s subsequent history is evidence of how distorted Money’s claims were. Unfortunately, that example nevertheless became widely accepted as supporting the idea that early surgery on intersex children was hugely beneficial.
Every Body lasts 92 minutes which is certainly not excessively long for a documentary feature, but the way in which the material has been put together does mean that it lacks the sense of shape in its second half which would give it maximum effect. The last third finds the film jumping around between different countries. On occasion this is telling, as witness a segment that sees Sean Saifa Wall attending an international intersex art exhibition in Berlin where he has photographs on display. But, as against that, various scenes of activism and other bits and pieces tend to lessen the impact rather than adding to it. Nevertheless, any shortcomings matter little since Every Body gives a platform to three contrasted but engaging people who can speak from the heart as they air their experiences. Viewers are left with plenty to ponder and that is all the more important when the ground covered is one that rarely makes the headlines.
MANSEL STIMPSON
Featuring River Gallo, Alicia Roth Weigel, Sean Saifa Wall.
Dir Julie Cohen, Pro Julie Cohen, Tommy Nguyen and Molly O’Brien, Ph Kate Phelan and Leah Anova, Ed Kelly Kendrick, Music Amanda Yamate.
NBC News Studio/Better Than Fiction-Dogwoof Releasing.
92 mins. USA. 2023. US Rel: 18 August 2023. UK Rel: 15 December 2023. Cert. 12A.
