By Kethry Burke-Scovill
Contributing Writer
In one word: powerful.
“Intersexion” traces the stories of several intersex people, from their conception and earliest memories to their adulthood, faithfully weaving the medical and social background of their lives and revealing startling and painful truths, as well as a profound strength of identity.
“Intersexion” (pronounced like “intersection”) is beautifully formatted. It sensitively presents intersex people’s experiences at the hands of the medical community while accurately documenting the horrendous scientific and medical abuse in a highly gendered world.
While not all intersex people, both in the movie and in real life, are put through the medical and social gauntlet from day one, the film emphasizes how impacting intersex identity is on a person’s life.
Unsurprisingly, the documentary contains many triggers, including suicide, sexual assault, gender identity, medical abuse, and body image.
For the most part, the triggers were handled well and sensitively, but there is a very graphic description of suicidal intention.
The general consensus of the people interviewed was against surgical reassignment of sex, absolutely understandable, and also a potential point of tension with the trans community, because the film is not always entirely clear what form of surgical reassignment they are referring to (namely, nonconsensual).
I was very pleased to see this film come to Simmons and be added to our library’s collection. I firmly believe this is an important addition to the intersex literature available here. While sometimes dated, the information is very much relevant to the current medical and social response to intersex people.
Intersex “conditions” are no longer considered a medical emergency, which is good considering 1 in every 2,000 births are intersex children with genital ambiguity. However, there are still five (consensual or otherwise) sexual reassignment surgeries conducted on newborns every day. “Intersexion” begs for action to be taken.
Stomach-clenching, heart-warming, and altogether powerful, “Intersexion” is above all about identity and surviving outside the gender binary.
