Intersexion: A Documentary About Being Intersex

David Strachan, Writer; Advocate for Intersex Human Rights; Advisor, The Intersex and Genderqueer Recognition Project; Former Member, Intersex Task Force, LGBT Advisory Committee, SF Human Rights Commission

The 44 minute film, Intersexion, was a documentary made for New Zealand television in 2011. It tells the personal stories of several intersex, not transgender, people around the world, exploring the adverse effects from surgical and sex hormonal interventions that some of them experienced as children. When a child is born most people ask, “Is it a boy or a girl?” What happens when doctors cannot answer that question? One baby in two thousand is born with ambiguous genitalia to the point that no one can tell if the child is male or female.

“I was amazed to discover just how common intersex conditions are in the world,” director Grant Lahood says. “Yet it was something I, probably like a lot of people, assumed was incredibly rare." Intersexion looks beyond the shame and secrecy that defines many intersex births and explores how intersex people, with their very different bodies, navigate their way through childhood, adolescence, relationships and adulthood, when they don’t fit the binary model of a solely male and female world.

August 18, 2014