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MUSIC: Piano Lumineuse
by Scott Twynholm

Growing up in 1980s
suburban Baton Rouge

was pretty idyllic for Kristi.

She loved spending time
with her friends,

running around the neighbourhood.

Growing up, Kristi and I lived
in the same neighbourhood,

so we were childhood friends.

We were both obsessed with soccer.

We were good, too.

She was fearless and...

Oh, I have to smile.

Erm, she wasn't even five feet tall.

A little tomboy, mouthy,
mouthy little kid.

Just really feisty.

Kristi's dad, John,
he was a really nice guy.

You know, expected 100%
all the time.

Her mum, Alice, very, very
sweet, nice lady,

very supportive of her kids.

They seemed to be very giving,
loving people -

but always seemed like
there was this aspect of secrecy.

I never... I never,
in a million years,

could have guessed the truth
of Kristi.

I am Kristi -
or at least, I was.

And I know what you're thinking,

this is a transgender story.

But it's not.

I have the utmost respect
and admiration for

the trans community worldwide.

But this story is not a trans one.

And it's important that
I tell it in full.

ON PHONE: Hello, my Jim.

I'm just thinking about
you right now.

I know you're going
to do something difficult...

..and I just wanted you to hear

the voice of somebody
who really loves you.

Hello, Sheriff.

When I think of Baton Rouge,
I think of the lies.

That's why I don't like
coming back here.

But I've come back to speak to
the man who started it all.

You know, started a chain of
events that continue on.

I just want to talk to him

and tell him that what he did...

..was wrong.

This is the street I grew up on,
Antioch Boulevard.

Oh, man, and here comes...

This is where I grew up.

I do want to pop out,
and I just want to see

what the driveway looks like.

Wow. OK, it's starting to come back.

This is a picture of me
and my mother holding my sister.

It looks like it's time to leave,

and I don't want to leave.

I'm playing a game with my mother,
sort of pulling away,

and she's like,
"I know you, kid. Come on."

I'm clearly delighted with myself...
with glee.

This is one of my favourites.

This is a picture of my dad.

I would have been four or five
in this photo.

I just love the way
I'm looking up into his eyes.

It's just that I trust him so much.

Yeah, I used to just blanket,

it was like the childhood was shit.

All of it, shit,
because of this lie.

You know? But it wasn't.

You know, it wasn't all shit.

This was right around the time
that Sheila started coaching me.

Sheila was an excellent coach.

And she's just very invested
in me doing well,

and really developing a rapport.

I definitely felt like
I was a mentor to her.

We talked a lot about life, about,

"What do you want to do
in the future?"

She knew, whatever
she was going to tell me,

I wasn't going to judge.

There were a lot of girls like me

when I started playing
organised soccer.

Tomboyish.

So, yeah, I was camouflaged.

But then, I'm like,
girls on my soccer team

started to wear earrings,

and started to put on make-up,

and started thinking about
their appearance, and I wasn't.

I mean, I wasn't interested
in that at all.

I know Kristi didn't fit
into that mould,

and neither did I.

We probably found great
comfort to each other.

I remember just having a random
conversation again one day.

We were like,
"If you were on a desert island,

"who would you want to be
there with you?"

And we both went,

"Laura Hepner, absolutely!"

LAUGHTER
So, just...

So, it was just...
It wasn't anything that we talked,

like, we never even had
the conversation.

"Oh, do you like girls?
You like...?" It just, we...

You grew up in a place
like Baton Rouge, you know,

like, for me personally,

liking girls was not what
you're supposed to do.

They say that water and sunshine
are the essence of life -

so life must be good in Louisiana.

It's very - this is a very,
very conservative place.

Christian conservative
family values.

Going to church together.

Very southern.

ECHOING: God can set you free!
Hallelujah!

The expectation was definitely
that boys were going to

become athletes, become engineers,

and girls were going to find
a spouse and get married...

..basically, and have some kids.

We used to laugh and say you were
going to get an Mrs Degree -

meaning you were going to get
a degree to be missus,

and become married.

It's just that Christian
and that conservative here.

Something must have
kicked in for my parents,

or at least my mum, that, you know,
"I need to feminise this kid."

And I started getting these sort of
mandatory permanents in my hair.

They'd dump a bunch
of chemicals in your hair,

just to...nuclearize your hair

and, I don't know, break its will.

SIGHS
Didn't win this battle.

BASEBALL GAME ON TV

I was around the age of 12.

My mum took me into her bedroom.

I remember there was a baseball game
that I wanted to watch,

and that I didn't want to go
in the bedroom and talk to her.

She was sitting next to me and...

..she said, "Soon, you'll have
to start taking these pills

"that are going to help you grow
and develop breasts

"and make you look like
other girls.

"And then, one day later on,

"you're going to have
to have a surgery."

I just, I...

I didn't know what
a future surgery meant.

And finally, she said,

"But you'll never be able
to have children of your own."

That's when she
sort of got choked up.

She breaks down and starts crying,
and I'm caring for her.

Like, I'm telling her,
"It's OK, Mama."

You know, "It's all right."

I was like, "OK.

"I'm not interested in that
at all anyway."

I just...and I-I went back
to watching the baseball game.

That's what I cared about.

Erm, like a child knows what his
parents need him to be.

That's the thing, is that...

And I know I'm flipping back,
I know.

There are milestones in my
life where I remember

not asking questions..

..because my parents were screaming
inside of themselves,

"Please don't ask."

I think there's some corps,
fundamental thing, right?

Mum, dad equals safety,

equals shelter, equals food,
equals love.

I just didn't want
my mum to be upset.

As soon as I started taking
those pills,

I started to really grow.

I guess I was happy
to be growing taller, but...

..I wasn't that excited
about growing breasts.

I didn't like the way
my body was changing at all.

But again, there actually wasn't
much I could say or do about it.

I don't think I ever knew Kristi

to be comfortable in
her own skin, honestly.

And I just remember
her girlfriend at the time

having a conversation with me,

super upset about Kristi
not allowing her to touch her,

have that physical intimacy,

and just really struggling
and hurting about that.

So, of course, me being...
just asked, like,

"What's going on?

"You know, she feels like -
that you don't love her.

"You won't open up.
Like, what are you afraid of?

"You don't... She's the best thing
that's ever happened to you.

"Y'all are so happy, like..."

That was when she looked at me
and said, you know,

"I don't have a hole down there."

And, of course, you know,
you try not to let your jaw drop,

or things like, you know, erm...

Everything about women turned me on.

But I wasn't interested at all
in them touching me.

It was very much
a one-sided experience.

I didn't think I was capable
of physical pleasure.

You know, I just didn't have
a relationship with my own body

for the longest time.

I was 19.

I was at college on
a soccer scholarship.

And I was taking this
feminist studies course.

They had given us a selection
to read from this book,

but I hadn't done the reading.

That room right there,
that's the class.

I had no idea that,
when I walked into this class,

my whole fucking world was going
to turn upside down.

The tables, the desks were all in
a circle, because the professor

wanted us to be looking
at each other when we talked.

And...I just started looking around.

You could see the people just
shaking their heads

in disbelief or disgust.

And I thought,
"This has got to be good.

"What is this?"

And so, I just started flipping
through the book and...

CHUCKLES

..I start reading about
how some children are born...

..with bodies, with genitals

that fall outside an arbitrary
acceptable norm.

The length is measured...

..you know, this long,
you get to be a boy.

If it's less than that,

then you lose your phallus,

and you're raised as a girl.

The choice is made by
the parents and the doctors.

The child is having their gender
designated, imprinted,

selected for them.

People were just sort of,

"Oh, my God, I can't believe
this happens regularly.

"What, they just mutilate babies?"

And it just hit me.

HEARTBEAT ECHOES

"I think this is about me."

Click, click, click, clink.
You know?

My mind immediately went to,
"Everything makes sense,

"and this is - I've got
to go get my records."

Like, "I've got to go and get them."

I drove myself to
the doctor's office.

I remember going to the desk and
saying, "I'm a current patient,

"and I'd like if you could give me
a copy of the medical records

"you have for me."

So, I get in, I immediately start
shuffling through the papers,

and I just start at the top,
and it just says,

"Karyotype XY."

And I'm like,
"Wait, what the fuck is that?

Like, XX, XY.

And I'm like,
"XX is chromosomally female.

"And it says XY.

"Why are they running
chromosome tests on me?

"XY, if it's supposed to be XX?

"Then, what does that...tell me?

"Oh, I was a healthy baby.

"But then, there's all this
other documentation about how

"my genital presentation needed
to be altered

"and so many things needed to be
removed, these healthy organs."

And I'm like, "What the fuck?"

And it had this name,

it had Richard Carter's
name all over it.

So, those things were taken out,

and my genitals were crafted
to have a very satisfying,

pleasing vulva presentation,

so I could then be safely
taken home by my parents.

I started in labour about
4am in the morning,

and went on to the hospital.

When we arrived,
the gynaecologist was just very

excited about - that it was a boy.

And then, he said, "Oh, wait,"

you know, he changed his mind
right in midstream.

I was called to the Woman's Hospital

to see an infant that
had ambiguous genitalia.

Ambiguous genitalia is a condition

where you're really not sure,

in looking at the genitalia,

whether you're looking at
a female or a male.

The most obvious thing was that
the phallus was nowhere near

the size of a penis that
you would expect in an infant.

They said that they could
correct the problem,

and that was, you know,

we could raise her as a girl.

In 1976, the medical thought was
that these patients needed

to be surgically constructed

the way they most likely look.

It was strictly
an anatomical decision,

because it was so much easier to
make it look more like a clitoris,

as opposed to trying
to make a penis.

So, that's what we did.

PHONE RINGS

I believe it was
a phone call at first,

a very solemn phone call to
my mother telling her

that I had gone to get my records,

and that I was upset
by what I'd found.

Obviously,
we're taking their advice,

and I feel very confidently
there was nothing malicious

or anything of that order.

They just thought that was
the best way to handle it.

You know, it says I'm, you know,

it says my chromosomes are male,

and that I had these surgeries
that took away parts of my body.

I was like, "I had testes,
you know, I had a...

"..a phallus between my legs,
and they were gone.

"I had those things,
and they were gone."

She was not...not very happy
at all during, what,

about a year or so there.
She was getting...

She was real angry.

She was angry toward us and towards
the doctors. And the doctors.

"You cut my genitals out.

"What did you think was going
to happen?"

You know, "What is the meaning
of all...? What is the...?

"Why didn't you tell me this?

"And I had to find it out on my own,
in my car, by myself

"with no-one to talk to?"

We tried to explain to her
this was the best thing

that we thought to do and,
including the doctors,

and we agreed.

There's not much else you can say.

That was not good enough.

All that did was...

..it was just gasoline on a fire.

MUSIC INTENSIFIES

I started running through
every memory that I'd had.

Every time I was bullied
for how I looked.

Every time I didn't meet a standard

when I was measured up
to other girls.

Every time I felt like
a fish out of water.

And just filling in
the blanks with these lies.

Just so much unnecessary suffering.

So much unnecessary suffering.

A-And why?

I was a psychology student at UCLA.

And a very famous pioneer
in sexual science gave a lecture

in abnormal psychology.

And most of the other kids in
the class were kind of giggling,

because he was talking about sex.

But he finally put up a slide

that showed a child
who had atypical genitalia.

And I recognised
the name of the syndrome

that he had on his slide.

I knew because I was one
of those kids.

I was born with intersex.

Intersex is an umbrella term
for all kids who are born

with differences in their
appearance of their genitalia,

differences in the formation
of their gonads,

of their sexual organs,

and also, to kids who have
different kinds of genetics.

It was not typically male
or typically female.

At the beginning, foetuses
have female-looking genitalia,

and the intervention of testosterone
and other androgens change that

to look like what are
typical male genitalia.

From here to there, things stop.

Depending upon where they stop,

you'll get a mix of appearance,

so it can be more to the female,

more to the male,

very much in the middle.

I didn't even know that a kid could
have surgery at age three months,

but I did.

And I had a dozen surgeries
before I was 12 years old.

So, I know very well
what that history is like,

and what it can do to a kid.

My mentor, he was introducing me to
all these other sexual scientists,

and I was learning a lot from
these people who were

real pioneers in the field.

..To be joined by Dr John Money.

He's from Johns Hopkins.
He's a world-famous sexologist.

Dr John Money is a professor...

Oh, he was the hero at the time.

John Money was an undisputed genius.

He made huge contributions
in the field of sexual science.

Welcome, Dr Money.Thank you.
APPLAUSE

He had become known for
his interest in intersex.

John was the only person

who was studying the psychology

and the development of people

who were born
with atypical genitalia.

And I wanted to do
my dissertation on that.

So, I became an intern with
John at age 24.

Good evening.

I'm working overtime tonight,

for I want to be able to tell you
something about gender identity.

One of the big debates in all of
science is nature versus nurture.

Is it what happens because you
have a genetic encoding?

Or is it because of how it is
that you're raised,

how it is that you're trained?

John believed very strongly
that human beings could be trained

to live in a gender of choice,
regardless of their chromosomes.

It is a characteristic of
the human species

that men and women
have a gender identity,

that newborn babies don't have one,

and that developing infants
and young children develop one.

They develop it in much the same way

as they develop their
native language.

John believed that how you're raised
can make all the difference

in how it is that you identify.

And he had this case.

I'm referring now
to identical twins,

genetic males looking
perfectly normal.

At the age of seven months,

the first of the twins
was scheduled for circumcision.

And there, an accident occurred.

The result?

There was absolutely no structure

of the penis left at all.

I was in shock,

and I could not comprehend.

"Oh, my God.
What are we going to do now?"

It is not wise to assign,
or, I should say,

to condemn a baby to live as a boy.

For, in fact, it is
surgically possible

to rehabilitate this baby
surgically as a female.

These surgeries have been
happening for a while,

where kids who were born with
atypical genitalia were being

fixed up to look more like males,
or more like females.

But the psychological model,

the kind of script for
how to reinforce gender

and how to teach them
how to live as boys or girls,

that was something that wasn't
so widely disseminated

until this case came out.

He seemed highly intelligent

and very confident of
what he was saying.

Certainly made an impact.

And I thought,
"Here's our answer.

"Here's our salvation.
Here's our hope."

John was really, really good
at selling his theory,

and these parents agreed.

And this one child was
assigned female.

And John started working very,
very directly with the family.

John and the team at Hopkins
established a script and a protocol

for how to tell families about what
was going to happen to them.

Do the sex of assignment.

The child would need surgery to have

a more female-appearing genitalia.

What's going to happen
to them at puberty,

and if that included
hormonal therapy.

If that included further surgeries -
which it often did.

John Money's main advice to us was,

"Don't let her think
that she was ever a boy.

"Keep that secret."

Part of the script was
to keep this a secret from them.

They were never to know that they
were anything other than a normal

little boy or a normal little girl.

So, it's quite an undertaking,

and it takes a lot of effort by
the family to maintain this.

The fact of the matter is that now,

the child has grown-up to have
a female gender identity,

which is in no way similar
to that of her brother.

When the two children
are seen together,

it's not possible to mistake them,

for one is a girl
and the other is a boy.

The book that John
published in 1972,

Man & Woman, Boy & Girl,

made John my hero in a lot of ways.

I mean, it was like,
"Here's the guy who's finally doing

"what I'm looking for
somebody to do."

In the '70s, the sexual
revolution was happening.

Differences in gender were something
where kind of those ideas

were kind of falling apart.

And this guy, John Money, coming up
with this amazing statement about

gender being fluid, and gender
being something that is a construct,

people really latched on to it.

It was a very popular idea,

and it fit with the spirit
of the times.

This became the basis for surgically
changing certain baby boys

into girls throughout
the medical world.

Once this case was published,

it gave a lot of power,

a lot of justification
for that model.

Physicians and surgeons,
not just in the United States,

but around the world were willing
to take on the script about

how to deal with kids who are
born with atypical genitalia.

Parents everywhere could be
far more easily convinced

that this will work.

So, yeah, like a cookbook,

that's how it got disseminated.

It makes it very exciting,
don't you think,

to live in an age of discovery
of human personality this way?

A few months after
I discovered my records

and confronted my parents,

I was still upset by
what I had found,

wrapping my head around the idea
that I had this body

when I was born,
and it was taken away from me.

And that information - information
that had been kept from me.

APPLAUSE

Welcome back to Northwest Afternoon.

We have a very important
and sensitive topic

that we're touching today,

though it may not be appropriate
for children.

I was doing laundry at their house,
watching TV.

..For children born with mixed-up
genitals, doctors usually recommend

fixing the genitals as
soon as possible.

That's what's happened
to our guests -

only they say the fix did
more harm than good.

Cheryl was surgically altered...

"We'll be speaking to Cheryl Chase

"of the Intersex Society of
North America about..."

But all I heard was "intersex".

We've now managed to connect, erm,

hundreds of intersex people
in North America

and throughout the world.

I heard her describe
intersex adults - plural -

speaking out publicly.

Would you like one of our leaflets?

I thought, "Oh, holy shit.

"Is this woman really on TV
talking about this?

What we do know from talking
to intersex adults,

is that a huge number of people
have experienced

the treatment as punishment.

Where is she?
How did she get there?

Speaking so concisely and
intelligently about a subject

I was just beginning to understand.

When doctors are confronted
with this, they say,

"Well, we are positive
that all of our other patients" -

who we have never heard from
and we haven't followed -

"are fine now."

But they can't produce one.

It wasn't satisfactory for her.

She's pissed off,
and she's super smart.

I thought,
"Holy shit, I am not alone.

"And, in fact, there is a burgeoning
political movement behind it."

I blew my mind, and I thought,

"Holy shit, I've gotta find
this Cheryl Chase."

I stumbled across San Francisco
Sex Information Hotline,

where you can call and
get nonjudgmental,

impartial information.

And they gave me a phone number

for the Intersex Society
of North America.

And I called from my dorm room,

and Cheryl Chase picks up the phone,

and it's the voice of
this woman that I saw on TV.

And I was terrified and
exhilarated at the same time.

There we go,
terror and exhilaration.

And I...couldn't believe
she was on the phone.

She ran me through a sort
of gauntlet of questions

to make sure I wasn't full of shit.

Make sure that
I wasn't a wanna-fuck.

CHUCKLING

Wanna-fucks - like, people who had
a prurient interest in intersex.

I had so many weird inquiries.

I remember there were people
sometimes who wrote to me

about intersex animals.

Like, there was this one guy
who said he has an intersex monkey,

and what should he do about it?

And I said, "Well, why do you want
to do anything about it?

"Does the monkey have a problem?
Then don't do anything."

"What do you want?"

And she let the silence hang.

"I want to meet the youngest
intersex person that you know,

"closest to my age."

So, she got back in touch
with me and said,

"I have someone who's willing
to speak with you.

"She's 26, and she lives
in Saint Louis."

Great.

Great.

At the time, I was still 20.

So, I spoke to a young person,

and we spoke for a couple of hours
and got on really well.

She said, "Why don't you come
to Saint Louis, and we'll hang out?

And I was like,
"OK, yeah, that'd be great."

And I went up there, and we had
dinner, and she said,

"Hey, do you want to...?

"We had we had this retreat back
in California a few years ago,

"and we made this film.

"It's called Hermaphrodites Speak!
Do you want to see it?"

And I was like, "Yeah!"

Here we are at the first-ever

International World
Intersex meeting.

Woo! Yeah.

Cheryl had this little microphone
that she would just hand to people.

It feels absolutely incredible
to have come all the way

from New Zealand for
the first-ever gathering.

Yeah. How did you find out about
the Intersex Society?

They were just a bunch of people

sitting in the woods, telling
their story, why they were there.

A friend of mine had the newsletter,

Hermaphrodites With Attitude,
cross her desk.

Hermaphrodites With Attitude?

That's right, cross her desk...

Are you a hermaphrodite
with attitude?

I'm a hermaphrodite with
major attitude. Yeah!

LAUGHTER

I was transfixed.

I knew that there were people
like me out there,

but I just didn't know what the
chances were of ever finding them.

It's not something
you can ask somebody

in kind of conversations.

Erm, so...

SIGHS

So, this has been, yeah,

just like a turning point
for my life.

Wow. Yeah.

LAUGHS

The Intersex Society was
founded in 1993,

and at that time,

I had come to realise
that I wasn't the only person

who had an experience like that.

There were a lot of people
who had similar experiences,

and...medical practice hadn't
acknowledged that what

they were doing was hurting us.

They really tried to ignore us
at first, doctors,

and they said,
"Blah, blah, blah, blah.

"We're pretty sure
everybody's happy. Blah."

But they wouldn't talk to us.

Cheryl spoke to me right away.

She was serious about this.

I knew it.

There was no going back.

I've written to Dr Money,
very politely asking him

if we can talk.

"I regret being unable to take
on any new commitments.

"I don't have time.
I don't have money.

"I decline your invitation
to talk with you directly.

"I do not see patients.
John Money."

You know,
I really did want to practise

"you catch more flies with honey
than with vinegar".

How do you feel about
the fact that was done to you?

At times, I feel like hiding
in the closet,

because it's like,
how can anybody accept somebody

who's been this mutilated?

And at other times, I get so mad
that I just want to get a dull,

rusty knife and start hacking off
other doctors' genitals,

and say, "Here, you son of a bitch,
how do you...?

"Now, how do you think it feels?"

Watching this film, it hit me
that all these folks in this film

had bodies that were different,

but that they all suffered...

..the same fate that I did.

Let's see, hold on.
Just give me a second.

SIGHS

Yeah. '97.

A friend called me up and said,

"Go buy a copy of Rolling Stone now.

"There's something in it
you gotta read."

I was 20 at the time,
and I had moved out of the dorms,

and I was actually staying at
my friend Heather's house,

just in her spare room.

All right, one here.

I ran out to the gas station...

Yeah, these are my...
..got a copy...

These are my Reimer files, indeed.

..and I remember running back to the
spare room and shutting the door,

and jumping on the bed and
opening it up, flipping the pages.

I was, like, in this whole spread,

and I'm reading it,
and I'm like, "Oh, God."

"In 1967, an anonymous baby boy
was turned into a girl by doctors

"at Johns Hopkins Hospital."

I mean, every other word,
I'm like, "Oh, God. Oh, God."

"For 25 years, the case was
called a medical triumph.

"Proof that a child's gender
identity could be changed.

"And thousands of sex reassignments
were performed based on this exam.

It was just like,
"Wait, what? What?"

And I was like...

"But the case was a failure,
the truth never reported..."

"..And a medical
controversy erupts."

I did not know this story.
This was news to me.

I was a journalist at Rolling
Stone magazine in the 1990s

when this academic paper came out.

That really was jaw-dropping
for what it revealed

about a world-famous case of
infant gender reassignment.

The child has grown up to have
a female gender identity,

which is in...

Absolute bombshell of a paper.

And so, I set out to try
to find the patient.

And we were lucky enough at
Rolling Stone, and persistent enough

to actually find this patient,

and for this patient to agree
to be interviewed.

That's really how
I ended up with this story

that was a world exclusive.

The part of it that you couldn't -
you wouldn't make up in fiction,

because no-one would believe it.

The patient was now living at

the age of 32 as a man,

married, with children
that were from the previous

relationship of his wife.

I mean, this was just rocking
everybody on their heels.

When he found out this is
being done to thousands of kids

around the world because of
your case being misreported

by this John Money character.

..Impossible to mistake them,
for one is a girl

and the other is a boy.

That's all it took, like,
David was just...

He was dumbstruck.
He couldn't believe...

He thought he was the one guy.

And, you know, wild horses couldn't
have held David back at that point.

I was appalled, disgusted,
and angry when I heard about it.

People thought that my case

was a success story?

There was nothing further
than the truth.

This poor kid was a guinea pig.

Patient zero for all the fucking
treatment and torture

that me and so many of
my friends had to experience.

It was just an experiment.

My first impression of David,

it just couldn't be summed up
by anger.

He was angry at John Money for
having recommended reassignment,

but then, he was angry at
his parents for having agreed

to the reassignment.

But then, he was angry at his
parents for having followed through

on a programme of not
telling him the truth.

He really was lied to.

Now, this was a programme of lying
that was imposed by Money

as being the only way
this could work.

I had doubts all the time,

because it was just
so obvious to everyone,

not just to me,

that she was masculine.

I remember his mum saying to me
that, at the age of 22 months,

when he was first put in dresses,
he was tearing them off.

When she first agreed to
try to reassign him

and call him Brenda.

Obviously, the mother
informs John Money,

but he will not report that.

I didn't like dressing like a girl.

I didn't like behaving like a girl.

I didn't like acting like a girl.

Yeah, well, honestly, like,
looking at this photo,

and I-I started seeing myself
in these, you know,

these old photos, you know, of
old photos of mine.

I never played with girl stuff.

I usually got stuck
with Barbie dolls, clothing.

I mean, consider myself lucky
that I did get the bicycle

the same year I got the Barbie.

But one got far more used
than the other.

The mother writes
some letters to Money,

and Money writes back, saying,

you know, "Don't worry, it's fine.
That's tomboyishness,

"and it is indeed going well."

They just have to stay the course.

I could see that Brenda
wasn't happy as a girl.

No matter what
I tried to do for her,

I could not persuade her
to do anything feminine.

I was never happy as Brenda.

Never.

Dr Money says that this child
provides, and I quote,

"Dramatic proof that the gender
identity option is open at birth."

It was in 1974 when the case was
referred to me as the head

of the Department of Psychiatry

at the Child Guidance Clinic
of Greater Winnipeg.

She was nine.

Is that your view?

The preliminary information would
suggest that the girl is having

considerable difficulty in
adjusting as a female.

I first heard about this case

because of my training in
child psychiatry.

This was being reported
as a huge success.

But when I first met Brenda,

it was evident to me
that this was not working.

There was clearly nothing
feminine about her at all.

Doctor, is she likely
to have a memory of what

has happened to her?

I can't answer that.

You can't answer it
because you don't know?

Or you can't answer it because
you don't want to answer it?

There were lots of
politics involved.

But I believe there was a social
pressure for this to succeed,

and it was entrusted to me
to make it happen.

I was even warned that,
should it fail,

my academic career would be ruined,

and that I would find myself
being blamed for

the failure of the outcome.

Doctor, this case disturbs you.

Yes.

It got so bad where you
end up having a...

I wound up having like a breakdown,

I'd shake like a baby and cry,

and huddle in the corner.

I didn't know why
I was behaving like that.

Dr Doreen McGee,

the member of my senior staff
that worked with her,

firmly came out and said,
"You gotta tell her."

She did say to them,
in no uncertain terms,

"The other route continuing this lie

"looks very much like
it's leading to suicide.

And that's when
Ron Reimer, the father,

decided he had to do just
this remarkable thing.

Tell Brenda the truth.

I don't remember 90%
of what happened in the car.

Dad told me, and I just had
a glaze over my eyes,

and I was staring
over the dashboard,

and I had ice cream all over me
that was melted.

You know, I said to David
at the time, you know,

"What was your reaction?"

And he surprised me by saying,
you know,

"I was angry, I was upset,
"I was unbelievably...

"..but I was relieved."

The main thing was relief.

And I thought to myself,
"Well, I'm not crazy.

"I'm not turning insane."

I thought I was turning insane.

I feel embarrassed that
I did not come clean.

As a responsible member of the team,

when it became evident
that it was not going well,

and the literature was
reporting that it was,

it was my responsibility
to report to the literature.

I did not do that,
and I deeply regret it.

That's the truth.

I could say that, I suppose.

John was so anxious for
his theory to be true.

Just got to a point where he just
wasn't willing to be questioned.

John was not somebody
who was willing to be wrong,

and it didn't matter if
the entire staff was looking

at him and saying,
"You're wrong about this, John.

"You need to think about
this again."

He laughed at us. He dismissed us.

He thought that we were stupid.

John was a very difficult person.

He was not a nice man.

So, yeah, I knew that I wanted
to get the hell out of there.

If I was asked, "When did Money
commit sort of the greatest act

"of fraudulence around
this whole thing?"

I would have to say it was 1975,

when he published Sexual Signatures.

Because by this time,
it was just undeniable that

this case was in total meltdown.

I mean, it was a disaster.

The lesson I learned from
such examples as the twins,

that we should respect individuals
for their individuality,

and we should not try
to push them...

To continue to sit on the truth

meant that this just kind of
virally expanded

across the globe.

You know, countless children
would have been operated on,

intervened upon, assigned
and reassigned

thanks to that book.

JIM: Realising that, even a few
years before my birth,

John Money, the orchestrator
of this experiment,

this human experiment,

knew that he had failed miserably,

and he kept walking around talking
about how his experiment was

a success, and how important he was,

and how his ego and his reputation
were more important than telling

the truth and saving children
like myself from mutilation,

and shame and the,
you know, brutal secrecy.

I could've been saved and spared.

My family could've been
saved and spared.

I could've been...
I could've been saved.

When my mother told me that,

"One day, you're going to have
a surgery down the line,"

I didn't know what that meant
as a kid.

But this was all planned out.

Once they removed
my testicles as a baby...

..the dominoes just had
to start falling.

There was no, like,
"Oh, should this domino fall?"

They HAD to fall.

She came home for Christmas,
and she said,

"Oh, I'm going to be here
for a couple weeks."

She said, "I have to have
some female surgery."

And I was like, "OK."
I said, "Are you OK?"

And she said, "Yeah, yeah."

I could tell she was a little
uncomfortable talking about it.

I always felt like her safe space,

and I didn't want
to cross that line.

I figured, if she wanted to tell me,
she would tell me.

And so, I said, "Tell Mum to
let me know that you're OK,

"and if you need something,
let me know."

I knew it was a secret.

Lies we had to tell.

But when you prescribe
secrecy and isolation,

you're prescribing that
to an entire family.

It was in December of 1994.

And my birthday is December 10th.

We went down to Children's Hospital
in New Orleans.

They brought us in.

I was scared, and I was
putting on a brave face.

I knew that's
what my parents wanted.

Especially, I knew that's
what my mother wanted.

"This is a family secret.

"Get us through this together."

What we're going to do
is they'll cut out

a piece of my actual colon,

and then, we'll cut between my legs

where a vagina should be,

and they'll place that piece
of colon between my legs -

a vaginal vault,
they would call it -

and then, presto.

There is a hole for
my husband to have sex with.

Right, this idealised man, this,
you know, All-American quarterback

who's going to have
somewhere to put his penis,

that he expects there will be
a vessel for him to..

..for you to receive him,
and give him what he wants.

And this vessel we have made
in between your legs,

we've hooked up to a bloodstream.

And it's a living organ.

It won't die inside you.

It's pretty elaborate.

I remember waking up
in a lot of pain.

You know, being hooked up
to all these tubes,

and these tubes going
between my legs.

And it hurt a lot.

It hurt to walk.

Just to walk to the bathroom,
it hurt.

I had to walk so slowly.

I remember thinking,
"God, I must be like an old person,"

when I was 18.

You know, I just turned 18 and...

SHAKY SIGH

My girlfriend at the time
came to visit,

and...it was so good to see her.

I didn't say to my mum and dad,
"This is my girlfriend.

"We're in a relationship."

I didn't say any of that.

This is this coded language.

They knew.

I wasn't having
this surgery for her.

She didn't want it.
She didn't care.

I didn't want it.

I was doing my duty.

I remember Alice giving me a call,
like, a day or two after,

saying that she was all right.

And then, there wasn't
a whole lot other than that.

I didn't know that
she was having surgery.

It was one of those things where,
"Oh, she's in town.

"Let me go ride my bike
over there and, you know,

"and, 'Hey, let's hang out.'"

That's when I found out.

Honestly, I wish
I would have known that,

you know, cos that's...

It's a lonely place. You know?

She went back to school...

..and I would hear from
her late at night.

I could tell she just wasn't in
the best space mentally.

She was unhappy.

She was struggling
to focus academically.

I could tell she was
not herself at all.

At all.

She was, you know, drinking
a lot more around that time,

and smoking - good God.

Erm...lost.

It was scary...

..that I didn't really understand
what this thing was on my body.

I didn't really understand.

I didn't want to be there.
I didn't want to play.

I don't remember her playing soccer
again after her surgery.

That's...

I never put that together,
but that's... Yeah.

Well, that makes me sad.

You know, lose something
you love so much.

I was so depressed.

And that's when I walked into
that lecture for that class,

and I found out the truth.

Remembering how painful
the vaginoplasty was for me...

..I never realised, like,
I was just on a course -

a course set back in 1976.

I was being managed and
manipulated on the instruction

of the doctors and attendants...

..one of whom was Dr Carter.

This man, Dr Richard Carter,
was the man who performed

these feminising surgeries
on me as a baby.

This is the place.

It's 5238 Essen Lane,
where Carter's office was.

You know, he must have been
in his late 30s, mid 30s

when I came into the world,

and I became his problem.

You know, a man looking at a,

you know, a genetically-male baby
with a very small penis,

and be like, "Gotta do
something about that.

"There's no way we can let
this baby out into the world."

Now I know - now I know -

I was never going to leave
that hospital unmutilated.

I had to be made lovable.

I just want to talk to him...

..and tell him I am
very unhappy with his work...

and the choices that
he made on my behalf,

and on my family's behalf.

When I was 19 and I found out
the truth behind these surgeries,

I was like, "These are my records.

"Fuck you, Mum and Dad.
Fuck you, medical establishment.

You know, "You don't get to hear
anything about me from now on,

"and I need to go out
and take care of myself.

"I need to go and fucking fend
for myself, because this is

"the kind of care that I'm being
offered from all of you."

Yeah, all it did was spike
my resentment and rage,

and make me more determined
than ever.

I knew Bo was in San Francisco,

and I knew I wanted to be
a part of this movement.

And I got myself there.

I started my new life.

# This is my conquering song

MUSIC: Love Survive
by Michael Nau

# Played on a wave so strong...

I started meeting queer women at the
book shop that I was working at.

# Played on a wave so strong...

Hanging out,
having a rollicking good time.

# Where only my love survived
# Love survived...

But I really didn't dive into
the San Francisco queer community

until I started working
as a bike messenger.

# The long crawl to the tide...

It was technically called
Lickety Split All-Girl Courier.

LAUGHTER
# All else at the door be denied...

I was so happy.

# Only my love survive...

I started making friends, going out,

and really immersing myself in
the queer scene in San Francisco.

It was...

# This is my thankful song

# For all that has been and gone...

And when I wasn't doing that,

I was tagging along with Bo,

trying to go wherever she went.

# For the spirit of the
eternal drum...

I was just a kid.

I mean, really, just tagging along.

Kristi was eager to get
involved and help out.

What we had to do was
convince medicine to change.

I hoped that, if doctors listened
to this, they would change.

I wanted them to stop doing
these things to people.

Kristi helped
with mailing parties,

events where we were learning skills

to help build our nonprofit
organisation...

..learning things
and making friends.

I tried to learn from her,

because there was so much
to learn from her.

You are going to be the doctors
in the future who are going

to change practice, and we hope
that you'll work with us.

And I met Tiger through the activist
community in San Francisco.

OK.

I'm Dr Howard Devore.
I'm a clinical psychologist.

I was born with ambiguous...

Tiger was kind to me,
welcomed me into the fold.

I was very taken by his deep voice.

And he was very bulky and big.

And he had a very sharp haircut.

Very smart haircut.

He was very confident.

Despite all the efforts
to make me as much a boy

as they possibly could,
with the support of both my parents

and the physicians involved
in my case,

I do not feel like a man.

Do not feel like a woman.

I, in fact, am an intersex person.

He spoke like somebody who knew
like he had something to say.

Please ask difficult questions.

Do not think that you're
going to embarrass us.

We really want to educate you
as directly and plainly

as we possibly can today.

When I first met Kristi, she was
very much at the beginning of

her intersex awareness journey,

and she was angry, and she was
powerful in her presentation,

and she wanted to do something
with all that anger,

and she was willing to work.

I'm very young,

and I felt it was very important
to become a volunteer,

to become an activist.

I would tell my story to anybody
who would listen.

Many, many doctors say that
microsurgery is the way to go.

Say that, when we remove
the clitoris and remove the testes,

and when we remove this and that,
when we build this and that,

it's all better. It's all better.

I think it was really empowering
for Kristi to be able to do that.

I remember being at events,
and Kristi's there,

proudly telling people about
what we're doing

and what happened to her.

I'm a 22-year-old female,
as the world sees me.

But I'm an intersex person
with no sexual function whatsoever.

There was something really
charismatic about Kristi,

and it was great to see that.

A person that's supposed to be
at their sexual peak, you know,

you're supposed to be young,
you're supposed to be alive,

and I'm not, I'm not.

It was all taken from me,
and not even with my consent.

Here is an awesome picture of me

and Kristi, and Tiger speaking
to UC Berkeley medical students.

Doctors didn't want to hear from us,

but medical students were
really eager to hear from us.

I felt confused about basic biology.

XX, XY, XX, XY.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute,
wait a minute.

"If I'm a female,
then I should be XX.

"Why does it say XY?"

She participated in
a documentary short film,

and she involved her family.

Every soccer game, every...

..activity, we were always concerned

that somebody would find out
and approach her.

And she told me later that a number
of people called her names,

and I cried over that.

And I said, "Honey, I'm sorry.

"There's nothing I can do about it."

I was really inspired
by how brave and how honest,

and how direct she could be.

The first couple of months
that I was a messenger,

I was in so much pain that I could
hardly sit down on the seat,

because the vaginoplasty is
so fucking disgusting

and so...barbaric.

It's starting to come out.

Like, the inner part of
the intestine is starting

to come out and, like, stick out.

And I was told that I would
probably have to wear a maxi pad

for the rest of my life.

I don't know if you've
ever tried to, like,

ride a bike with a maxi pad -
it does not work.

Er... Hmm.

I want to make it clear that
the surgery that I did not choose

was a nightmare for me.

But this surgery for people
who choose it

saves people's lives.

So, yeah, you know,
I wasn't a trans person,

but from the moment I started
speaking on intersex stuff,

I connected with trans people.

And I was right in there.

I was right where I wanted to be.

Might be gay or lesbian,
or trans, but...

..I was a part of a community.

And it was an intense education.

It was a real activist education

that I was getting from Bo,
I was getting from Tiger.

My name is Kristi.

I'm a resident of
Northern California.

I gave interviews in radio
and magazines, on television,

worked at a legal organisation
that advocated for the legal rights

of intersex kids and
their families.

Lying by omission
is what it's called,

and the heart of the matter
is self-determination.

I give my personal testimony at

the San Francisco Human Rights
Commission on Intersex.

The operative word is moratorium.

It should be placed at
the very least...

..on surgeries in San Francisco.
It's a great place to start.

And you guys can do that.
Thank you.

APPLAUSE

Yeah, it was good for her.

We were trying to extend
our reach as far as possible

to illustrate the truth
that these things,

these surgeries happen
all over the world.

And I was just like, "What is
keeping people from absorbing...?"

It's not just my story,
it's so many people's stories.

David's story came out and,
you know, made a splash

in publishing circles in Manhattan,

but had no effect on the
medical community,

the protocols for intersex kids,

the surgeries and so on continued.

It takes a lot to change
medical opinion and protocols.

It just does.

And one article in Rolling Stone
ain't going to do it.

A baby is born
perfect in every way.

At six, she wore dresses.

At 14, she discovered the truth.

So, we had this whirlwind
tour of New York

and other places
publicising the story.

For years, this case was called
a medical triumph.

But in truth,
the case was a failure.

It was amazing.
The story was getting around.

This is great, this is great.

And then, David decided to be on TV,

and I thought,
"This is even better."

And it's fucking Oprah. "Great!"

Devastating the lives of just
about everybody involved.

You know,
we walked out on the street.

Someone that had just been
watching it on TV

recognises David and says,

"You know, I just saw you on TV,
you are incredible!

"You walk in the light, man!

I'll never forget that,
"You walk in the light,"

and she shook David's hand.

I think it symbolised the way
the world accepted him now,

and took him and took his story.

It was...
Let's just put it this way,

it was a net positive all
the way around.

It was awesome.

TIGER: So, after the case
fell apart,

I don't think it was possible
for John to say,

"Oh. My mistake. Oh, well."

I think that what happened was
that John believed that his success

was ruined by an outside influence.

And he stood firm on that position.

It didn't work because that's life.

Because you're human,

and eventually, you wind up
being who you are.

People started coming
after Dr Money,

and I think it was
very uncomfortable for him.

Yeah, eventually they had
a psychiatrist who was able

to get John booted off campus,

and I just think he stopped
answering the phone

and answering his door.

He really kind of
barricaded himself.

These days, John Money works here

in the basement of this off-campus
building in Baltimore.

We wanted to talk to Money
about his theories.

Hello? Yeah? We're were the
Canadian television programme

called the Fifth Estate.
We'd like to see Dr Money.

OK, hold on a second.

We had contacted John Money
by phone, and also written to him

in hopes of getting an interview.
But...

Says you don't have
an appointment, I'm sorry.

Yeah, he got relegated to
a basement, motherfucker.

CHUCKLES
That was my favourite part.

I was already thinking about
getting rid of this vaginoplasty.

I wanted to decolonise my body
as much as I was able,

and was within my power to do.

I had a double mastectomy, and then,

I had the colon
vaginoplasty removed.

This man, Dr Richard Carter,

you know, realising that he was not
some lone wolf acting irresponsibly

toward one family
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

But I was still not...

I wasn't happy about any of it.

The people that mattered
and the people with authority.

It was shared blame
across the board.

Kristi was the only infant
that I ever was associated with

in my 40 years of practice that
had ambiguous genitalia.

These children...

..problems that they
would have faced

if nothing at all had been done...

..in my opinion,
would have been astronomical.

Even though I knew she was -
this infant was going to have

problems down the road, I was hoping
that she'd have less problems

if she looked a little bit more
like a girl than not one at all.

When I was 19 and I found out
the truth behind these surgeries,

I stopped taking oestrogen
immediately.

There were a few years that I just
was not on any hormones at all,

and that was when my bones
began to disintegrate.

My doctor told me the bone scan
results showed that I was...

..that I currently had osteopenia,

which is a precursor
to osteoporosis,

and I was on the royal path
to having my bones disintegrate

by the time I was 25 or 30.

She said,
"You must go back on oestrogen,

"or you must start taking
testosterone."

Yeah, I didn't... I wasn't
so sure about testosterone.

I wasn't psyched about
getting a beard,

getting a receding hairline,
or dying earlier.

You know, all that stuff that,
you know, gets laid on men.

And, you know,
I-I wasn't into that at all -

but I was pretty into having
a functional skeleton.

My voice started getting deeper.

At some point, you know, I told
my co-workers, my managers

that they needed
to start calling me he.

I was so lucky and so fortunate.

Nobody told me there would be
so much hair,

but my body just soaked it up!

The girlfriend at the time
was just like, "Wow.

"This was clearly what your body's
been dying for, for so long."

She was very happy about
all these changes,

and she was very happy
to see me grow happier -

happy in my body and content,

and comfortable in my own skin.

When Kristi was in California,
we kind of lost touch,

and I never saw her again
until he came home

when his dad died.

And then, it hit me.

"I'm going to see Kristi as Jim
for the first time."

This is a person I've known
as Kristi my whole life,

and now it's going to be
a different person.

And so, I was very, very anxious.

I remember, night before,
I could not sleep,

I stayed up all night.

When I got to their house,
I walked in,

and he was standing there.

And it was like...
it was it was so...

It was remarkable, almost -
this calm came over me.

We gave each other a big hug,
and I was just like,

"Oh, my God," you know,

there was this calm about him
that I had never known.

It was like he had
finally found this thing

he had been searching for
all these years.

It was very emotional.

God, look at those trees. Jesus.

I have been gone that long.

Hey!

How's it going? It's going OK.

LAUGHING: Oh, my God.

Oh, my boy!

MUFFLED LAUGHTER

SNIFFLING
MUFFLED SOBS

It's been so long. I know.
Ah, how are you?

Good.

It's good to see you. Yeah.

Er, and of all places.
I know, right?

We spent most of our life...

Right, in that mud pit. Yeah.
In that mud pit.

That was your favourite mud pit
right there, that one.

That one, yeah. Oh, my God.
Yeah. Oh, let me look at you.

You look wonderful. Aww! God.

Thank you. Well, you saved me.

Well... You know, like, you really
put me in a position to succeed.

You really did.

You put me in a position to succeed,
and it gave me a lot.

You had something special,
and I knew you did.

Yeah. Aww, well...
Thank you so much.

My mother was giving me hell about

not coming home to visit
as often, and...

..I was like, "You're asking me
to come back to a place,

"even to visit,
that people are fleeing."

I remember when
I was living in Montana,

and my favourite aunt died.

I came home. We get to the funeral.

I hadn't seen my uncle in 30 years.

I walked up to him.

He didn't say hello.

And he said - he quoted
some Bible passage at me about,

"As you were born, so shall you die

"and be seen in the eyes of God."

Told me I was an abomination.

And then, I walked over
and hugged his wife.

CHUCKLES

And I sat down next to my mum,
and I said,

"Your brother just threatened me."

And she was like,
"Oh, no, I'm sure he didn't."

You know...

..the 10,000th reminder
that my mother and I live in

completely different worlds.

You know, it's not her fault.

It's where she lives.

I was so lucky to be able to reach
out to Bo, in San Francisco,

and wanting desperately
for the world to open up,

I knew that there was more.

Like, I was like, right,
I intended to survive,

And to do that, I had to leave.

Eventually, the fanfare died down.

OPRAH: Thank you for sharing
your story.

I moved on to other stories
that I had to do.

He returned to Winnipeg.

Four years went by and,
in that four years,

Brian, the brother -
the ignored brother -

Brian had this troubled sister

that all the attention went to.

He was just expected, because
he wasn't an injured person,

or sex-reassigned,
"You should be just fine."

So, he had to kind of be just fine.

He wasn't just fine.

Brian was definitely
seriously depressed.

In 2003, he died of a...
possibly accidental overdose

of alcohol and drugs.

When I heard that Brian died,
I thought, "Oh, my God.

"Better keep our eye on David,"

because I knew how important
Brian was to David.

10.30pm at night,
the police came to the door.

And I think I was screaming,
"No, no, no."

In May of 2004...

..I was actually just
rising from bed,

so it was kind of early morning.

The phone rang,
and it was David's father.

and he said, "Er, John,
I've got some very bad news."

And I knew what he was going
to say at that point.

They asked us to sit down,

and they said they had
some bad news.

That David was dead.

TEARFULLY: And...I just cried.

Yeah, where was I? I was living
in Berkeley when he died.

My girlfriend forwarded
an article to me,

that David Reimer died by suicide.

It was so sad.
I remember being so sad.

A man named David Reimer
has taken his own life.

A sad end to a life story
already filled with pain.

I was horribly shocked
and entirely unsurprised.

I mean, you knew him for
seven years, was he happy at all?

I mean, what was his life like?

David was perfectly capable
of happiness for periods of time,

but his dark childhood
always was there.

He says, "This will never leave me."

DAVID: I thought he was perverted.

I thought he was a sick man.

These very strange,
therapeutic actions that Money

had made David and Brian perform
when they were children -

sexual rehearsal play,
that's what he called it.

The experiments that
he made us do...

..going into sexual positions

with no clothes on,

taking pictures of us.

How degrading for seven-year-olds.

The man believed that this was
a critical and crucial way

to reinforce gender.

I mean, he didn't exactly tell
the parents about it,

but he wrote about it endlessly
in his books and papers.

It became a hobby horse
by his final years.

When my folks weren't around,

well, then, we did what
we were told, and if we didn't,

then we got yelled at
to the point where we thought

we were going to get backhanded.

Well, eventually we took our
clothes off and sat on the couch,

Had photos of us taking...

He made them inspect
each other's genitals.

He showed pornographic images
of sexual penetration,

and he simply went
further and further.

The type of questions that were
asked were sexual in nature,

to the point where
it would make me blush.

It was very explicit.

You know, those episodes were
so damaging to them.

They were both off-put
and frightened of it,

and fearful of him.

It was a house of horrors, period.

You know, seeing a kid cower,

and be repulsed and frightened
of sexual imagery,

why would you...?

You know, that's almost
a sadistic thing.

I don't know.

TIGER: This experiment really
ruined the family.

It was terrible.

One of the things that used
to really get to me about

the Johns Hopkins record was that,

as we were following patients from
birth into hopefully adulthood,

one of the things that you would
see come up on the charts

were "lost to follow up."

Quote-unquote,
"Lost to follow up."

And what we came to realise
over time -

not the people at Hopkins, but the
intersex awareness community -

"lost to follow up" means suicide

at least as often as
"I won't come to see you at

"your institution any more".

And the people at Hopkins
would never admit it,

because they just said,
"Oh, we stopped hearing from them.

"They just disappeared."

I had found that community
that saved me,

and David had to go
back to Winnipeg alone.

If I'd have had to go back to
Baton Rouge and stay there

the rest of my life,
it would have broken me.

I have no expectation
that I would have...

..be alive.

SKYPE RINGING TONE

TIGER: OK, can you hear me?

Hi, Tiger. How are you?

I'm good. How are you?

Good.

Hello.

What's up, Tiger?

Looking good.

Man, that is some sharp
facial hair you got there.

Hey, Bo. Hey.

So, more than 30 years
we've been working on this,

and they're still doing it.
Yes. Very frustrating.

Yeah. I was naive.

I thought I was - when I was
out in San Francisco,

and I was 21, and I was thinking,
"Oh man," you know,

in my head - I mean, I'm sure
I didn't voice this -

but I was like, "I'm going to be
part of this generation

"that'll really flip this shit."
I really did.

The kind of activism that I did,

I don't do any more.

I had to step away around 2015.

I just couldn't keep up anymore.
I couldn't bear.

And the good news is, is that
there's a whole new generation

of young people out there
who are loud and pissed off,

and determined to get
their message across,

and to get policy changed.

INDISTINCT SHOUTING

There's so much...
so much more to do.

But the wheels of history bend
toward justice, however slowly.

At the end of the day,
it's all about bodily autonomy.

It's all about intersex people
having affirming,

supportive health care

that they get to choose what to do
with their own bodies.

I wasn't as successful as I thought
or hoped I would be.

I didn't get surgeries to stop.

But I had a revelation in
my early 30s that

the thing that hurt the most

wasn't that I was different,

and it wasn't that
I was sexually mutilated -

it was that I was made
to feel ashamed.

And that there's no earthly reason
why I should be ashamed.

And I was going to change that.

I was going to decide,
by force of will,

that I'm not going to be ashamed.

Part of not being ashamed is being
able to talk about your story.

So, I got to make meaning out of it

and turn it into a mission
in helping people,

and have a feeling of
accomplishment about it.

The intersex awareness movement
that has sprung up as a result of

all these efforts that
so many of us made,

has saved innumerable lives.

But do these surgeries still happen?
Yes.

All those bad things still happen.

And I want to do all I can
to try to get a few more people

to know better, than to just
follow that old model.

YVONNE ON RECORDING:
Hello, my Jim.

I'm thinking about you.

I know you're going to do
something difficult.

And I just wanted you to...

My mum's greatest fear was
that she was afraid

no-one would ever love me.

That I wouldn't be able to,
you know, build a life with someone.

And I have.

And with someone wonderful.

Someone truly wonderful.

Hey, Jim.

Where are we? In Pennsylvania.

OK. What is this place?

It's in Riemer.
YVONNE LAUGHS

It's the Youghiogheny.

Youghiogheny.

I'm thinking about holding
little Jim in my heart.

Show him some love

while you're doing this
difficult thing.

I love you very much.

And I'll talk to you later.

Bye, sweetheart.

I'm about to sit down with the man

who pushed the first domino over

and, you know, started a chain
of events that continued

through my childhood and
my adolescence,

and my adulthood, and...

I just made some notes here,
just some questions. And...

..it's important to say my piece,

and I have this opportunity to tell
Carter what my life has been like

in a way that I feel like I can go
to my grave with him knowing.

If you had the opportunity
to sit down with the person

who was in charge of your care,.

not only what would you say,

but how would you...

..like, posture yourself?
Like, what outcome?

Anyway, that's like three
questions in one. But...

From the standpoint of just...

..the raw experience of walking
into this kind of a meeting,

I think it's incredibly important.

We know that most of these doctors,
they'll tell you straight out

they've never had any complaints.

You just can't expect to get to get
anybody to sit across from you

and say, "Yeah, we've
looked back at this,

"we've all decided we were
doing the wrong thing,

"and maybe we jumped the gun" -
and nobody's going to say that.

No physician is going to say that,

especially if they're
still practising.

A lot of intersex people fantasise
about meeting the surgeon

that mutilated them as children.

But it almost never happens.

That space is never - hardly,
almost never provided for them.

It's like Heidi Wolcott,
in Hermaphrodites Speak!

You know, saying, "I would love to
take a rusty, dull knife and..."

..A dull rusty knife...
"..chop up my..."

..and start hacking off other
doctors' genitals and say,

"Here, you son of a bitch!
Now, how do you think it feels?"

Like, the fantasy of
a hostile confrontation.

Like, I just know that wouldn't
give me anything anymore.

I mean...

I just want to have
a conversation with him.

I just want him to hear me.

Even though he might just possibly
clam up and be reserved.

It can be, you know, briefly
humiliating and disappointing,

but whatever.

Hi. How are you doing?

Just lay it down.

Jim. Richard. Richard, yeah.
It's nice to see you.

So good to see you. Yeah.

I mean, you just look great.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

Yeah.I shaved today.
RICHARD LAUGHS

I did not anticipate getting
all this body hair.

Turns out I look pretty OK
with the beard.

Oh, you look great with one.

But tell me, like,
you were a young surgeon

when my family and
your paths crossed.

I was...in 1976,
I had just come to Baton Rouge.

When - what's your birth date?
December 10th, 1970.

So, I'd been in practice
five months...

Five months. ..when I was called
that day that you were born

to come evaluate
and give an opinion.

Wow.

And I don't know
what is being done today,

as far as, if you were born today,

I don't know how the situation
would be handled.

And how would you have liked
to have been handled back then?

I think I would have liked
to have been let to go home.

Yeah. You know? Nothing, right?

I wish that my parents would have
just taken me home as I was,

as their healthy baby,
and been braver.

You know what I mean?

But I realise that is asking a whole
lot in the late '70s. Absolutely.

That would be asking an awful lot.

What were my parents' concerns?
I mean, again, I know...

They were in la-la land.

They had no clue what was going on.

I mean, "My son has...
my child has what?"

Mm-hm. "Well, what do we do?"

Yeah, so they were terrified
like any other parent would be?

Sure, absolutely, they were.

Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine
what they went through.

I really can't
What my parents were experiencing

was terror through
a social emergency, right?

There was nothing genetic
that I was going to have

to be dealing with going forward,

except for this problematic
presentation.

What proof did you have that
pursuing that path

of constructing a vulva,

you know, just cutting off the penis

and castration of
whatever was there,

where was the evidence
that would work?

Er, I really can't answer that.

Er, I...

I don't know what the evidence was,

and there probably was no evidence,
in retrospect, that that would work.

Have you ever heard of John Money?

I had never heard of him,

but once I got involved in
what we were doing,

I went back to my textbooks,
and he is in the textbook.

Yeah. And, like,
these surgeries were happening

before John Money came along.

But John Money gave it, like,
a psychological framework

that would sort of would just...

He was okaying what we were doing.

He was okaying what you were doing.
Yeah.

I mean, it's one of those things,
though, that, right,

if you're performing surgery,
you know...you know,

invasive surgery on a healthy baby,

like, if you're going to go
out of your way to...

..really harm a healthy child,
and cut into healthy skin...

Well, when you say "harm"...

.."harm a healthy child,"
I understand what you're saying.

But at the time, we...

..o-our thought process was,
we're not harming someone,

we're helping someone.

Maybe the question also is,
who are you doing it for? Right?

The child's not asking for it.
Well, that's a good point.

It just seems like the surgeries
were prescribed for the parents.

Definitely not me.

Well, I-I would disagree
a bit with that.

The surgery was for you. Mm.

What we thought was
the best thing for you. Mm-hm.

Times have changed.

Back in 1976, that's what was done.

That's what we had been
taught to do.

That's what we did.

And unfortunately, that was...
the wrong thing to do.

Thank you.

I can't tell you, it's just kind of
revolutionary for you

to say that it was wrong.

And you understand, in retrospect,
it was wrong. Mm-hm.

Yeah. At the time,
we thought it was right.

Obviously, we wouldn't have done it.
Right.

But...from what I have
learned since then,

in talking to you...
Mm-hm.

..is that we did the wrong thing.

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, I would ask, does that
constitute an apology?

Well, sure. Yeah?

PHONE LINE RINGS

Hello?

Hey.

It's over.

Yeah?

It was so surreal the whole time.

Oh, Jim.

Erm... Yeah.

I was really just focused
on trying to get him to hear

that you pushed over a domino.

And...I've been dealing with
the fallout ever since.

I don't know,
I could see regret in his eyes.

You know, he wished... Yeah.

Er...

I feel like I am supposed
to be here doing this.

And it's not in any sort of
self-important bullshit.

I'm just saying, you know,
I feel like that really helps

just to open up the dam,
just get it out, you know?

Just get it out. Erm...

My father died in 2010.

And my mother is still
in Louisiana.

My mum is somebody
that leads with her heart.

And...I still have work
to do with her.

And she has apologised
on more than one occasion

for not defending me as a baby,

for not being stronger,

for not standing in the way.

She doesn't forgive herself
for what happened to me as a baby,

and as a child,
and as an adolescent.

But sometimes,
forgiveness doesn't come...

..easily.

Yeah, there's no finish line here.

I'll be dealing with
the fallout from this bullshit

for the rest of my life.

I will.

TEARFULLY: But Goddamn it, that is
not a reason not to do this film.

That is a reason TO do it.

You know what I'm saying?

Oh, man.

Right. I'm just keeping in
my mind that hopefully,

somebody will see
something like this.

If I have to be - if my story
has to be a cautionary tale,

let me use it in such a way

that other people can avoid
these same fates, you know?

These surgeries are going to stop,
you know?

And if they stop within the next
five, ten, 15 years -

and they will,
they will stop in my lifetime -

they'll stop in my lifetime,

and I'll get to talk to little
hermaphrodites running around.

I'll get to hold them in my arms.

I'll get to tell them,
you know...

I'll get to tell their parents...

..TEARFULLY: how wonderful
their children are.

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