1
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:08,800
This programme contains strong
language and scenes some viewers may
find disturbing

2
00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000
Downloaded from
YTS.BZ

3
00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000
Official YIFY movies site:
YTS.BZ

4
00:00:32,360 --> 00:00:35,120
MUSIC: Piano Lumineuse
by Scott Twynholm

5
00:00:52,320 --> 00:00:54,680
Growing up in 1980s
suburban Baton Rouge

6
00:00:54,720 --> 00:00:56,560
was pretty idyllic for Kristi.

7
00:00:59,120 --> 00:01:01,120
She loved spending time
with her friends,

8
00:01:01,160 --> 00:01:02,960
running around the neighbourhood.

9
00:01:04,680 --> 00:01:07,240
Growing up, Kristi and I lived
in the same neighbourhood,

10
00:01:07,280 --> 00:01:09,960
so we were childhood friends.

11
00:01:10,000 --> 00:01:11,960
We were both obsessed with soccer.

12
00:01:13,000 --> 00:01:14,240
We were good, too.

13
00:01:15,800 --> 00:01:18,560
She was fearless and...

14
00:01:18,600 --> 00:01:20,360
Oh, I have to smile.

15
00:01:20,400 --> 00:01:23,000
Erm, she wasn't even five feet tall.

16
00:01:23,040 --> 00:01:26,320
A little tomboy, mouthy,
mouthy little kid.

17
00:01:26,360 --> 00:01:27,760
Just really feisty.

18
00:01:29,560 --> 00:01:32,640
Kristi's dad, John,
he was a really nice guy.

19
00:01:32,680 --> 00:01:35,720
You know, expected 100%
all the time.

20
00:01:35,760 --> 00:01:39,680
Her mum, Alice, very, very
sweet, nice lady,

21
00:01:39,720 --> 00:01:41,800
very supportive of her kids.

22
00:01:43,160 --> 00:01:45,960
They seemed to be very giving,
loving people -

23
00:01:46,000 --> 00:01:49,720
but always seemed like
there was this aspect of secrecy.

24
00:01:49,760 --> 00:01:52,360
I never... I never,
in a million years,

25
00:01:52,400 --> 00:01:55,120
could have guessed the truth
of Kristi.

26
00:01:57,160 --> 00:02:00,240
I am Kristi -
or at least, I was.

27
00:02:02,080 --> 00:02:04,240
And I know what you're thinking,

28
00:02:04,280 --> 00:02:06,440
this is a transgender story.

29
00:02:06,480 --> 00:02:08,560
But it's not.

30
00:02:08,600 --> 00:02:10,800
I have the utmost respect
and admiration for

31
00:02:10,840 --> 00:02:13,000
the trans community worldwide.

32
00:02:13,040 --> 00:02:16,160
But this story is not a trans one.

33
00:02:17,640 --> 00:02:21,640
And it's important that
I tell it in full.

34
00:03:04,200 --> 00:03:06,280
ON PHONE: Hello, my Jim.

35
00:03:06,320 --> 00:03:09,080
I'm just thinking about
you right now.

36
00:03:09,120 --> 00:03:12,680
I know you're going
to do something difficult...

37
00:03:12,720 --> 00:03:16,080
..and I just wanted you to hear

38
00:03:16,120 --> 00:03:18,280
the voice of somebody
who really loves you.

39
00:03:20,640 --> 00:03:21,880
Hello, Sheriff.

40
00:03:23,720 --> 00:03:26,360
When I think of Baton Rouge,
I think of the lies.

41
00:03:26,400 --> 00:03:29,000
That's why I don't like
coming back here.

42
00:03:29,040 --> 00:03:32,560
But I've come back to speak to
the man who started it all.

43
00:03:32,600 --> 00:03:35,240
You know, started a chain of
events that continue on.

44
00:03:36,360 --> 00:03:38,360
I just want to talk to him

45
00:03:38,400 --> 00:03:40,880
and tell him that what he did...

46
00:03:42,120 --> 00:03:43,320
..was wrong.

47
00:03:47,200 --> 00:03:49,920
This is the street I grew up on,
Antioch Boulevard.

48
00:03:53,840 --> 00:03:55,920
Oh, man, and here comes...

49
00:03:55,960 --> 00:03:57,400
This is where I grew up.

50
00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:03,600
I do want to pop out,
and I just want to see

51
00:04:03,640 --> 00:04:05,120
what the driveway looks like.

52
00:04:16,760 --> 00:04:18,880
Wow. OK, it's starting to come back.

53
00:04:20,880 --> 00:04:25,360
This is a picture of me
and my mother holding my sister.

54
00:04:25,400 --> 00:04:27,480
It looks like it's time to leave,

55
00:04:27,520 --> 00:04:29,160
and I don't want to leave.

56
00:04:29,200 --> 00:04:32,720
I'm playing a game with my mother,
sort of pulling away,

57
00:04:32,760 --> 00:04:35,720
and she's like,
"I know you, kid. Come on."

58
00:04:36,960 --> 00:04:41,160
I'm clearly delighted with myself...
with glee.

59
00:04:42,640 --> 00:04:44,080
This is one of my favourites.

60
00:04:44,120 --> 00:04:45,720
This is a picture of my dad.

61
00:04:45,760 --> 00:04:48,200
I would have been four or five
in this photo.

62
00:04:50,040 --> 00:04:53,480
I just love the way
I'm looking up into his eyes.

63
00:04:53,520 --> 00:04:55,440
It's just that I trust him so much.

64
00:04:58,160 --> 00:04:59,600
Yeah, I used to just blanket,

65
00:04:59,640 --> 00:05:01,760
it was like the childhood was shit.

66
00:05:01,800 --> 00:05:04,560
All of it, shit,
because of this lie.

67
00:05:05,920 --> 00:05:07,800
You know? But it wasn't.

68
00:05:09,080 --> 00:05:10,880
You know, it wasn't all shit.

69
00:05:13,880 --> 00:05:17,560
This was right around the time
that Sheila started coaching me.

70
00:05:17,600 --> 00:05:20,200
Sheila was an excellent coach.

71
00:05:20,240 --> 00:05:23,320
And she's just very invested
in me doing well,

72
00:05:23,360 --> 00:05:25,440
and really developing a rapport.

73
00:05:27,200 --> 00:05:30,760
I definitely felt like
I was a mentor to her.

74
00:05:30,800 --> 00:05:33,320
We talked a lot about life, about,

75
00:05:33,360 --> 00:05:35,360
"What do you want to do
in the future?"

76
00:05:35,400 --> 00:05:37,600
She knew, whatever
she was going to tell me,

77
00:05:37,640 --> 00:05:38,960
I wasn't going to judge.

78
00:05:40,520 --> 00:05:42,240
There were a lot of girls like me

79
00:05:42,280 --> 00:05:45,040
when I started playing
organised soccer.

80
00:05:45,080 --> 00:05:46,240
Tomboyish.

81
00:05:49,720 --> 00:05:51,760
So, yeah, I was camouflaged.

82
00:05:53,240 --> 00:05:55,400
But then, I'm like,
girls on my soccer team

83
00:05:55,440 --> 00:05:57,040
started to wear earrings,

84
00:05:57,080 --> 00:05:59,760
and started to put on make-up,

85
00:05:59,800 --> 00:06:02,800
and started thinking about
their appearance, and I wasn't.

86
00:06:02,840 --> 00:06:05,480
I mean, I wasn't interested
in that at all.

87
00:06:06,840 --> 00:06:08,800
I know Kristi didn't fit
into that mould,

88
00:06:08,840 --> 00:06:09,840
and neither did I.

89
00:06:09,880 --> 00:06:13,320
We probably found great
comfort to each other.

90
00:06:13,360 --> 00:06:17,640
I remember just having a random
conversation again one day.

91
00:06:17,680 --> 00:06:20,200
We were like,
"If you were on a desert island,

92
00:06:20,240 --> 00:06:22,280
"who would you want to be
there with you?"

93
00:06:22,320 --> 00:06:23,880
And we both went,

94
00:06:23,920 --> 00:06:25,760
"Laura Hepner, absolutely!"

95
00:06:25,800 --> 00:06:27,600
LAUGHTER
So, just...

96
00:06:29,360 --> 00:06:31,720
So, it was just...
It wasn't anything that we talked,

97
00:06:31,760 --> 00:06:33,800
like, we never even had
the conversation.

98
00:06:33,840 --> 00:06:36,480
"Oh, do you like girls?
You like...?" It just, we...

99
00:06:43,720 --> 00:06:46,120
You grew up in a place
like Baton Rouge, you know,

100
00:06:46,160 --> 00:06:47,680
like, for me personally,

101
00:06:47,720 --> 00:06:50,280
liking girls was not what
you're supposed to do.

102
00:06:52,200 --> 00:06:55,560
They say that water and sunshine
are the essence of life -

103
00:06:55,600 --> 00:06:58,200
so life must be good in Louisiana.

104
00:06:59,320 --> 00:07:02,520
It's very - this is a very,
very conservative place.

105
00:07:02,560 --> 00:07:05,760
Christian conservative
family values.

106
00:07:05,800 --> 00:07:07,440
Going to church together.

107
00:07:08,600 --> 00:07:10,520
Very southern.

108
00:07:10,560 --> 00:07:14,680
ECHOING: God can set you free!
Hallelujah!

109
00:07:14,720 --> 00:07:17,480
The expectation was definitely
that boys were going to

110
00:07:17,520 --> 00:07:20,440
become athletes, become engineers,

111
00:07:20,480 --> 00:07:24,440
and girls were going to find
a spouse and get married...

112
00:07:24,480 --> 00:07:26,840
..basically, and have some kids.

113
00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:30,000
We used to laugh and say you were
going to get an Mrs Degree -

114
00:07:30,040 --> 00:07:32,840
meaning you were going to get
a degree to be missus,

115
00:07:32,880 --> 00:07:34,920
and become married.

116
00:07:34,960 --> 00:07:37,640
It's just that Christian
and that conservative here.

117
00:07:39,520 --> 00:07:41,680
Something must have
kicked in for my parents,

118
00:07:41,720 --> 00:07:45,520
or at least my mum, that, you know,
"I need to feminise this kid."

119
00:07:45,560 --> 00:07:49,120
And I started getting these sort of
mandatory permanents in my hair.

120
00:07:50,280 --> 00:07:52,760
They'd dump a bunch
of chemicals in your hair,

121
00:07:52,800 --> 00:07:55,920
just to...nuclearize your hair

122
00:07:55,960 --> 00:07:58,520
and, I don't know, break its will.

123
00:08:00,600 --> 00:08:02,800
SIGHS
Didn't win this battle.

124
00:08:14,320 --> 00:08:18,240
BASEBALL GAME ON TV

125
00:08:24,720 --> 00:08:26,360
I was around the age of 12.

126
00:08:27,560 --> 00:08:30,480
My mum took me into her bedroom.

127
00:08:32,800 --> 00:08:35,600
I remember there was a baseball game
that I wanted to watch,

128
00:08:35,640 --> 00:08:38,440
and that I didn't want to go
in the bedroom and talk to her.

129
00:08:41,360 --> 00:08:44,880
She was sitting next to me and...

130
00:08:47,560 --> 00:08:50,480
..she said, "Soon, you'll have
to start taking these pills

131
00:08:50,520 --> 00:08:53,480
"that are going to help you grow
and develop breasts

132
00:08:53,520 --> 00:08:55,640
"and make you look like
other girls.

133
00:08:59,280 --> 00:09:01,800
"And then, one day later on,

134
00:09:01,840 --> 00:09:03,880
"you're going to have
to have a surgery."

135
00:09:05,760 --> 00:09:07,600
I just, I...

136
00:09:07,640 --> 00:09:09,960
I didn't know what
a future surgery meant.

137
00:09:12,960 --> 00:09:15,600
And finally, she said,

138
00:09:15,640 --> 00:09:18,400
"But you'll never be able
to have children of your own."

139
00:09:20,440 --> 00:09:22,800
That's when she
sort of got choked up.

140
00:09:22,840 --> 00:09:25,720
She breaks down and starts crying,
and I'm caring for her.

141
00:09:25,760 --> 00:09:27,720
Like, I'm telling her,
"It's OK, Mama."

142
00:09:27,760 --> 00:09:29,080
You know, "It's all right."

143
00:09:29,120 --> 00:09:30,880
I was like, "OK.

144
00:09:30,920 --> 00:09:33,520
"I'm not interested in that
at all anyway."

145
00:09:33,560 --> 00:09:36,520
I just...and I-I went back
to watching the baseball game.

146
00:09:37,760 --> 00:09:39,080
That's what I cared about.

147
00:09:40,680 --> 00:09:44,560
Erm, like a child knows what his
parents need him to be.

148
00:09:46,160 --> 00:09:48,080
That's the thing, is that...

149
00:09:48,120 --> 00:09:50,080
And I know I'm flipping back,
I know.

150
00:09:51,280 --> 00:09:54,280
There are milestones in my
life where I remember

151
00:09:54,320 --> 00:09:55,920
not asking questions..

152
00:09:57,320 --> 00:10:01,400
..because my parents were screaming
inside of themselves,

153
00:10:01,440 --> 00:10:02,920
"Please don't ask."

154
00:10:04,080 --> 00:10:08,200
I think there's some corps,
fundamental thing, right?

155
00:10:08,240 --> 00:10:10,760
Mum, dad equals safety,

156
00:10:10,800 --> 00:10:13,280
equals shelter, equals food,
equals love.

157
00:10:16,360 --> 00:10:18,160
I just didn't want
my mum to be upset.

158
00:10:27,640 --> 00:10:30,520
As soon as I started taking
those pills,

159
00:10:30,560 --> 00:10:32,160
I started to really grow.

160
00:10:33,880 --> 00:10:36,640
I guess I was happy
to be growing taller, but...

161
00:10:37,920 --> 00:10:41,240
..I wasn't that excited
about growing breasts.

162
00:10:41,280 --> 00:10:43,840
I didn't like the way
my body was changing at all.

163
00:10:43,880 --> 00:10:47,040
But again, there actually wasn't
much I could say or do about it.

164
00:10:49,480 --> 00:10:53,160
I don't think I ever knew Kristi

165
00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:56,600
to be comfortable in
her own skin, honestly.

166
00:10:56,640 --> 00:11:01,280
And I just remember
her girlfriend at the time

167
00:11:01,320 --> 00:11:03,280
having a conversation with me,

168
00:11:03,320 --> 00:11:09,160
super upset about Kristi
not allowing her to touch her,

169
00:11:09,200 --> 00:11:11,560
have that physical intimacy,

170
00:11:11,600 --> 00:11:15,720
and just really struggling
and hurting about that.

171
00:11:15,760 --> 00:11:20,120
So, of course, me being...
just asked, like,

172
00:11:20,160 --> 00:11:21,840
"What's going on?

173
00:11:21,880 --> 00:11:24,320
"You know, she feels like -
that you don't love her.

174
00:11:24,360 --> 00:11:27,760
"You won't open up.
Like, what are you afraid of?

175
00:11:27,800 --> 00:11:30,080
"You don't... She's the best thing
that's ever happened to you.

176
00:11:30,120 --> 00:11:32,160
"Y'all are so happy, like..."

177
00:11:32,200 --> 00:11:36,760
That was when she looked at me
and said, you know,

178
00:11:36,800 --> 00:11:39,000
"I don't have a hole down there."

179
00:11:40,720 --> 00:11:43,600
And, of course, you know,
you try not to let your jaw drop,

180
00:11:43,640 --> 00:11:46,080
or things like, you know, erm...

181
00:11:48,760 --> 00:11:50,640
Everything about women turned me on.

182
00:11:52,720 --> 00:11:55,880
But I wasn't interested at all
in them touching me.

183
00:11:57,160 --> 00:11:59,240
It was very much
a one-sided experience.

184
00:12:00,520 --> 00:12:03,040
I didn't think I was capable
of physical pleasure.

185
00:12:03,080 --> 00:12:06,560
You know, I just didn't have
a relationship with my own body

186
00:12:06,600 --> 00:12:07,920
for the longest time.

187
00:12:23,080 --> 00:12:24,120
I was 19.

188
00:12:24,160 --> 00:12:26,200
I was at college on
a soccer scholarship.

189
00:12:28,440 --> 00:12:30,760
And I was taking this
feminist studies course.

190
00:12:33,400 --> 00:12:36,720
They had given us a selection
to read from this book,

191
00:12:36,760 --> 00:12:38,240
but I hadn't done the reading.

192
00:12:40,920 --> 00:12:43,480
That room right there,
that's the class.

193
00:12:44,880 --> 00:12:47,040
I had no idea that,
when I walked into this class,

194
00:12:47,080 --> 00:12:49,720
my whole fucking world was going
to turn upside down.

195
00:12:52,800 --> 00:12:56,280
The tables, the desks were all in
a circle, because the professor

196
00:12:56,320 --> 00:12:59,320
wanted us to be looking
at each other when we talked.

197
00:12:59,360 --> 00:13:03,000
And...I just started looking around.

198
00:13:05,160 --> 00:13:07,720
You could see the people just
shaking their heads

199
00:13:07,760 --> 00:13:09,080
in disbelief or disgust.

200
00:13:10,520 --> 00:13:13,280
And I thought,
"This has got to be good.

201
00:13:13,320 --> 00:13:14,640
"What is this?"

202
00:13:14,680 --> 00:13:17,480
And so, I just started flipping
through the book and...

203
00:13:17,520 --> 00:13:18,840
CHUCKLES

204
00:13:20,120 --> 00:13:24,920
..I start reading about
how some children are born...

205
00:13:24,960 --> 00:13:28,320
..with bodies, with genitals

206
00:13:28,360 --> 00:13:33,160
that fall outside an arbitrary
acceptable norm.

207
00:13:33,200 --> 00:13:34,600
The length is measured...

208
00:13:36,400 --> 00:13:39,400
..you know, this long,
you get to be a boy.

209
00:13:39,440 --> 00:13:41,680
If it's less than that,

210
00:13:41,720 --> 00:13:44,200
then you lose your phallus,

211
00:13:44,240 --> 00:13:46,640
and you're raised as a girl.

212
00:13:46,680 --> 00:13:49,200
The choice is made by
the parents and the doctors.

213
00:13:49,240 --> 00:13:52,640
The child is having their gender
designated, imprinted,

214
00:13:52,680 --> 00:13:54,040
selected for them.

215
00:13:55,160 --> 00:13:56,840
People were just sort of,

216
00:13:56,880 --> 00:14:00,000
"Oh, my God, I can't believe
this happens regularly.

217
00:14:00,040 --> 00:14:02,280
"What, they just mutilate babies?"

218
00:14:04,160 --> 00:14:06,000
And it just hit me.

219
00:14:06,040 --> 00:14:10,280
HEARTBEAT ECHOES

220
00:14:10,320 --> 00:14:12,040
"I think this is about me."

221
00:14:19,680 --> 00:14:23,120
Click, click, click, clink.
You know?

222
00:14:23,160 --> 00:14:26,040
My mind immediately went to,
"Everything makes sense,

223
00:14:26,080 --> 00:14:29,120
"and this is - I've got
to go get my records."

224
00:14:29,160 --> 00:14:31,520
Like, "I've got to go and get them."

225
00:14:31,560 --> 00:14:33,480
I drove myself to
the doctor's office.

226
00:14:33,520 --> 00:14:36,040
I remember going to the desk and
saying, "I'm a current patient,

227
00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:39,200
"and I'd like if you could give me
a copy of the medical records

228
00:14:39,240 --> 00:14:40,400
"you have for me."

229
00:14:40,440 --> 00:14:43,400
So, I get in, I immediately start
shuffling through the papers,

230
00:14:43,440 --> 00:14:46,480
and I just start at the top,
and it just says,

231
00:14:46,520 --> 00:14:48,080
"Karyotype XY."

232
00:14:48,120 --> 00:14:50,160
And I'm like,
"Wait, what the fuck is that?

233
00:14:50,200 --> 00:14:52,360
Like, XX, XY.

234
00:14:52,400 --> 00:14:55,880
And I'm like,
"XX is chromosomally female.

235
00:14:55,920 --> 00:14:57,840
"And it says XY.

236
00:14:57,880 --> 00:15:00,480
"Why are they running
chromosome tests on me?

237
00:15:00,520 --> 00:15:02,720
"XY, if it's supposed to be XX?

238
00:15:02,760 --> 00:15:06,200
"Then, what does that...tell me?

239
00:15:06,240 --> 00:15:07,720
"Oh, I was a healthy baby.

240
00:15:07,760 --> 00:15:10,600
"But then, there's all this
other documentation about how

241
00:15:10,640 --> 00:15:13,840
"my genital presentation needed
to be altered

242
00:15:13,880 --> 00:15:18,440
"and so many things needed to be
removed, these healthy organs."

243
00:15:18,480 --> 00:15:20,840
And I'm like, "What the fuck?"

244
00:15:20,880 --> 00:15:22,120
And it had this name,

245
00:15:22,160 --> 00:15:24,200
it had Richard Carter's
name all over it.

246
00:15:25,800 --> 00:15:27,200
So, those things were taken out,

247
00:15:27,240 --> 00:15:30,160
and my genitals were crafted
to have a very satisfying,

248
00:15:30,200 --> 00:15:32,120
pleasing vulva presentation,

249
00:15:32,160 --> 00:15:35,360
so I could then be safely
taken home by my parents.

250
00:15:37,400 --> 00:15:40,960
I started in labour about
4am in the morning,

251
00:15:41,000 --> 00:15:43,800
and went on to the hospital.

252
00:15:43,840 --> 00:15:48,000
When we arrived,
the gynaecologist was just very

253
00:15:48,040 --> 00:15:51,800
excited about - that it was a boy.

254
00:15:51,840 --> 00:15:53,840
And then, he said, "Oh, wait,"

255
00:15:53,880 --> 00:15:56,480
you know, he changed his mind
right in midstream.

256
00:15:58,760 --> 00:16:01,240
I was called to the Woman's Hospital

257
00:16:01,280 --> 00:16:04,640
to see an infant that
had ambiguous genitalia.

258
00:16:04,680 --> 00:16:08,200
Ambiguous genitalia is a condition

259
00:16:08,240 --> 00:16:10,560
where you're really not sure,

260
00:16:10,600 --> 00:16:12,160
in looking at the genitalia,

261
00:16:12,200 --> 00:16:15,360
whether you're looking at
a female or a male.

262
00:16:16,680 --> 00:16:21,640
The most obvious thing was that
the phallus was nowhere near

263
00:16:21,680 --> 00:16:25,480
the size of a penis that
you would expect in an infant.

264
00:16:25,520 --> 00:16:28,240
They said that they could
correct the problem,

265
00:16:28,280 --> 00:16:30,840
and that was, you know,

266
00:16:30,880 --> 00:16:33,720
we could raise her as a girl.

267
00:16:33,760 --> 00:16:38,480
In 1976, the medical thought was
that these patients needed

268
00:16:38,520 --> 00:16:42,160
to be surgically constructed

269
00:16:42,200 --> 00:16:45,200
the way they most likely look.

270
00:16:45,240 --> 00:16:49,120
It was strictly
an anatomical decision,

271
00:16:49,160 --> 00:16:53,720
because it was so much easier to
make it look more like a clitoris,

272
00:16:53,760 --> 00:16:57,520
as opposed to trying
to make a penis.

273
00:16:59,480 --> 00:17:01,200
So, that's what we did.

274
00:17:02,640 --> 00:17:05,200
PHONE RINGS

275
00:17:05,240 --> 00:17:08,000
I believe it was
a phone call at first,

276
00:17:08,040 --> 00:17:11,480
a very solemn phone call to
my mother telling her

277
00:17:11,520 --> 00:17:13,920
that I had gone to get my records,

278
00:17:13,960 --> 00:17:18,600
and that I was upset
by what I'd found.

279
00:17:18,640 --> 00:17:20,840
Obviously,
we're taking their advice,

280
00:17:20,880 --> 00:17:24,520
and I feel very confidently
there was nothing malicious

281
00:17:24,560 --> 00:17:25,800
or anything of that order.

282
00:17:25,840 --> 00:17:28,920
They just thought that was
the best way to handle it.

283
00:17:28,960 --> 00:17:30,680
You know, it says I'm, you know,

284
00:17:30,720 --> 00:17:32,640
it says my chromosomes are male,

285
00:17:32,680 --> 00:17:38,360
and that I had these surgeries
that took away parts of my body.

286
00:17:38,400 --> 00:17:42,720
I was like, "I had testes,
you know, I had a...

287
00:17:45,360 --> 00:17:47,560
"..a phallus between my legs,
and they were gone.

288
00:17:47,600 --> 00:17:49,600
"I had those things,
and they were gone."

289
00:17:49,640 --> 00:17:53,640
She was not...not very happy
at all during, what,

290
00:17:53,680 --> 00:17:55,840
about a year or so there.
She was getting...

291
00:17:55,880 --> 00:17:57,160
She was real angry.

292
00:17:57,200 --> 00:18:01,720
She was angry toward us and towards
the doctors. And the doctors.

293
00:18:01,760 --> 00:18:03,440
"You cut my genitals out.

294
00:18:03,480 --> 00:18:05,800
"What did you think was going
to happen?"

295
00:18:09,080 --> 00:18:11,680
You know, "What is the meaning
of all...? What is the...?

296
00:18:11,720 --> 00:18:13,280
"Why didn't you tell me this?

297
00:18:13,320 --> 00:18:17,120
"And I had to find it out on my own,
in my car, by myself

298
00:18:17,160 --> 00:18:19,560
"with no-one to talk to?"

299
00:18:19,600 --> 00:18:23,480
We tried to explain to her
this was the best thing

300
00:18:23,520 --> 00:18:27,120
that we thought to do and,
including the doctors,

301
00:18:27,160 --> 00:18:28,200
and we agreed.

302
00:18:29,560 --> 00:18:31,400
There's not much else you can say.

303
00:18:31,440 --> 00:18:32,920
That was not good enough.

304
00:18:34,760 --> 00:18:36,760
All that did was...

305
00:18:36,800 --> 00:18:38,640
..it was just gasoline on a fire.

306
00:18:38,680 --> 00:18:41,480
MUSIC INTENSIFIES

307
00:18:43,200 --> 00:18:46,680
I started running through
every memory that I'd had.

308
00:18:48,160 --> 00:18:52,160
Every time I was bullied
for how I looked.

309
00:18:52,200 --> 00:18:54,600
Every time I didn't meet a standard

310
00:18:54,640 --> 00:18:56,640
when I was measured up
to other girls.

311
00:18:57,920 --> 00:19:00,480
Every time I felt like
a fish out of water.

312
00:19:01,680 --> 00:19:06,120
And just filling in
the blanks with these lies.

313
00:19:08,320 --> 00:19:10,880
Just so much unnecessary suffering.

314
00:19:10,920 --> 00:19:12,920
So much unnecessary suffering.

315
00:19:14,760 --> 00:19:16,080
A-And why?

316
00:19:27,600 --> 00:19:30,120
I was a psychology student at UCLA.

317
00:19:32,120 --> 00:19:36,480
And a very famous pioneer
in sexual science gave a lecture

318
00:19:36,520 --> 00:19:38,200
in abnormal psychology.

319
00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:41,240
And most of the other kids in
the class were kind of giggling,

320
00:19:41,280 --> 00:19:42,960
because he was talking about sex.

321
00:19:43,000 --> 00:19:45,160
But he finally put up a slide

322
00:19:45,200 --> 00:19:49,040
that showed a child
who had atypical genitalia.

323
00:19:49,080 --> 00:19:51,840
And I recognised
the name of the syndrome

324
00:19:51,880 --> 00:19:53,920
that he had on his slide.

325
00:19:53,960 --> 00:19:56,440
I knew because I was one
of those kids.

326
00:19:56,480 --> 00:19:58,040
I was born with intersex.

327
00:19:59,840 --> 00:20:03,000
Intersex is an umbrella term
for all kids who are born

328
00:20:03,040 --> 00:20:05,800
with differences in their
appearance of their genitalia,

329
00:20:05,840 --> 00:20:08,160
differences in the formation
of their gonads,

330
00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:09,400
of their sexual organs,

331
00:20:09,440 --> 00:20:12,200
and also, to kids who have
different kinds of genetics.

332
00:20:12,240 --> 00:20:14,840
It was not typically male
or typically female.

333
00:20:14,880 --> 00:20:17,600
At the beginning, foetuses
have female-looking genitalia,

334
00:20:17,640 --> 00:20:21,440
and the intervention of testosterone
and other androgens change that

335
00:20:21,480 --> 00:20:24,680
to look like what are
typical male genitalia.

336
00:20:24,720 --> 00:20:28,320
From here to there, things stop.

337
00:20:28,360 --> 00:20:29,800
Depending upon where they stop,

338
00:20:29,840 --> 00:20:32,200
you'll get a mix of appearance,

339
00:20:32,240 --> 00:20:34,240
so it can be more to the female,

340
00:20:34,280 --> 00:20:35,560
more to the male,

341
00:20:35,600 --> 00:20:36,800
very much in the middle.

342
00:20:38,840 --> 00:20:41,640
I didn't even know that a kid could
have surgery at age three months,

343
00:20:41,680 --> 00:20:42,840
but I did.

344
00:20:42,880 --> 00:20:45,440
And I had a dozen surgeries
before I was 12 years old.

345
00:20:47,520 --> 00:20:50,040
So, I know very well
what that history is like,

346
00:20:50,080 --> 00:20:51,320
and what it can do to a kid.

347
00:20:53,240 --> 00:20:56,720
My mentor, he was introducing me to
all these other sexual scientists,

348
00:20:56,760 --> 00:20:59,000
and I was learning a lot from
these people who were

349
00:20:59,040 --> 00:21:00,400
real pioneers in the field.

350
00:21:00,440 --> 00:21:02,000
..To be joined by Dr John Money.

351
00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:04,920
He's from Johns Hopkins.
He's a world-famous sexologist.

352
00:21:04,960 --> 00:21:06,520
Dr John Money is a professor...

353
00:21:06,560 --> 00:21:08,040
Oh, he was the hero at the time.

354
00:21:08,080 --> 00:21:09,920
John Money was an undisputed genius.

355
00:21:09,960 --> 00:21:13,320
He made huge contributions
in the field of sexual science.

356
00:21:13,360 --> 00:21:17,080
Welcome, Dr Money.Thank you.
APPLAUSE

357
00:21:17,120 --> 00:21:20,800
He had become known for
his interest in intersex.

358
00:21:20,840 --> 00:21:22,560
John was the only person

359
00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:25,000
who was studying the psychology

360
00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:27,160
and the development of people

361
00:21:27,200 --> 00:21:30,080
who were born
with atypical genitalia.

362
00:21:30,120 --> 00:21:32,200
And I wanted to do
my dissertation on that.

363
00:21:33,400 --> 00:21:35,800
So, I became an intern with
John at age 24.

364
00:21:38,520 --> 00:21:40,440
Good evening.

365
00:21:40,480 --> 00:21:42,520
I'm working overtime tonight,

366
00:21:42,560 --> 00:21:46,520
for I want to be able to tell you
something about gender identity.

367
00:21:46,560 --> 00:21:50,120
One of the big debates in all of
science is nature versus nurture.

368
00:21:50,160 --> 00:21:52,520
Is it what happens because you
have a genetic encoding?

369
00:21:52,560 --> 00:21:54,680
Or is it because of how it is
that you're raised,

370
00:21:54,720 --> 00:21:57,160
how it is that you're trained?

371
00:21:57,200 --> 00:22:01,960
John believed very strongly
that human beings could be trained

372
00:22:02,000 --> 00:22:07,400
to live in a gender of choice,
regardless of their chromosomes.

373
00:22:07,440 --> 00:22:09,920
It is a characteristic of
the human species

374
00:22:09,960 --> 00:22:12,960
that men and women
have a gender identity,

375
00:22:13,000 --> 00:22:15,040
that newborn babies don't have one,

376
00:22:15,080 --> 00:22:19,160
and that developing infants
and young children develop one.

377
00:22:19,200 --> 00:22:21,160
They develop it in much the same way

378
00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:23,160
as they develop their
native language.

379
00:22:25,200 --> 00:22:28,960
John believed that how you're raised
can make all the difference

380
00:22:29,000 --> 00:22:31,240
in how it is that you identify.

381
00:22:31,280 --> 00:22:33,440
And he had this case.

382
00:22:33,480 --> 00:22:35,880
I'm referring now
to identical twins,

383
00:22:35,920 --> 00:22:39,840
genetic males looking
perfectly normal.

384
00:22:39,880 --> 00:22:41,400
At the age of seven months,

385
00:22:41,440 --> 00:22:44,600
the first of the twins
was scheduled for circumcision.

386
00:22:44,640 --> 00:22:47,040
And there, an accident occurred.

387
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:48,520
The result?

388
00:22:48,560 --> 00:22:50,600
There was absolutely no structure

389
00:22:50,640 --> 00:22:52,520
of the penis left at all.

390
00:23:04,040 --> 00:23:06,120
I was in shock,

391
00:23:06,160 --> 00:23:08,520
and I could not comprehend.

392
00:23:10,520 --> 00:23:13,880
"Oh, my God.
What are we going to do now?"

393
00:23:15,560 --> 00:23:18,840
It is not wise to assign,
or, I should say,

394
00:23:18,880 --> 00:23:21,800
to condemn a baby to live as a boy.

395
00:23:21,840 --> 00:23:25,280
For, in fact, it is
surgically possible

396
00:23:25,320 --> 00:23:30,560
to rehabilitate this baby
surgically as a female.

397
00:23:35,960 --> 00:23:37,880
These surgeries have been
happening for a while,

398
00:23:37,920 --> 00:23:40,920
where kids who were born with
atypical genitalia were being

399
00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:44,040
fixed up to look more like males,
or more like females.

400
00:23:44,080 --> 00:23:45,520
But the psychological model,

401
00:23:45,560 --> 00:23:48,320
the kind of script for
how to reinforce gender

402
00:23:48,360 --> 00:23:51,400
and how to teach them
how to live as boys or girls,

403
00:23:51,440 --> 00:23:54,640
that was something that wasn't
so widely disseminated

404
00:23:54,680 --> 00:23:56,160
until this case came out.

405
00:23:57,800 --> 00:23:59,680
He seemed highly intelligent

406
00:23:59,720 --> 00:24:03,920
and very confident of
what he was saying.

407
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:05,720
Certainly made an impact.

408
00:24:05,760 --> 00:24:09,000
And I thought,
"Here's our answer.

409
00:24:09,040 --> 00:24:11,320
"Here's our salvation.
Here's our hope."

410
00:24:13,120 --> 00:24:16,480
John was really, really good
at selling his theory,

411
00:24:16,520 --> 00:24:18,600
and these parents agreed.

412
00:24:18,640 --> 00:24:21,760
And this one child was
assigned female.

413
00:24:21,800 --> 00:24:25,480
And John started working very,
very directly with the family.

414
00:24:30,200 --> 00:24:34,480
John and the team at Hopkins
established a script and a protocol

415
00:24:34,520 --> 00:24:37,640
for how to tell families about what
was going to happen to them.

416
00:24:41,720 --> 00:24:43,320
Do the sex of assignment.

417
00:24:46,920 --> 00:24:49,520
The child would need surgery to have

418
00:24:49,560 --> 00:24:51,800
a more female-appearing genitalia.

419
00:24:58,800 --> 00:25:00,880
What's going to happen
to them at puberty,

420
00:25:00,920 --> 00:25:03,000
and if that included
hormonal therapy.

421
00:25:07,000 --> 00:25:10,120
If that included further surgeries -
which it often did.

422
00:25:15,440 --> 00:25:19,280
John Money's main advice to us was,

423
00:25:19,320 --> 00:25:22,280
"Don't let her think
that she was ever a boy.

424
00:25:23,360 --> 00:25:24,840
"Keep that secret."

425
00:25:26,800 --> 00:25:29,120
Part of the script was
to keep this a secret from them.

426
00:25:29,160 --> 00:25:32,440
They were never to know that they
were anything other than a normal

427
00:25:32,480 --> 00:25:34,320
little boy or a normal little girl.

428
00:25:34,360 --> 00:25:36,320
So, it's quite an undertaking,

429
00:25:36,360 --> 00:25:39,640
and it takes a lot of effort by
the family to maintain this.

430
00:25:43,800 --> 00:25:45,880
The fact of the matter is that now,

431
00:25:45,920 --> 00:25:49,960
the child has grown-up to have
a female gender identity,

432
00:25:50,000 --> 00:25:53,400
which is in no way similar
to that of her brother.

433
00:26:06,000 --> 00:26:07,840
When the two children
are seen together,

434
00:26:07,880 --> 00:26:09,840
it's not possible to mistake them,

435
00:26:09,880 --> 00:26:12,280
for one is a girl
and the other is a boy.

436
00:26:14,160 --> 00:26:16,640
The book that John
published in 1972,

437
00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:18,280
Man and Woman, Boy

438
00:26:18,320 --> 00:26:20,520
made John my hero in a lot of ways.

439
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:23,080
I mean, it was like,
"Here's the guy who's finally doing

440
00:26:23,120 --> 00:26:26,240
"what I'm looking for
somebody to do."

441
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:29,200
In the '70s, the sexual
revolution was happening.

442
00:26:29,240 --> 00:26:32,400
Differences in gender were something
where kind of those ideas

443
00:26:32,440 --> 00:26:33,920
were kind of falling apart.

444
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:38,800
And this guy, John Money, coming up
with this amazing statement about

445
00:26:38,840 --> 00:26:43,120
gender being fluid, and gender
being something that is a construct,

446
00:26:43,160 --> 00:26:44,880
people really latched on to it.

447
00:26:44,920 --> 00:26:46,680
It was a very popular idea,

448
00:26:46,720 --> 00:26:48,640
and it fit with the spirit
of the times.

449
00:26:50,160 --> 00:26:53,680
This became the basis for surgically
changing certain baby boys

450
00:26:53,720 --> 00:26:56,160
into girls throughout
the medical world.

451
00:26:56,200 --> 00:26:58,120
Once this case was published,

452
00:26:58,160 --> 00:27:00,040
it gave a lot of power,

453
00:27:00,080 --> 00:27:02,280
a lot of justification
for that model.

454
00:27:05,200 --> 00:27:07,480
Physicians and surgeons,
not just in the United States,

455
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:11,080
but around the world were willing
to take on the script about

456
00:27:11,120 --> 00:27:14,520
how to deal with kids who are
born with atypical genitalia.

457
00:27:15,840 --> 00:27:18,600
Parents everywhere could be
far more easily convinced

458
00:27:18,640 --> 00:27:19,640
that this will work.

459
00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:22,880
So, yeah, like a cookbook,

460
00:27:22,920 --> 00:27:24,520
that's how it got disseminated.

461
00:27:26,000 --> 00:27:27,720
It makes it very exciting,
don't you think,

462
00:27:27,760 --> 00:27:31,920
to live in an age of discovery
of human personality this way?

463
00:27:47,440 --> 00:27:49,520
A few months after
I discovered my records

464
00:27:49,560 --> 00:27:50,920
and confronted my parents,

465
00:27:50,960 --> 00:27:53,680
I was still upset by
what I had found,

466
00:27:53,720 --> 00:27:57,000
wrapping my head around the idea
that I had this body

467
00:27:57,040 --> 00:27:59,240
when I was born,
and it was taken away from me.

468
00:27:59,280 --> 00:28:02,400
And that information - information
that had been kept from me.

469
00:28:02,440 --> 00:28:03,440
APPLAUSE

470
00:28:03,480 --> 00:28:05,320
Welcome back to Northwest Afternoon.

471
00:28:05,360 --> 00:28:07,560
We have a very important
and sensitive topic

472
00:28:07,600 --> 00:28:09,040
that we're touching today,

473
00:28:09,080 --> 00:28:12,120
though it may not be appropriate
for children.

474
00:28:12,160 --> 00:28:16,000
I was doing laundry at their house,
watching TV.

475
00:28:16,040 --> 00:28:19,320
..For children born with mixed-up
genitals, doctors usually recommend

476
00:28:19,360 --> 00:28:21,800
fixing the genitals as
soon as possible.

477
00:28:21,840 --> 00:28:23,240
That's what's happened
to our guests -

478
00:28:23,280 --> 00:28:25,480
only they say the fix did
more harm than good.

479
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:26,880
Cheryl was surgically altered...

480
00:28:26,920 --> 00:28:30,320
"We'll be speaking to Cheryl Chase

481
00:28:30,360 --> 00:28:34,200
"of the Intersex Society of
North America about..."

482
00:28:34,240 --> 00:28:36,160
But all I heard was "intersex".

483
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:38,920
We've now managed to connect, erm,

484
00:28:38,960 --> 00:28:41,400
hundreds of intersex people
in North America

485
00:28:41,440 --> 00:28:43,080
and throughout the world.

486
00:28:43,120 --> 00:28:45,720
I heard her describe
intersex adults - plural -

487
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:47,360
speaking out publicly.

488
00:28:47,400 --> 00:28:48,840
Would you like one of our leaflets?

489
00:28:48,880 --> 00:28:51,400
I thought, "Oh, holy shit.

490
00:28:51,440 --> 00:28:54,200
"Is this woman really on TV
talking about this?

491
00:28:54,240 --> 00:28:57,080
What we do know from talking
to intersex adults,

492
00:28:57,120 --> 00:29:00,400
is that a huge number of people
have experienced

493
00:29:00,440 --> 00:29:02,760
the treatment as punishment.

494
00:29:02,800 --> 00:29:05,760
Where is she?
How did she get there?

495
00:29:05,800 --> 00:29:09,040
Speaking so concisely and
intelligently about a subject

496
00:29:09,080 --> 00:29:12,560
I was just beginning to understand.

497
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:15,040
When doctors are confronted
with this, they say,

498
00:29:15,080 --> 00:29:18,400
"Well, we are positive
that all of our other patients" -

499
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:21,560
who we have never heard from
and we haven't followed -

500
00:29:21,600 --> 00:29:23,080
"are fine now."

501
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:24,800
But they can't produce one.

502
00:29:24,840 --> 00:29:27,280
It wasn't satisfactory for her.

503
00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:30,120
She's pissed off,
and she's super smart.

504
00:29:30,160 --> 00:29:32,720
I thought,
"Holy shit, I am not alone.

505
00:29:34,440 --> 00:29:39,160
"And, in fact, there is a burgeoning
political movement behind it."

506
00:29:40,800 --> 00:29:42,960
I blew my mind, and I thought,

507
00:29:43,000 --> 00:29:45,880
"Holy shit, I've gotta find
this Cheryl Chase."

508
00:29:47,280 --> 00:29:50,240
I stumbled across San Francisco
Sex Information Hotline,

509
00:29:50,280 --> 00:29:53,520
where you can call and
get nonjudgmental,

510
00:29:53,560 --> 00:29:55,560
impartial information.

511
00:29:55,600 --> 00:29:59,080
And they gave me a phone number

512
00:29:59,120 --> 00:30:01,280
for the Intersex Society
of North America.

513
00:30:02,960 --> 00:30:05,040
And I called from my dorm room,

514
00:30:05,080 --> 00:30:07,240
and Cheryl Chase picks up the phone,

515
00:30:07,280 --> 00:30:09,960
and it's the voice of
this woman that I saw on TV.

516
00:30:10,000 --> 00:30:12,280
And I was terrified and
exhilarated at the same time.

517
00:30:12,320 --> 00:30:14,720
There we go,
terror and exhilaration.

518
00:30:14,760 --> 00:30:18,320
And I...couldn't believe
she was on the phone.

519
00:30:18,360 --> 00:30:21,840
She ran me through a sort
of gauntlet of questions

520
00:30:21,880 --> 00:30:23,720
to make sure I wasn't full of shit.

521
00:30:23,760 --> 00:30:26,440
Make sure that
I wasn't a wanna-fuck.

522
00:30:26,480 --> 00:30:27,520
CHUCKLING

523
00:30:27,560 --> 00:30:32,680
Wanna-fucks - like, people who had
a prurient interest in intersex.

524
00:30:32,720 --> 00:30:34,200
I had so many weird inquiries.

525
00:30:34,240 --> 00:30:36,400
I remember there were people
sometimes who wrote to me

526
00:30:36,440 --> 00:30:37,640
about intersex animals.

527
00:30:37,680 --> 00:30:40,080
Like, there was this one guy
who said he has an intersex monkey,

528
00:30:40,120 --> 00:30:41,560
and what should he do about it?

529
00:30:41,600 --> 00:30:44,160
And I said, "Well, why do you want
to do anything about it?

530
00:30:44,200 --> 00:30:47,760
"Does the monkey have a problem?
Then don't do anything."

531
00:30:47,800 --> 00:30:49,080
"What do you want?"

532
00:30:53,720 --> 00:30:55,440
And she let the silence hang.

533
00:30:58,080 --> 00:31:01,200
"I want to meet the youngest
intersex person that you know,

534
00:31:01,240 --> 00:31:02,560
"closest to my age."

535
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:10,520
So, she got back in touch
with me and said,

536
00:31:10,560 --> 00:31:13,120
"I have someone who's willing
to speak with you.

537
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:16,560
"She's 26, and she lives
in Saint Louis."

538
00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:17,600
Great.

539
00:31:19,000 --> 00:31:20,360
Great.

540
00:31:20,400 --> 00:31:22,840
At the time, I was still 20.

541
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:26,760
So, I spoke to a young person,

542
00:31:26,800 --> 00:31:29,760
and we spoke for a couple of hours
and got on really well.

543
00:31:29,800 --> 00:31:33,720
She said, "Why don't you come
to Saint Louis, and we'll hang out?

544
00:31:33,760 --> 00:31:36,800
And I was like,
"OK, yeah, that'd be great."

545
00:31:36,840 --> 00:31:40,520
And I went up there, and we had
dinner, and she said,

546
00:31:40,560 --> 00:31:41,800
"Hey, do you want to...?

547
00:31:41,840 --> 00:31:44,640
"We had we had this retreat back
in California a few years ago,

548
00:31:44,680 --> 00:31:46,080
"and we made this film.

549
00:31:46,120 --> 00:31:49,080
"It's called Hermaphrodites Speak!
Do you want to see it?"

550
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:52,240
And I was like, "Yeah!"

551
00:31:52,280 --> 00:31:55,320
Here we are at the first-ever

552
00:31:55,360 --> 00:31:58,320
International World
Intersex meeting.

553
00:31:58,360 --> 00:31:59,600
Woo! Yeah.

554
00:32:00,760 --> 00:32:04,360
Cheryl had this little microphone
that she would just hand to people.

555
00:32:04,400 --> 00:32:07,120
It feels absolutely incredible
to have come all the way

556
00:32:07,160 --> 00:32:09,520
from New Zealand for
the first-ever gathering.

557
00:32:09,560 --> 00:32:12,240
Yeah. How did you find out about
the Intersex Society?

558
00:32:12,280 --> 00:32:14,840
They were just a bunch of people

559
00:32:14,880 --> 00:32:18,360
sitting in the woods, telling
their story, why they were there.

560
00:32:18,400 --> 00:32:21,240
A friend of mine had the newsletter,

561
00:32:21,280 --> 00:32:23,680
Hermaphrodites With Attitude,
cross her desk.

562
00:32:23,720 --> 00:32:25,320
Hermaphrodites With Attitude?

563
00:32:25,360 --> 00:32:26,760
That's right, cross her desk...

564
00:32:26,800 --> 00:32:28,680
Are you a hermaphrodite
with attitude?

565
00:32:28,720 --> 00:32:31,120
I'm a hermaphrodite with
major attitude. Yeah!

566
00:32:31,160 --> 00:32:33,440
LAUGHTER

567
00:32:33,480 --> 00:32:35,160
I was transfixed.

568
00:32:35,200 --> 00:32:38,720
I knew that there were people
like me out there,

569
00:32:38,760 --> 00:32:41,680
but I just didn't know what the
chances were of ever finding them.

570
00:32:41,720 --> 00:32:43,760
It's not something
you can ask somebody

571
00:32:43,800 --> 00:32:45,600
in kind of conversations.

572
00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:46,640
Erm, so...

573
00:32:46,680 --> 00:32:47,840
SIGHS

574
00:32:47,880 --> 00:32:49,200
So, this has been, yeah,

575
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:51,760
just like a turning point
for my life.

576
00:32:51,800 --> 00:32:52,800
Wow. Yeah.

577
00:32:52,840 --> 00:32:54,040
LAUGHS

578
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:56,320
The Intersex Society was
founded in 1993,

579
00:32:56,360 --> 00:32:58,680
and at that time,

580
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:02,560
I had come to realise
that I wasn't the only person

581
00:33:02,600 --> 00:33:04,200
who had an experience like that.

582
00:33:04,240 --> 00:33:07,080
There were a lot of people
who had similar experiences,

583
00:33:07,120 --> 00:33:10,680
and...medical practice hadn't
acknowledged that what

584
00:33:10,720 --> 00:33:12,680
they were doing was hurting us.

585
00:33:12,720 --> 00:33:15,280
They really tried to ignore us
at first, doctors,

586
00:33:15,320 --> 00:33:18,480
and they said,
"Blah, blah, blah, blah.

587
00:33:18,520 --> 00:33:21,760
"We're pretty sure
everybody's happy. Blah."

588
00:33:21,800 --> 00:33:23,360
But they wouldn't talk to us.

589
00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:27,080
Cheryl spoke to me right away.

590
00:33:27,120 --> 00:33:29,040
She was serious about this.

591
00:33:31,000 --> 00:33:32,800
I knew it.

592
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:35,160
There was no going back.

593
00:33:39,800 --> 00:33:42,920
I've written to Dr Money,
very politely asking him

594
00:33:42,960 --> 00:33:44,080
if we can talk.

595
00:33:45,720 --> 00:33:48,600
"I regret being unable to take
on any new commitments.

596
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:50,360
"I don't have time.
I don't have money.

597
00:33:50,400 --> 00:33:53,080
"I decline your invitation
to talk with you directly.

598
00:33:53,120 --> 00:33:55,040
"I do not see patients.
John Money."

599
00:33:57,120 --> 00:33:59,520
You know,
I really did want to practise

600
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:03,200
"you catch more flies with honey
than with vinegar".

601
00:34:08,040 --> 00:34:10,520
How do you feel about
the fact that was done to you?

602
00:34:11,920 --> 00:34:14,520
At times, I feel like hiding
in the closet,

603
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:18,680
because it's like,
how can anybody accept somebody

604
00:34:18,720 --> 00:34:20,760
who's been this mutilated?

605
00:34:20,800 --> 00:34:25,520
And at other times, I get so mad
that I just want to get a dull,

606
00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:29,600
rusty knife and start hacking off
other doctors' genitals,

607
00:34:29,640 --> 00:34:32,440
and say, "Here, you son of a bitch,
how do you...?

608
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:34,080
"Now, how do you think it feels?"

609
00:34:36,240 --> 00:34:41,200
Watching this film, it hit me
that all these folks in this film

610
00:34:41,240 --> 00:34:44,480
had bodies that were different,

611
00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:46,280
but that they all suffered...

612
00:34:48,720 --> 00:34:50,800
..the same fate that I did.

613
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:58,240
Let's see, hold on.
Just give me a second.

614
00:34:58,280 --> 00:35:00,120
SIGHS

615
00:35:00,160 --> 00:35:01,720
Yeah. '97.

616
00:35:11,000 --> 00:35:13,000
A friend called me up and said,

617
00:35:13,040 --> 00:35:14,760
"Go buy a copy of Rolling Stone now.

618
00:35:17,400 --> 00:35:19,480
"There's something in it
you gotta read."

619
00:35:28,440 --> 00:35:30,680
I was 20 at the time,
and I had moved out of the dorms,

620
00:35:30,720 --> 00:35:33,120
and I was actually staying at
my friend Heather's house,

621
00:35:33,160 --> 00:35:34,520
just in her spare room.

622
00:35:34,560 --> 00:35:36,600
All right, one here.

623
00:35:36,640 --> 00:35:38,000
I ran out to the gas station...

624
00:35:38,040 --> 00:35:40,160
Yeah, these are my...
..got a copy...

625
00:35:40,200 --> 00:35:43,720
These are my Reimer files, indeed.

626
00:35:43,760 --> 00:35:46,760
..and I remember running back to the
spare room and shutting the door,

627
00:35:46,800 --> 00:35:49,800
and jumping on the bed and
opening it up, flipping the pages.

628
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:53,560
I was, like, in this whole spread,

629
00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:55,600
and I'm reading it,
and I'm like, "Oh, God."

630
00:35:55,640 --> 00:35:59,640
"In 1967, an anonymous baby boy
was turned into a girl by doctors

631
00:35:59,680 --> 00:36:01,080
"at Johns Hopkins Hospital."

632
00:36:01,120 --> 00:36:04,040
I mean, every other word,
I'm like, "Oh, God. Oh, God."

633
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:06,880
"For 25 years, the case was
called a medical triumph.

634
00:36:06,920 --> 00:36:09,520
"Proof that a child's gender
identity could be changed.

635
00:36:09,560 --> 00:36:13,120
"And thousands of sex reassignments
were performed based on this exam.

636
00:36:13,160 --> 00:36:15,000
It was just like,
"Wait, what? What?"

637
00:36:15,040 --> 00:36:16,040
And I was like...

638
00:36:16,080 --> 00:36:18,960
"But the case was a failure,
the truth never reported..."

639
00:36:19,000 --> 00:36:21,160
"..And a medical
controversy erupts."

640
00:36:23,120 --> 00:36:26,000
I did not know this story.
This was news to me.

641
00:36:31,880 --> 00:36:36,160
I was a journalist at Rolling
Stone magazine in the 1990s

642
00:36:36,200 --> 00:36:38,680
when this academic paper came out.

643
00:36:38,720 --> 00:36:43,320
That really was jaw-dropping
for what it revealed

644
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:48,320
about a world-famous case of
infant gender reassignment.

645
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:52,200
The child has grown up to have
a female gender identity,

646
00:36:52,240 --> 00:36:53,360
which is in...

647
00:36:53,400 --> 00:36:56,960
Absolute bombshell of a paper.

648
00:36:57,000 --> 00:37:01,080
And so, I set out to try
to find the patient.

649
00:37:01,120 --> 00:37:04,360
And we were lucky enough at
Rolling Stone, and persistent enough

650
00:37:04,400 --> 00:37:06,120
to actually find this patient,

651
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:08,560
and for this patient to agree
to be interviewed.

652
00:37:09,960 --> 00:37:12,440
That's really how
I ended up with this story

653
00:37:12,480 --> 00:37:14,360
that was a world exclusive.

654
00:37:17,040 --> 00:37:20,160
The part of it that you couldn't -
you wouldn't make up in fiction,

655
00:37:20,200 --> 00:37:22,600
because no-one would believe it.

656
00:37:22,640 --> 00:37:24,840
The patient was now living at

657
00:37:24,880 --> 00:37:28,000
the age of 32 as a man,

658
00:37:28,040 --> 00:37:30,880
married, with children
that were from the previous

659
00:37:30,920 --> 00:37:32,240
relationship of his wife.

660
00:37:33,760 --> 00:37:37,000
I mean, this was just rocking
everybody on their heels.

661
00:37:39,160 --> 00:37:43,400
When he found out this is
being done to thousands of kids

662
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:47,840
around the world because of
your case being misreported

663
00:37:47,880 --> 00:37:49,760
by this John Money character.

664
00:37:49,800 --> 00:37:52,120
..Impossible to mistake them,
for one is a girl

665
00:37:52,160 --> 00:37:53,240
and the other is a boy.

666
00:37:53,280 --> 00:37:55,080
That's all it took, like,
David was just...

667
00:37:55,120 --> 00:37:57,280
He was dumbstruck.
He couldn't believe...

668
00:37:57,320 --> 00:37:59,120
He thought he was the one guy.

669
00:37:59,160 --> 00:38:03,800
And, you know, wild horses couldn't
have held David back at that point.

670
00:38:03,840 --> 00:38:07,040
I was appalled, disgusted,
and angry when I heard about it.

671
00:38:09,120 --> 00:38:11,280
People thought that my case

672
00:38:11,320 --> 00:38:12,600
was a success story?

673
00:38:14,200 --> 00:38:16,280
There was nothing further
than the truth.

674
00:38:17,840 --> 00:38:21,560
This poor kid was a guinea pig.

675
00:38:21,600 --> 00:38:26,400
Patient zero for all the fucking
treatment and torture

676
00:38:26,440 --> 00:38:30,440
that me and so many of
my friends had to experience.

677
00:38:30,480 --> 00:38:32,240
It was just an experiment.

678
00:38:36,120 --> 00:38:39,200
My first impression of David,

679
00:38:39,240 --> 00:38:41,680
it just couldn't be summed up
by anger.

680
00:38:41,720 --> 00:38:45,640
He was angry at John Money for
having recommended reassignment,

681
00:38:45,680 --> 00:38:48,360
but then, he was angry at
his parents for having agreed

682
00:38:48,400 --> 00:38:49,600
to the reassignment.

683
00:38:49,640 --> 00:38:52,880
But then, he was angry at his
parents for having followed through

684
00:38:52,920 --> 00:38:56,040
on a programme of not
telling him the truth.

685
00:38:57,680 --> 00:38:59,360
He really was lied to.

686
00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:03,360
Now, this was a programme of lying
that was imposed by Money

687
00:39:03,400 --> 00:39:06,640
as being the only way
this could work.

688
00:39:06,680 --> 00:39:08,520
I had doubts all the time,

689
00:39:08,560 --> 00:39:13,560
because it was just
so obvious to everyone,

690
00:39:13,600 --> 00:39:15,760
not just to me,

691
00:39:15,800 --> 00:39:19,840
that she was masculine.

692
00:39:19,880 --> 00:39:23,360
I remember his mum saying to me
that, at the age of 22 months,

693
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:27,400
when he was first put in dresses,
he was tearing them off.

694
00:39:27,440 --> 00:39:30,280
When she first agreed to
try to reassign him

695
00:39:30,320 --> 00:39:32,160
and call him Brenda.

696
00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,200
Obviously, the mother
informs John Money,

697
00:39:36,240 --> 00:39:38,600
but he will not report that.

698
00:39:40,200 --> 00:39:41,920
I didn't like dressing like a girl.

699
00:39:41,960 --> 00:39:43,520
I didn't like behaving like a girl.

700
00:39:43,560 --> 00:39:45,600
I didn't like acting like a girl.

701
00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:49,160
Yeah, well, honestly, like,
looking at this photo,

702
00:39:49,200 --> 00:39:51,840
and I-I started seeing myself
in these, you know,

703
00:39:51,880 --> 00:39:55,400
these old photos, you know, of
old photos of mine.

704
00:39:55,440 --> 00:39:57,800
I never played with girl stuff.

705
00:39:57,840 --> 00:40:01,000
I usually got stuck
with Barbie dolls, clothing.

706
00:40:05,600 --> 00:40:08,360
I mean, consider myself lucky
that I did get the bicycle

707
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:09,880
the same year I got the Barbie.

708
00:40:10,960 --> 00:40:13,320
But one got far more used
than the other.

709
00:40:14,840 --> 00:40:17,440
The mother writes
some letters to Money,

710
00:40:17,480 --> 00:40:19,400
and Money writes back, saying,

711
00:40:19,440 --> 00:40:22,600
you know, "Don't worry, it's fine.
That's tomboyishness,

712
00:40:22,640 --> 00:40:24,120
"and it is indeed going well."

713
00:40:24,160 --> 00:40:25,840
They just have to stay the course.

714
00:40:27,760 --> 00:40:31,880
I could see that Brenda
wasn't happy as a girl.

715
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:34,640
No matter what
I tried to do for her,

716
00:40:34,680 --> 00:40:39,200
I could not persuade her
to do anything feminine.

717
00:40:43,960 --> 00:40:45,480
I was never happy as Brenda.

718
00:40:46,880 --> 00:40:48,080
Never.

719
00:41:00,160 --> 00:41:05,000
Dr Money says that this child
provides, and I quote,

720
00:41:05,040 --> 00:41:10,520
"Dramatic proof that the gender
identity option is open at birth."

721
00:41:10,560 --> 00:41:15,520
It was in 1974 when the case was
referred to me as the head

722
00:41:15,560 --> 00:41:17,920
of the Department of Psychiatry

723
00:41:17,960 --> 00:41:21,320
at the Child Guidance Clinic
of Greater Winnipeg.

724
00:41:22,400 --> 00:41:24,400
She was nine.

725
00:41:24,440 --> 00:41:25,640
Is that your view?

726
00:41:26,920 --> 00:41:31,360
The preliminary information would
suggest that the girl is having

727
00:41:31,400 --> 00:41:34,800
considerable difficulty in
adjusting as a female.

728
00:41:36,840 --> 00:41:38,360
I first heard about this case

729
00:41:38,400 --> 00:41:41,040
because of my training in
child psychiatry.

730
00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:44,600
This was being reported
as a huge success.

731
00:41:44,640 --> 00:41:46,880
But when I first met Brenda,

732
00:41:46,920 --> 00:41:50,160
it was evident to me
that this was not working.

733
00:41:50,200 --> 00:41:56,520
There was clearly nothing
feminine about her at all.

734
00:41:56,560 --> 00:42:00,720
Doctor, is she likely
to have a memory of what

735
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:02,400
has happened to her?

736
00:42:07,760 --> 00:42:09,200
I can't answer that.

737
00:42:13,160 --> 00:42:15,360
You can't answer it
because you don't know?

738
00:42:16,880 --> 00:42:19,760
Or you can't answer it because
you don't want to answer it?

739
00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:24,200
There were lots of
politics involved.

740
00:42:24,240 --> 00:42:28,640
But I believe there was a social
pressure for this to succeed,

741
00:42:28,680 --> 00:42:31,760
and it was entrusted to me
to make it happen.

742
00:42:33,320 --> 00:42:37,600
I was even warned that,
should it fail,

743
00:42:37,640 --> 00:42:41,080
my academic career would be ruined,

744
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:45,720
and that I would find myself
being blamed for

745
00:42:45,760 --> 00:42:48,120
the failure of the outcome.

746
00:42:49,560 --> 00:42:51,160
Doctor, this case disturbs you.

747
00:42:52,320 --> 00:42:53,320
Yes.

748
00:42:55,120 --> 00:42:57,080
It got so bad where you
end up having a...

749
00:42:57,120 --> 00:42:59,040
I wound up having like a breakdown,

750
00:42:59,080 --> 00:43:00,720
I'd shake like a baby and cry,

751
00:43:00,760 --> 00:43:02,320
and huddle in the corner.

752
00:43:02,360 --> 00:43:05,160
I didn't know why
I was behaving like that.

753
00:43:05,200 --> 00:43:06,600
Dr Doreen McGee,

754
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:10,200
the member of my senior staff
that worked with her,

755
00:43:10,240 --> 00:43:12,960
firmly came out and said,
"You gotta tell her."

756
00:43:14,040 --> 00:43:16,360
She did say to them,
in no uncertain terms,

757
00:43:16,400 --> 00:43:18,880
"The other route continuing this lie

758
00:43:18,920 --> 00:43:22,360
"looks very much like
it's leading to suicide.

759
00:43:22,400 --> 00:43:25,680
And that's when
Ron Reimer, the father,

760
00:43:25,720 --> 00:43:29,000
decided he had to do just
this remarkable thing.

761
00:43:30,720 --> 00:43:33,000
Tell Brenda the truth.

762
00:43:33,040 --> 00:43:36,800
I don't remember 90%
of what happened in the car.

763
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:40,360
Dad told me, and I just had
a glaze over my eyes,

764
00:43:40,400 --> 00:43:42,160
and I was staring
over the dashboard,

765
00:43:42,200 --> 00:43:44,480
and I had ice cream all over me
that was melted.

766
00:43:45,560 --> 00:43:48,320
You know, I said to David
at the time, you know,

767
00:43:48,360 --> 00:43:50,120
"What was your reaction?"

768
00:43:50,160 --> 00:43:52,400
And he surprised me by saying,
you know,

769
00:43:52,440 --> 00:43:54,920
"I was angry, I was upset,
"I was unbelievably...

770
00:43:54,960 --> 00:43:56,160
"..but I was relieved."

771
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,040
The main thing was relief.

772
00:43:59,080 --> 00:44:03,800
And I thought to myself,
"Well, I'm not crazy.

773
00:44:03,840 --> 00:44:05,160
"I'm not turning insane."

774
00:44:06,960 --> 00:44:08,760
I thought I was turning insane.

775
00:44:11,640 --> 00:44:15,080
I feel embarrassed that
I did not come clean.

776
00:44:17,120 --> 00:44:19,640
As a responsible member of the team,

777
00:44:19,680 --> 00:44:23,440
when it became evident
that it was not going well,

778
00:44:23,480 --> 00:44:26,440
and the literature was
reporting that it was,

779
00:44:26,480 --> 00:44:30,880
it was my responsibility
to report to the literature.

780
00:44:30,920 --> 00:44:34,520
I did not do that,
and I deeply regret it.

781
00:44:34,560 --> 00:44:36,200
That's the truth.

782
00:44:36,240 --> 00:44:37,800
I could say that, I suppose.

783
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:45,040
John was so anxious for
his theory to be true.

784
00:44:45,080 --> 00:44:48,760
Just got to a point where he just
wasn't willing to be questioned.

785
00:44:48,800 --> 00:44:51,920
John was not somebody
who was willing to be wrong,

786
00:44:51,960 --> 00:44:54,760
and it didn't matter if
the entire staff was looking

787
00:44:54,800 --> 00:44:57,320
at him and saying,
"You're wrong about this, John.

788
00:44:57,360 --> 00:44:59,200
"You need to think about
this again."

789
00:44:59,240 --> 00:45:01,920
He laughed at us. He dismissed us.

790
00:45:01,960 --> 00:45:04,520
He thought that we were stupid.

791
00:45:04,560 --> 00:45:06,840
John was a very difficult person.

792
00:45:06,880 --> 00:45:08,920
He was not a nice man.

793
00:45:08,960 --> 00:45:11,760
So, yeah, I knew that I wanted
to get the hell out of there.

794
00:45:13,200 --> 00:45:17,440
If I was asked, "When did Money
commit sort of the greatest act

795
00:45:17,480 --> 00:45:20,360
"of fraudulence around
this whole thing?"

796
00:45:20,400 --> 00:45:22,480
I would have to say it was 1975,

797
00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:25,240
when he published Sexual Signatures.

798
00:45:25,280 --> 00:45:28,120
Because by this time,
it was just undeniable that

799
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:30,520
this case was in total meltdown.

800
00:45:30,560 --> 00:45:32,480
I mean, it was a disaster.

801
00:45:32,520 --> 00:45:36,240
The lesson I learned from
such examples as the twins,

802
00:45:36,280 --> 00:45:39,840
that we should respect individuals
for their individuality,

803
00:45:39,880 --> 00:45:41,560
and we should not try
to push them...

804
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:45,400
To continue to sit on the truth

805
00:45:45,440 --> 00:45:48,720
meant that this just kind of
virally expanded

806
00:45:48,760 --> 00:45:50,080
across the globe.

807
00:45:50,120 --> 00:45:54,320
You know, countless children
would have been operated on,

808
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:57,400
intervened upon, assigned
and reassigned

809
00:45:57,440 --> 00:45:58,880
thanks to that book.

810
00:46:03,560 --> 00:46:07,040
JIM: Realising that, even a few
years before my birth,

811
00:46:07,080 --> 00:46:09,960
John Money, the orchestrator
of this experiment,

812
00:46:10,000 --> 00:46:11,320
this human experiment,

813
00:46:11,360 --> 00:46:13,880
knew that he had failed miserably,

814
00:46:13,920 --> 00:46:17,680
and he kept walking around talking
about how his experiment was

815
00:46:17,720 --> 00:46:20,000
a success, and how important he was,

816
00:46:20,040 --> 00:46:24,600
and how his ego and his reputation
were more important than telling

817
00:46:24,640 --> 00:46:29,400
the truth and saving children
like myself from mutilation,

818
00:46:29,440 --> 00:46:35,040
and shame and the,
you know, brutal secrecy.

819
00:46:44,000 --> 00:46:45,480
I could've been saved and spared.

820
00:46:45,520 --> 00:46:47,600
My family could've been
saved and spared.

821
00:46:51,800 --> 00:46:53,880
I could've been...
I could've been saved.

822
00:47:00,960 --> 00:47:02,320
When my mother told me that,

823
00:47:02,360 --> 00:47:05,000
"One day, you're going to have
a surgery down the line,"

824
00:47:05,040 --> 00:47:07,840
I didn't know what that meant
as a kid.

825
00:47:07,880 --> 00:47:09,600
But this was all planned out.

826
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:12,040
Once they removed
my testicles as a baby...

827
00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:16,000
..the dominoes just had
to start falling.

828
00:47:16,040 --> 00:47:18,800
There was no, like,
"Oh, should this domino fall?"

829
00:47:18,840 --> 00:47:20,320
They HAD to fall.

830
00:47:21,600 --> 00:47:24,840
She came home for Christmas,
and she said,

831
00:47:24,880 --> 00:47:28,120
"Oh, I'm going to be here
for a couple weeks."

832
00:47:28,160 --> 00:47:31,440
She said, "I have to have
some female surgery."

833
00:47:31,480 --> 00:47:34,280
And I was like, "OK."
I said, "Are you OK?"

834
00:47:34,320 --> 00:47:35,760
And she said, "Yeah, yeah."

835
00:47:35,800 --> 00:47:39,400
I could tell she was a little
uncomfortable talking about it.

836
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:41,320
I always felt like her safe space,

837
00:47:41,360 --> 00:47:43,560
and I didn't want
to cross that line.

838
00:47:43,600 --> 00:47:46,760
I figured, if she wanted to tell me,
she would tell me.

839
00:47:46,800 --> 00:47:50,760
And so, I said, "Tell Mum to
let me know that you're OK,

840
00:47:50,800 --> 00:47:53,160
"and if you need something,
let me know."

841
00:47:55,560 --> 00:47:57,360
I knew it was a secret.

842
00:47:57,400 --> 00:47:58,600
Lies we had to tell.

843
00:48:00,360 --> 00:48:03,840
But when you prescribe
secrecy and isolation,

844
00:48:03,880 --> 00:48:06,160
you're prescribing that
to an entire family.

845
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:14,480
It was in December of 1994.

846
00:48:17,680 --> 00:48:19,560
And my birthday is December 10th.

847
00:48:22,000 --> 00:48:24,920
We went down to Children's Hospital
in New Orleans.

848
00:48:24,960 --> 00:48:26,160
They brought us in.

849
00:48:28,720 --> 00:48:31,400
I was scared, and I was
putting on a brave face.

850
00:48:32,920 --> 00:48:35,240
I knew that's
what my parents wanted.

851
00:48:35,280 --> 00:48:37,720
Especially, I knew that's
what my mother wanted.

852
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:39,800
"This is a family secret.

853
00:48:39,840 --> 00:48:41,440
"Get us through this together."

854
00:48:44,000 --> 00:48:45,960
What we're going to do
is they'll cut out

855
00:48:46,000 --> 00:48:48,440
a piece of my actual colon,

856
00:48:48,480 --> 00:48:51,040
and then, we'll cut between my legs

857
00:48:51,080 --> 00:48:53,720
where a vagina should be,

858
00:48:53,760 --> 00:48:58,280
and they'll place that piece
of colon between my legs -

859
00:48:58,320 --> 00:49:01,600
a vaginal vault,
they would call it -

860
00:49:01,640 --> 00:49:03,840
and then, presto.

861
00:49:03,880 --> 00:49:07,240
There is a hole for
my husband to have sex with.

862
00:49:11,760 --> 00:49:16,600
Right, this idealised man, this,
you know, All-American quarterback

863
00:49:16,640 --> 00:49:18,840
who's going to have
somewhere to put his penis,

864
00:49:18,880 --> 00:49:21,400
that he expects there will be
a vessel for him to..

865
00:49:21,440 --> 00:49:24,000
..for you to receive him,
and give him what he wants.

866
00:49:26,680 --> 00:49:29,760
And this vessel we have made
in between your legs,

867
00:49:29,800 --> 00:49:31,600
we've hooked up to a bloodstream.

868
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:33,160
And it's a living organ.

869
00:49:35,240 --> 00:49:37,400
It won't die inside you.

870
00:49:38,920 --> 00:49:40,200
It's pretty elaborate.

871
00:49:43,440 --> 00:49:46,120
I remember waking up
in a lot of pain.

872
00:49:47,160 --> 00:49:48,920
You know, being hooked up
to all these tubes,

873
00:49:48,960 --> 00:49:50,640
and these tubes going
between my legs.

874
00:49:50,680 --> 00:49:52,400
And it hurt a lot.

875
00:49:53,680 --> 00:49:55,160
It hurt to walk.

876
00:49:55,200 --> 00:49:57,240
Just to walk to the bathroom,
it hurt.

877
00:49:57,280 --> 00:49:59,360
I had to walk so slowly.

878
00:49:59,400 --> 00:50:04,320
I remember thinking,
"God, I must be like an old person,"

879
00:50:04,360 --> 00:50:05,680
when I was 18.

880
00:50:05,720 --> 00:50:07,200
You know, I just turned 18 and...

881
00:50:09,120 --> 00:50:10,200
SHAKY SIGH

882
00:50:12,560 --> 00:50:14,520
My girlfriend at the time
came to visit,

883
00:50:14,560 --> 00:50:17,480
and...it was so good to see her.

884
00:50:19,360 --> 00:50:21,920
I didn't say to my mum and dad,
"This is my girlfriend.

885
00:50:21,960 --> 00:50:23,600
"We're in a relationship."

886
00:50:23,640 --> 00:50:25,160
I didn't say any of that.

887
00:50:26,400 --> 00:50:28,240
This is this coded language.

888
00:50:28,280 --> 00:50:29,400
They knew.

889
00:50:30,560 --> 00:50:32,400
I wasn't having
this surgery for her.

890
00:50:33,440 --> 00:50:36,160
She didn't want it.
She didn't care.

891
00:50:36,200 --> 00:50:37,320
I didn't want it.

892
00:50:38,720 --> 00:50:41,160
I was doing my duty.

893
00:50:47,720 --> 00:50:52,400
I remember Alice giving me a call,
like, a day or two after,

894
00:50:52,440 --> 00:50:54,240
saying that she was all right.

895
00:50:56,920 --> 00:51:00,160
And then, there wasn't
a whole lot other than that.

896
00:51:02,200 --> 00:51:04,960
I didn't know that
she was having surgery.

897
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,040
It was one of those things where,
"Oh, she's in town.

898
00:51:08,080 --> 00:51:12,000
"Let me go ride my bike
over there and, you know,

899
00:51:12,040 --> 00:51:13,640
"and, 'Hey, let's hang out.'"

900
00:51:14,920 --> 00:51:16,360
That's when I found out.

901
00:51:18,360 --> 00:51:21,080
Honestly, I wish
I would have known that,

902
00:51:21,120 --> 00:51:23,440
you know, cos that's...

903
00:51:23,480 --> 00:51:25,680
It's a lonely place. You know?

904
00:51:28,480 --> 00:51:30,400
She went back to school...

905
00:51:31,840 --> 00:51:34,760
..and I would hear from
her late at night.

906
00:51:34,800 --> 00:51:39,200
I could tell she just wasn't in
the best space mentally.

907
00:51:39,240 --> 00:51:40,560
She was unhappy.

908
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:45,200
She was struggling
to focus academically.

909
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:49,680
I could tell she was
not herself at all.

910
00:51:49,720 --> 00:51:50,720
At all.

911
00:51:52,360 --> 00:51:56,360
She was, you know, drinking
a lot more around that time,

912
00:51:56,400 --> 00:51:57,800
and smoking - good God.

913
00:51:57,840 --> 00:51:59,840
Erm...lost.

914
00:52:02,880 --> 00:52:05,200
It was scary...

915
00:52:05,240 --> 00:52:08,880
..that I didn't really understand
what this thing was on my body.

916
00:52:08,920 --> 00:52:10,360
I didn't really understand.

917
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:14,160
I didn't want to be there.
I didn't want to play.

918
00:52:17,880 --> 00:52:22,040
I don't remember her playing soccer
again after her surgery.

919
00:52:23,240 --> 00:52:24,560
That's...

920
00:52:24,600 --> 00:52:27,640
I never put that together,
but that's... Yeah.

921
00:52:29,200 --> 00:52:31,280
Well, that makes me sad.

922
00:52:33,760 --> 00:52:35,840
You know, lose something
you love so much.

923
00:52:38,960 --> 00:52:40,320
I was so depressed.

924
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:47,720
And that's when I walked into
that lecture for that class,

925
00:52:47,760 --> 00:52:49,480
and I found out the truth.

926
00:52:59,400 --> 00:53:03,120
Remembering how painful
the vaginoplasty was for me...

927
00:53:04,680 --> 00:53:07,400
..I never realised, like,
I was just on a course -

928
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:10,880
a course set back in 1976.

929
00:53:10,920 --> 00:53:14,000
I was being managed and
manipulated on the instruction

930
00:53:14,040 --> 00:53:16,080
of the doctors and attendants...

931
00:53:18,720 --> 00:53:20,040
..one of whom was Dr Carter.

932
00:53:22,440 --> 00:53:26,760
This man, Dr Richard Carter,
was the man who performed

933
00:53:26,800 --> 00:53:29,680
these feminising surgeries
on me as a baby.

934
00:53:32,480 --> 00:53:34,480
This is the place.

935
00:53:34,520 --> 00:53:38,280
It's 5238 Essen Lane,
where Carter's office was.

936
00:53:40,200 --> 00:53:42,640
You know, he must have been
in his late 30s, mid 30s

937
00:53:42,680 --> 00:53:44,400
when I came into the world,

938
00:53:44,440 --> 00:53:45,880
and I became his problem.

939
00:53:47,200 --> 00:53:48,800
You know, a man looking at a,

940
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:51,760
you know, a genetically-male baby
with a very small penis,

941
00:53:51,800 --> 00:53:53,440
and be like, "Gotta do
something about that.

942
00:53:53,480 --> 00:53:56,240
"There's no way we can let
this baby out into the world."

943
00:53:57,640 --> 00:53:59,400
Now I know - now I know -

944
00:53:59,440 --> 00:54:02,280
I was never going to leave
that hospital unmutilated.

945
00:54:02,320 --> 00:54:03,880
I had to be made lovable.

946
00:54:07,640 --> 00:54:10,680
I just want to talk to him...

947
00:54:10,720 --> 00:54:14,320
..and tell him I am
very unhappy with his work...

948
00:54:16,280 --> 00:54:18,520
and the choices that
he made on my behalf,

949
00:54:18,560 --> 00:54:19,880
and on my family's behalf.

950
00:54:24,520 --> 00:54:28,760
When I was 19 and I found out
the truth behind these surgeries,

951
00:54:28,800 --> 00:54:31,800
I was like, "These are my records.

952
00:54:31,840 --> 00:54:35,200
"Fuck you, Mum and Dad.
Fuck you, medical establishment.

953
00:54:37,320 --> 00:54:39,880
You know, "You don't get to hear
anything about me from now on,

954
00:54:39,920 --> 00:54:41,880
"and I need to go out
and take care of myself.

955
00:54:41,920 --> 00:54:44,400
"I need to go and fucking fend
for myself, because this is

956
00:54:44,440 --> 00:54:48,040
"the kind of care that I'm being
offered from all of you."

957
00:54:48,080 --> 00:54:51,280
Yeah, all it did was spike
my resentment and rage,

958
00:54:51,320 --> 00:54:53,240
and make me more determined
than ever.

959
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:02,440
I knew Bo was in San Francisco,

960
00:55:02,480 --> 00:55:05,240
and I knew I wanted to be
a part of this movement.

961
00:55:06,560 --> 00:55:08,400
And I got myself there.

962
00:55:08,440 --> 00:55:10,000
I started my new life.

963
00:55:10,040 --> 00:55:12,320


964
00:55:12,360 --> 00:55:15,280
MUSIC: Love Survive
by Michael Nau

965
00:55:15,320 --> 00:55:17,760


966
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:21,160
I started meeting queer women at the
book shop that I was working at.

967
00:55:21,200 --> 00:55:23,480


968
00:55:23,520 --> 00:55:26,440
Hanging out,
having a rollicking good time.

969
00:55:26,480 --> 00:55:29,880



970
00:55:29,920 --> 00:55:33,080
But I really didn't dive into
the San Francisco queer community

971
00:55:33,120 --> 00:55:35,920
until I started working
as a bike messenger.

972
00:55:35,960 --> 00:55:38,840


973
00:55:38,880 --> 00:55:41,920
It was technically called
Lickety Split All-Girl Courier.

974
00:55:41,960 --> 00:55:44,600
LAUGHTER


975
00:55:44,640 --> 00:55:47,120
I was so happy.

976
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:48,400


977
00:55:48,440 --> 00:55:50,240
I started making friends, going out,

978
00:55:50,280 --> 00:55:53,960
and really immersing myself in
the queer scene in San Francisco.

979
00:55:54,000 --> 00:55:55,000
It was...

980
00:55:55,040 --> 00:55:57,000


981
00:56:00,480 --> 00:56:04,240


982
00:56:04,280 --> 00:56:06,320
And when I wasn't doing that,

983
00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,960
I was tagging along with Bo,

984
00:56:10,000 --> 00:56:12,160
trying to go wherever she went.

985
00:56:12,200 --> 00:56:15,280

eternal drum...

986
00:56:15,320 --> 00:56:16,960
I was just a kid.

987
00:56:17,000 --> 00:56:18,800
I mean, really, just tagging along.

988
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:24,160
Kristi was eager to get
involved and help out.

989
00:56:24,200 --> 00:56:26,640
What we had to do was
convince medicine to change.

990
00:56:27,960 --> 00:56:30,640
I hoped that, if doctors listened
to this, they would change.

991
00:56:30,680 --> 00:56:33,800
I wanted them to stop doing
these things to people.

992
00:56:33,840 --> 00:56:36,360
Kristi helped
with mailing parties,

993
00:56:36,400 --> 00:56:38,240
events where we were learning skills

994
00:56:38,280 --> 00:56:41,640
to help build our nonprofit
organisation...

995
00:56:41,680 --> 00:56:43,640
..learning things
and making friends.

996
00:56:45,760 --> 00:56:47,480
I tried to learn from her,

997
00:56:47,520 --> 00:56:49,680
because there was so much
to learn from her.

998
00:56:49,720 --> 00:56:51,960
You are going to be the doctors
in the future who are going

999
00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:54,640
to change practice, and we hope
that you'll work with us.

1000
00:56:54,680 --> 00:56:58,600
And I met Tiger through the activist
community in San Francisco.

1001
00:56:58,640 --> 00:57:00,280
OK.

1002
00:57:00,320 --> 00:57:03,080
I'm Dr Howard Devore.
I'm a clinical psychologist.

1003
00:57:03,120 --> 00:57:04,560
I was born with ambiguous...

1004
00:57:04,600 --> 00:57:08,040
Tiger was kind to me,
welcomed me into the fold.

1005
00:57:08,080 --> 00:57:10,080
I was very taken by his deep voice.

1006
00:57:11,120 --> 00:57:14,080
And he was very bulky and big.

1007
00:57:14,120 --> 00:57:16,280
And he had a very sharp haircut.

1008
00:57:16,320 --> 00:57:18,480
Very smart haircut.

1009
00:57:18,520 --> 00:57:19,880
He was very confident.

1010
00:57:19,920 --> 00:57:22,200
Despite all the efforts
to make me as much a boy

1011
00:57:22,240 --> 00:57:25,240
as they possibly could,
with the support of both my parents

1012
00:57:25,280 --> 00:57:27,240
and the physicians involved
in my case,

1013
00:57:27,280 --> 00:57:29,320
I do not feel like a man.

1014
00:57:29,360 --> 00:57:30,960
Do not feel like a woman.

1015
00:57:31,000 --> 00:57:33,800
I, in fact, am an intersex person.

1016
00:57:33,840 --> 00:57:37,960
He spoke like somebody who knew
like he had something to say.

1017
00:57:38,000 --> 00:57:39,720
Please ask difficult questions.

1018
00:57:39,760 --> 00:57:41,720
Do not think that you're
going to embarrass us.

1019
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:44,400
We really want to educate you
as directly and plainly

1020
00:57:44,440 --> 00:57:45,920
as we possibly can today.

1021
00:57:45,960 --> 00:57:48,960
When I first met Kristi, she was
very much at the beginning of

1022
00:57:49,000 --> 00:57:50,440
her intersex awareness journey,

1023
00:57:50,480 --> 00:57:55,000
and she was angry, and she was
powerful in her presentation,

1024
00:57:55,040 --> 00:57:57,560
and she wanted to do something
with all that anger,

1025
00:57:57,600 --> 00:57:59,160
and she was willing to work.

1026
00:57:59,200 --> 00:58:00,320
I'm very young,

1027
00:58:00,360 --> 00:58:05,120
and I felt it was very important
to become a volunteer,

1028
00:58:05,160 --> 00:58:06,480
to become an activist.

1029
00:58:06,520 --> 00:58:08,560
I would tell my story to anybody
who would listen.

1030
00:58:08,600 --> 00:58:12,120
Many, many doctors say that
microsurgery is the way to go.

1031
00:58:12,160 --> 00:58:14,960
Say that, when we remove
the clitoris and remove the testes,

1032
00:58:15,000 --> 00:58:17,480
and when we remove this and that,
when we build this and that,

1033
00:58:17,520 --> 00:58:19,680
it's all better. It's all better.

1034
00:58:19,720 --> 00:58:23,880
I think it was really empowering
for Kristi to be able to do that.

1035
00:58:23,920 --> 00:58:26,960
I remember being at events,
and Kristi's there,

1036
00:58:27,000 --> 00:58:29,200
proudly telling people about
what we're doing

1037
00:58:29,240 --> 00:58:30,360
and what happened to her.

1038
00:58:30,400 --> 00:58:34,840
I'm a 22-year-old female,
as the world sees me.

1039
00:58:34,880 --> 00:58:38,040
But I'm an intersex person
with no sexual function whatsoever.

1040
00:58:38,080 --> 00:58:40,800
There was something really
charismatic about Kristi,

1041
00:58:40,840 --> 00:58:42,200
and it was great to see that.

1042
00:58:42,240 --> 00:58:44,920
A person that's supposed to be
at their sexual peak, you know,

1043
00:58:44,960 --> 00:58:47,440
you're supposed to be young,
you're supposed to be alive,

1044
00:58:47,480 --> 00:58:49,440
and I'm not, I'm not.

1045
00:58:49,480 --> 00:58:52,120
It was all taken from me,
and not even with my consent.

1046
00:58:52,160 --> 00:58:56,920
Here is an awesome picture of me

1047
00:58:56,960 --> 00:59:02,440
and Kristi, and Tiger speaking
to UC Berkeley medical students.

1048
00:59:02,480 --> 00:59:04,160
Doctors didn't want to hear from us,

1049
00:59:04,200 --> 00:59:06,960
but medical students were
really eager to hear from us.

1050
00:59:09,120 --> 00:59:11,920
I felt confused about basic biology.

1051
00:59:11,960 --> 00:59:13,800
XX, XY, XX, XY.

1052
00:59:13,840 --> 00:59:15,960
"Wait a minute, wait a minute,
wait a minute.

1053
00:59:16,000 --> 00:59:17,800
"If I'm a female,
then I should be XX.

1054
00:59:17,840 --> 00:59:19,040
"Why does it say XY?"

1055
00:59:20,160 --> 00:59:23,360
She participated in
a documentary short film,

1056
00:59:23,400 --> 00:59:25,200
and she involved her family.

1057
00:59:25,240 --> 00:59:29,320
Every soccer game, every...

1058
00:59:30,600 --> 00:59:33,320
..activity, we were always concerned

1059
00:59:33,360 --> 00:59:37,160
that somebody would find out
and approach her.

1060
00:59:37,200 --> 00:59:42,000
And she told me later that a number
of people called her names,

1061
00:59:42,040 --> 00:59:44,160
and I cried over that.

1062
00:59:44,200 --> 00:59:46,440
And I said, "Honey, I'm sorry.

1063
00:59:46,480 --> 00:59:48,560
"There's nothing I can do about it."

1064
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:52,480
I was really inspired
by how brave and how honest,

1065
00:59:52,520 --> 00:59:55,480
and how direct she could be.

1066
00:59:55,520 --> 00:59:57,400
The first couple of months
that I was a messenger,

1067
00:59:57,440 --> 01:00:00,680
I was in so much pain that I could
hardly sit down on the seat,

1068
01:00:00,720 --> 01:00:04,520
because the vaginoplasty is
so fucking disgusting

1069
01:00:04,560 --> 01:00:07,200
and so...barbaric.

1070
01:00:07,240 --> 01:00:08,640
It's starting to come out.

1071
01:00:08,680 --> 01:00:11,360
Like, the inner part of
the intestine is starting

1072
01:00:11,400 --> 01:00:14,280
to come out and, like, stick out.

1073
01:00:14,320 --> 01:00:16,760
And I was told that I would
probably have to wear a maxi pad

1074
01:00:16,800 --> 01:00:18,640
for the rest of my life.

1075
01:00:18,680 --> 01:00:20,440
I don't know if you've
ever tried to, like,

1076
01:00:20,480 --> 01:00:22,640
ride a bike with a maxi pad -
it does not work.

1077
01:00:24,080 --> 01:00:25,480
Er... Hmm.

1078
01:00:27,040 --> 01:00:30,560
I want to make it clear that
the surgery that I did not choose

1079
01:00:30,600 --> 01:00:32,560
was a nightmare for me.

1080
01:00:32,600 --> 01:00:35,000
But this surgery for people
who choose it

1081
01:00:35,040 --> 01:00:37,000
saves people's lives.

1082
01:00:37,040 --> 01:00:40,440
So, yeah, you know,
I wasn't a trans person,

1083
01:00:40,480 --> 01:00:43,080
but from the moment I started
speaking on intersex stuff,

1084
01:00:43,120 --> 01:00:44,960
I connected with trans people.

1085
01:00:45,000 --> 01:00:46,800
And I was right in there.

1086
01:00:46,840 --> 01:00:48,640
I was right where I wanted to be.

1087
01:00:52,480 --> 01:00:55,040
Might be gay or lesbian,
or trans, but...

1088
01:00:57,400 --> 01:00:58,920
..I was a part of a community.

1089
01:01:03,520 --> 01:01:05,400
And it was an intense education.

1090
01:01:06,480 --> 01:01:09,040
It was a real activist education

1091
01:01:09,080 --> 01:01:12,480
that I was getting from Bo,
I was getting from Tiger.

1092
01:01:12,520 --> 01:01:14,320
My name is Kristi.

1093
01:01:14,360 --> 01:01:16,640
I'm a resident of
Northern California.

1094
01:01:16,680 --> 01:01:21,000
I gave interviews in radio
and magazines, on television,

1095
01:01:21,040 --> 01:01:24,720
worked at a legal organisation
that advocated for the legal rights

1096
01:01:24,760 --> 01:01:26,840
of intersex kids and
their families.

1097
01:01:26,880 --> 01:01:29,240
Lying by omission
is what it's called,

1098
01:01:29,280 --> 01:01:32,120
and the heart of the matter
is self-determination.

1099
01:01:32,160 --> 01:01:33,720
I give my personal testimony at

1100
01:01:33,760 --> 01:01:36,040
the San Francisco Human Rights
Commission on Intersex.

1101
01:01:36,080 --> 01:01:38,120
The operative word is moratorium.

1102
01:01:38,160 --> 01:01:40,400
It should be placed at
the very least...

1103
01:01:42,360 --> 01:01:45,840
..on surgeries in San Francisco.
It's a great place to start.

1104
01:01:45,880 --> 01:01:47,600
And you guys can do that.
Thank you.

1105
01:01:47,640 --> 01:01:49,240
APPLAUSE

1106
01:01:49,280 --> 01:01:50,680
Yeah, it was good for her.

1107
01:01:51,880 --> 01:01:54,960
We were trying to extend
our reach as far as possible

1108
01:01:55,000 --> 01:01:57,360
to illustrate the truth
that these things,

1109
01:01:57,400 --> 01:01:59,880
these surgeries happen
all over the world.

1110
01:01:59,920 --> 01:02:03,880
And I was just like, "What is
keeping people from absorbing...?"

1111
01:02:03,920 --> 01:02:06,600
It's not just my story,
it's so many people's stories.

1112
01:02:14,080 --> 01:02:18,200
David's story came out and,
you know, made a splash

1113
01:02:18,240 --> 01:02:20,640
in publishing circles in Manhattan,

1114
01:02:20,680 --> 01:02:25,240
but had no effect on the
medical community,

1115
01:02:25,280 --> 01:02:28,440
the protocols for intersex kids,

1116
01:02:28,480 --> 01:02:31,080
the surgeries and so on continued.

1117
01:02:31,120 --> 01:02:35,560
It takes a lot to change
medical opinion and protocols.

1118
01:02:35,600 --> 01:02:36,720
It just does.

1119
01:02:36,760 --> 01:02:39,840
And one article in Rolling Stone
ain't going to do it.

1120
01:02:41,880 --> 01:02:45,160
A baby is born
perfect in every way.

1121
01:02:45,200 --> 01:02:47,080
At six, she wore dresses.

1122
01:02:47,120 --> 01:02:49,560
At 14, she discovered the truth.

1123
01:02:51,080 --> 01:02:54,120
So, we had this whirlwind
tour of New York

1124
01:02:54,160 --> 01:02:57,200
and other places
publicising the story.

1125
01:02:57,240 --> 01:03:00,160
For years, this case was called
a medical triumph.

1126
01:03:00,200 --> 01:03:02,960
But in truth,
the case was a failure.

1127
01:03:03,000 --> 01:03:05,800
It was amazing.
The story was getting around.

1128
01:03:05,840 --> 01:03:06,920
This is great, this is great.

1129
01:03:06,960 --> 01:03:08,440
And then, David decided to be on TV,

1130
01:03:08,480 --> 01:03:10,160
and I thought,
"This is even better."

1131
01:03:10,200 --> 01:03:12,440
And it's fucking Oprah. "Great!"

1132
01:03:12,480 --> 01:03:15,600
Devastating the lives of just
about everybody involved.

1133
01:03:15,640 --> 01:03:17,640
You know,
we walked out on the street.

1134
01:03:17,680 --> 01:03:20,160
Someone that had just been
watching it on TV

1135
01:03:20,200 --> 01:03:22,040
recognises David and says,

1136
01:03:22,080 --> 01:03:24,440
"You know, I just saw you on TV,
you are incredible!

1137
01:03:24,480 --> 01:03:25,840
"You walk in the light, man!

1138
01:03:25,880 --> 01:03:28,200
I'll never forget that,
"You walk in the light,"

1139
01:03:28,240 --> 01:03:29,600
and she shook David's hand.

1140
01:03:31,320 --> 01:03:35,200
I think it symbolised the way
the world accepted him now,

1141
01:03:35,240 --> 01:03:37,320
and took him and took his story.

1142
01:03:37,360 --> 01:03:39,160
It was...
Let's just put it this way,

1143
01:03:39,200 --> 01:03:41,200
it was a net positive all
the way around.

1144
01:03:41,240 --> 01:03:42,400
It was awesome.

1145
01:03:49,000 --> 01:03:51,520
TIGER: So, after the case
fell apart,

1146
01:03:51,560 --> 01:03:55,040
I don't think it was possible
for John to say,

1147
01:03:55,080 --> 01:03:58,520
"Oh. My mistake. Oh, well."

1148
01:03:58,560 --> 01:04:01,920
I think that what happened was
that John believed that his success

1149
01:04:01,960 --> 01:04:03,920
was ruined by an outside influence.

1150
01:04:05,280 --> 01:04:07,760
And he stood firm on that position.

1151
01:04:10,080 --> 01:04:12,520
It didn't work because that's life.

1152
01:04:12,560 --> 01:04:14,160
Because you're human,

1153
01:04:14,200 --> 01:04:17,520
and eventually, you wind up
being who you are.

1154
01:04:19,360 --> 01:04:21,440
People started coming
after Dr Money,

1155
01:04:21,480 --> 01:04:24,920
and I think it was
very uncomfortable for him.

1156
01:04:24,960 --> 01:04:27,200
Yeah, eventually they had
a psychiatrist who was able

1157
01:04:27,240 --> 01:04:28,680
to get John booted off campus,

1158
01:04:28,720 --> 01:04:31,040
and I just think he stopped
answering the phone

1159
01:04:31,080 --> 01:04:32,280
and answering his door.

1160
01:04:32,320 --> 01:04:34,240
He really kind of
barricaded himself.

1161
01:04:35,920 --> 01:04:37,920
These days, John Money works here

1162
01:04:37,960 --> 01:04:40,880
in the basement of this off-campus
building in Baltimore.

1163
01:04:42,680 --> 01:04:45,200
We wanted to talk to Money
about his theories.

1164
01:04:45,240 --> 01:04:48,120
Hello? Yeah? We're were the
Canadian television programme

1165
01:04:48,160 --> 01:04:50,960
called the Fifth Estate.
We'd like to see Dr Money.

1166
01:04:51,000 --> 01:04:52,640
OK, hold on a second.

1167
01:04:54,360 --> 01:04:57,480
We had contacted John Money
by phone, and also written to him

1168
01:04:57,520 --> 01:05:00,160
in hopes of getting an interview.
But...

1169
01:05:00,200 --> 01:05:03,680
Says you don't have
an appointment, I'm sorry.

1170
01:05:03,720 --> 01:05:07,520
Yeah, he got relegated to
a basement, motherfucker.

1171
01:05:07,560 --> 01:05:09,920
CHUCKLES
That was my favourite part.

1172
01:05:13,600 --> 01:05:17,720
I was already thinking about
getting rid of this vaginoplasty.

1173
01:05:18,840 --> 01:05:23,040
I wanted to decolonise my body
as much as I was able,

1174
01:05:23,080 --> 01:05:25,560
and was within my power to do.

1175
01:05:26,880 --> 01:05:28,480
I had a double mastectomy, and then,

1176
01:05:28,520 --> 01:05:31,200
I had the colon
vaginoplasty removed.

1177
01:05:32,440 --> 01:05:35,200
This man, Dr Richard Carter,

1178
01:05:35,240 --> 01:05:39,560
you know, realising that he was not
some lone wolf acting irresponsibly

1179
01:05:39,600 --> 01:05:42,360
toward one family
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

1180
01:05:42,400 --> 01:05:44,600
But I was still not...

1181
01:05:44,640 --> 01:05:47,160
I wasn't happy about any of it.

1182
01:05:47,200 --> 01:05:50,160
The people that mattered
and the people with authority.

1183
01:05:50,200 --> 01:05:52,480
It was shared blame
across the board.

1184
01:05:54,400 --> 01:05:59,360
Kristi was the only infant
that I ever was associated with

1185
01:05:59,400 --> 01:06:02,440
in my 40 years of practice that
had ambiguous genitalia.

1186
01:06:05,280 --> 01:06:07,760
These children...

1187
01:06:07,800 --> 01:06:09,840
..problems that they
would have faced

1188
01:06:09,880 --> 01:06:12,560
if nothing at all had been done...

1189
01:06:13,800 --> 01:06:16,200
..in my opinion,
would have been astronomical.

1190
01:06:18,800 --> 01:06:21,560
Even though I knew she was -
this infant was going to have

1191
01:06:21,600 --> 01:06:25,080
problems down the road, I was hoping
that she'd have less problems

1192
01:06:25,120 --> 01:06:28,680
if she looked a little bit more
like a girl than not one at all.

1193
01:06:32,880 --> 01:06:36,840
When I was 19 and I found out
the truth behind these surgeries,

1194
01:06:36,880 --> 01:06:39,200
I stopped taking oestrogen
immediately.

1195
01:06:39,240 --> 01:06:42,360
There were a few years that I just
was not on any hormones at all,

1196
01:06:42,400 --> 01:06:45,200
and that was when my bones
began to disintegrate.

1197
01:06:45,240 --> 01:06:48,840
My doctor told me the bone scan
results showed that I was...

1198
01:06:48,880 --> 01:06:50,520
..that I currently had osteopenia,

1199
01:06:50,560 --> 01:06:52,840
which is a precursor
to osteoporosis,

1200
01:06:52,880 --> 01:06:56,320
and I was on the royal path
to having my bones disintegrate

1201
01:06:56,360 --> 01:06:58,640
by the time I was 25 or 30.

1202
01:06:58,680 --> 01:07:01,760
She said,
"You must go back on oestrogen,

1203
01:07:01,800 --> 01:07:03,880
"or you must start taking
testosterone."

1204
01:07:07,440 --> 01:07:11,000
Yeah, I didn't... I wasn't
so sure about testosterone.

1205
01:07:11,040 --> 01:07:13,000
I wasn't psyched about
getting a beard,

1206
01:07:13,040 --> 01:07:16,880
getting a receding hairline,
or dying earlier.

1207
01:07:16,920 --> 01:07:20,640
You know, all that stuff that,
you know, gets laid on men.

1208
01:07:20,680 --> 01:07:23,040
And, you know,
I-I wasn't into that at all -

1209
01:07:23,080 --> 01:07:25,960
but I was pretty into having
a functional skeleton.

1210
01:07:30,560 --> 01:07:32,280
My voice started getting deeper.

1211
01:07:32,320 --> 01:07:35,160
At some point, you know, I told
my co-workers, my managers

1212
01:07:35,200 --> 01:07:37,160
that they needed
to start calling me he.

1213
01:07:39,400 --> 01:07:40,960
I was so lucky and so fortunate.

1214
01:07:47,720 --> 01:07:49,800
Nobody told me there would be
so much hair,

1215
01:07:49,840 --> 01:07:51,280
but my body just soaked it up!

1216
01:07:54,440 --> 01:07:57,120
The girlfriend at the time
was just like, "Wow.

1217
01:07:57,160 --> 01:08:00,480
"This was clearly what your body's
been dying for, for so long."

1218
01:08:02,960 --> 01:08:05,240
She was very happy about
all these changes,

1219
01:08:05,280 --> 01:08:08,880
and she was very happy
to see me grow happier -

1220
01:08:08,920 --> 01:08:11,400
happy in my body and content,

1221
01:08:11,440 --> 01:08:13,400
and comfortable in my own skin.

1222
01:08:17,720 --> 01:08:21,080
When Kristi was in California,
we kind of lost touch,

1223
01:08:21,120 --> 01:08:25,400
and I never saw her again
until he came home

1224
01:08:25,440 --> 01:08:26,880
when his dad died.

1225
01:08:28,000 --> 01:08:30,600
And then, it hit me.

1226
01:08:30,640 --> 01:08:33,680
"I'm going to see Kristi as Jim
for the first time."

1227
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:36,240
This is a person I've known
as Kristi my whole life,

1228
01:08:36,280 --> 01:08:38,160
and now it's going to be
a different person.

1229
01:08:38,200 --> 01:08:40,240
And so, I was very, very anxious.

1230
01:08:40,280 --> 01:08:42,480
I remember, night before,
I could not sleep,

1231
01:08:42,520 --> 01:08:43,760
I stayed up all night.

1232
01:08:46,000 --> 01:08:48,760
When I got to their house,
I walked in,

1233
01:08:48,800 --> 01:08:50,480
and he was standing there.

1234
01:08:50,520 --> 01:08:54,120
And it was like...
it was it was so...

1235
01:08:54,160 --> 01:08:57,280
It was remarkable, almost -
this calm came over me.

1236
01:09:07,920 --> 01:09:11,600
We gave each other a big hug,
and I was just like,

1237
01:09:11,640 --> 01:09:13,400
"Oh, my God," you know,

1238
01:09:13,440 --> 01:09:16,680
there was this calm about him
that I had never known.

1239
01:09:16,720 --> 01:09:19,400
It was like he had
finally found this thing

1240
01:09:19,440 --> 01:09:22,360
he had been searching for
all these years.

1241
01:09:22,400 --> 01:09:24,360
It was very emotional.

1242
01:09:31,360 --> 01:09:33,400
God, look at those trees. Jesus.

1243
01:09:33,440 --> 01:09:34,880
I have been gone that long.

1244
01:09:40,320 --> 01:09:41,320
Hey!

1245
01:09:43,480 --> 01:09:46,200
How's it going? It's going OK.

1246
01:09:46,240 --> 01:09:47,560
LAUGHING: Oh, my God.

1247
01:09:48,680 --> 01:09:50,240
Oh, my boy!

1248
01:09:50,280 --> 01:09:51,760
MUFFLED LAUGHTER

1249
01:09:53,520 --> 01:09:57,360
SNIFFLING
MUFFLED SOBS

1250
01:09:57,400 --> 01:10:01,360
It's been so long. I know.
Ah, how are you?

1251
01:10:02,720 --> 01:10:04,200
Good.

1252
01:10:04,240 --> 01:10:07,400
It's good to see you. Yeah.

1253
01:10:07,440 --> 01:10:10,040
Er, and of all places.
I know, right?

1254
01:10:10,080 --> 01:10:11,320
We spent most of our life...

1255
01:10:11,360 --> 01:10:14,080
Right, in that mud pit. Yeah.
In that mud pit.

1256
01:10:14,120 --> 01:10:16,520
That was your favourite mud pit
right there, that one.

1257
01:10:16,560 --> 01:10:20,320
That one, yeah. Oh, my God.
Yeah. Oh, let me look at you.

1258
01:10:20,360 --> 01:10:22,960
You look wonderful. Aww! God.

1259
01:10:23,000 --> 01:10:25,640
Thank you. Well, you saved me.

1260
01:10:25,680 --> 01:10:28,720
Well... You know, like, you really
put me in a position to succeed.

1261
01:10:28,760 --> 01:10:29,800
You really did.

1262
01:10:29,840 --> 01:10:32,480
You put me in a position to succeed,
and it gave me a lot.

1263
01:10:32,520 --> 01:10:35,240
You had something special,
and I knew you did.

1264
01:10:35,280 --> 01:10:37,640
Yeah. Aww, well...
Thank you so much.

1265
01:10:54,840 --> 01:10:56,520
My mother was giving me hell about

1266
01:10:56,560 --> 01:10:58,960
not coming home to visit
as often, and...

1267
01:11:03,560 --> 01:11:06,160
..I was like, "You're asking me
to come back to a place,

1268
01:11:06,200 --> 01:11:08,280
"even to visit,
that people are fleeing."

1269
01:11:12,200 --> 01:11:14,920
I remember when
I was living in Montana,

1270
01:11:14,960 --> 01:11:16,880
and my favourite aunt died.

1271
01:11:16,920 --> 01:11:19,400
I came home. We get to the funeral.

1272
01:11:22,320 --> 01:11:24,600
I hadn't seen my uncle in 30 years.

1273
01:11:24,640 --> 01:11:26,040
I walked up to him.

1274
01:11:28,600 --> 01:11:31,560
He didn't say hello.

1275
01:11:31,600 --> 01:11:34,560
And he said - he quoted
some Bible passage at me about,

1276
01:11:34,600 --> 01:11:37,160
"As you were born, so shall you die

1277
01:11:37,200 --> 01:11:39,560
"and be seen in the eyes of God."

1278
01:11:41,440 --> 01:11:43,120
Told me I was an abomination.

1279
01:11:44,720 --> 01:11:46,880
And then, I walked over
and hugged his wife.

1280
01:11:46,920 --> 01:11:47,920
CHUCKLES

1281
01:11:50,520 --> 01:11:52,440
And I sat down next to my mum,
and I said,

1282
01:11:52,480 --> 01:11:54,120
"Your brother just threatened me."

1283
01:11:54,160 --> 01:11:57,120
And she was like,
"Oh, no, I'm sure he didn't."

1284
01:11:57,160 --> 01:11:59,000
You know...

1285
01:11:59,040 --> 01:12:01,600
..the 10,000th reminder
that my mother and I live in

1286
01:12:01,640 --> 01:12:03,200
completely different worlds.

1287
01:12:04,240 --> 01:12:06,800
You know, it's not her fault.

1288
01:12:06,840 --> 01:12:08,120
It's where she lives.

1289
01:12:11,040 --> 01:12:16,720
I was so lucky to be able to reach
out to Bo, in San Francisco,

1290
01:12:16,760 --> 01:12:19,400
and wanting desperately
for the world to open up,

1291
01:12:19,440 --> 01:12:21,120
I knew that there was more.

1292
01:12:21,160 --> 01:12:24,200
Like, I was like, right,
I intended to survive,

1293
01:12:25,360 --> 01:12:27,120
And to do that, I had to leave.

1294
01:12:38,120 --> 01:12:40,360
Eventually, the fanfare died down.

1295
01:12:40,400 --> 01:12:43,120
OPRAH: Thank you for sharing
your story.

1296
01:12:43,160 --> 01:12:47,360
I moved on to other stories
that I had to do.

1297
01:12:47,400 --> 01:12:49,320
He returned to Winnipeg.

1298
01:12:54,040 --> 01:12:58,200
Four years went by and,
in that four years,

1299
01:12:58,240 --> 01:13:01,520
Brian, the brother -
the ignored brother -

1300
01:13:01,560 --> 01:13:03,120
Brian had this troubled sister

1301
01:13:03,160 --> 01:13:05,280
that all the attention went to.

1302
01:13:05,320 --> 01:13:08,240
He was just expected, because
he wasn't an injured person,

1303
01:13:08,280 --> 01:13:11,520
or sex-reassigned,
"You should be just fine."

1304
01:13:11,560 --> 01:13:13,720
So, he had to kind of be just fine.

1305
01:13:13,760 --> 01:13:15,120
He wasn't just fine.

1306
01:13:17,080 --> 01:13:20,440
Brian was definitely
seriously depressed.

1307
01:13:22,240 --> 01:13:28,680
In 2003, he died of a...
possibly accidental overdose

1308
01:13:28,720 --> 01:13:30,360
of alcohol and drugs.

1309
01:13:32,080 --> 01:13:36,720
When I heard that Brian died,
I thought, "Oh, my God.

1310
01:13:36,760 --> 01:13:39,120
"Better keep our eye on David,"

1311
01:13:39,160 --> 01:13:44,040
because I knew how important
Brian was to David.

1312
01:13:47,360 --> 01:13:50,040
10.30pm at night,
the police came to the door.

1313
01:13:52,560 --> 01:13:57,080
And I think I was screaming,
"No, no, no."

1314
01:13:59,280 --> 01:14:02,000
In May of 2004...

1315
01:14:04,360 --> 01:14:07,520
..I was actually just
rising from bed,

1316
01:14:07,560 --> 01:14:09,160
so it was kind of early morning.

1317
01:14:10,880 --> 01:14:14,920
The phone rang,
and it was David's father.

1318
01:14:14,960 --> 01:14:17,920
and he said, "Er, John,
I've got some very bad news."

1319
01:14:19,480 --> 01:14:22,200
And I knew what he was going
to say at that point.

1320
01:14:24,440 --> 01:14:25,960
They asked us to sit down,

1321
01:14:26,000 --> 01:14:29,080
and they said they had
some bad news.

1322
01:14:29,120 --> 01:14:30,720
That David was dead.

1323
01:14:32,800 --> 01:14:37,360
TEARFULLY: And...I just cried.

1324
01:14:41,280 --> 01:14:44,040
Yeah, where was I? I was living
in Berkeley when he died.

1325
01:14:45,840 --> 01:14:48,880
My girlfriend forwarded
an article to me,

1326
01:14:48,920 --> 01:14:52,160
that David Reimer died by suicide.

1327
01:14:55,000 --> 01:14:57,600
It was so sad.
I remember being so sad.

1328
01:14:59,520 --> 01:15:02,080
A man named David Reimer
has taken his own life.

1329
01:15:02,120 --> 01:15:05,200
A sad end to a life story
already filled with pain.

1330
01:15:05,240 --> 01:15:08,920
I was horribly shocked
and entirely unsurprised.

1331
01:15:08,960 --> 01:15:11,840
I mean, you knew him for
seven years, was he happy at all?

1332
01:15:11,880 --> 01:15:13,360
I mean, what was his life like?

1333
01:15:13,400 --> 01:15:17,080
David was perfectly capable
of happiness for periods of time,

1334
01:15:17,120 --> 01:15:20,320
but his dark childhood
always was there.

1335
01:15:20,360 --> 01:15:22,960
He says, "This will never leave me."

1336
01:15:24,440 --> 01:15:26,320
DAVID: I thought he was perverted.

1337
01:15:26,360 --> 01:15:27,680
I thought he was a sick man.

1338
01:15:28,880 --> 01:15:33,920
These very strange,
therapeutic actions that Money

1339
01:15:33,960 --> 01:15:38,480
had made David and Brian perform
when they were children -

1340
01:15:38,520 --> 01:15:41,440
sexual rehearsal play,
that's what he called it.

1341
01:15:41,480 --> 01:15:44,080
The experiments that
he made us do...

1342
01:15:46,280 --> 01:15:48,920
..going into sexual positions

1343
01:15:48,960 --> 01:15:50,640
with no clothes on,

1344
01:15:50,680 --> 01:15:52,520
taking pictures of us.

1345
01:15:52,560 --> 01:15:54,680
How degrading for seven-year-olds.

1346
01:15:55,840 --> 01:15:59,920
The man believed that this was
a critical and crucial way

1347
01:15:59,960 --> 01:16:01,560
to reinforce gender.

1348
01:16:01,600 --> 01:16:03,880
I mean, he didn't exactly tell
the parents about it,

1349
01:16:03,920 --> 01:16:07,720
but he wrote about it endlessly
in his books and papers.

1350
01:16:07,760 --> 01:16:10,000
It became a hobby horse
by his final years.

1351
01:16:11,320 --> 01:16:13,240
When my folks weren't around,

1352
01:16:13,280 --> 01:16:16,160
well, then, we did what
we were told, and if we didn't,

1353
01:16:16,200 --> 01:16:19,080
then we got yelled at
to the point where we thought

1354
01:16:19,120 --> 01:16:22,120
we were going to get backhanded.

1355
01:16:22,160 --> 01:16:24,920
Well, eventually we took our
clothes off and sat on the couch,

1356
01:16:24,960 --> 01:16:26,400
Had photos of us taking...

1357
01:16:27,720 --> 01:16:30,440
He made them inspect
each other's genitals.

1358
01:16:30,480 --> 01:16:35,040
He showed pornographic images
of sexual penetration,

1359
01:16:35,080 --> 01:16:38,320
and he simply went
further and further.

1360
01:16:38,360 --> 01:16:42,120
The type of questions that were
asked were sexual in nature,

1361
01:16:42,160 --> 01:16:45,880
to the point where
it would make me blush.

1362
01:16:45,920 --> 01:16:47,360
It was very explicit.

1363
01:16:48,680 --> 01:16:53,800
You know, those episodes were
so damaging to them.

1364
01:16:53,840 --> 01:16:56,720
They were both off-put
and frightened of it,

1365
01:16:56,760 --> 01:16:59,320
and fearful of him.

1366
01:16:59,360 --> 01:17:03,400
It was a house of horrors, period.

1367
01:17:04,480 --> 01:17:06,600
You know, seeing a kid cower,

1368
01:17:06,640 --> 01:17:10,240
and be repulsed and frightened
of sexual imagery,

1369
01:17:10,280 --> 01:17:12,000
why would you...?

1370
01:17:12,040 --> 01:17:14,320
You know, that's almost
a sadistic thing.

1371
01:17:14,360 --> 01:17:15,360
I don't know.

1372
01:17:21,160 --> 01:17:23,520
TIGER: This experiment really
ruined the family.

1373
01:17:23,560 --> 01:17:24,720
It was terrible.

1374
01:17:28,360 --> 01:17:30,880
One of the things that used
to really get to me about

1375
01:17:30,920 --> 01:17:33,400
the Johns Hopkins record was that,

1376
01:17:33,440 --> 01:17:37,960
as we were following patients from
birth into hopefully adulthood,

1377
01:17:38,000 --> 01:17:40,520
one of the things that you would
see come up on the charts

1378
01:17:40,560 --> 01:17:41,800
were "lost to follow up."

1379
01:17:41,840 --> 01:17:43,920
Quote-unquote,
"Lost to follow up."

1380
01:17:43,960 --> 01:17:46,360
And what we came to realise
over time -

1381
01:17:46,400 --> 01:17:50,520
not the people at Hopkins, but the
intersex awareness community -

1382
01:17:50,560 --> 01:17:52,880
"lost to follow up" means suicide

1383
01:17:52,920 --> 01:17:55,120
at least as often as
"I won't come to see you at

1384
01:17:55,160 --> 01:17:56,560
"your institution any more".

1385
01:17:56,600 --> 01:17:58,920
And the people at Hopkins
would never admit it,

1386
01:17:58,960 --> 01:18:01,320
because they just said,
"Oh, we stopped hearing from them.

1387
01:18:01,360 --> 01:18:02,680
"They just disappeared."

1388
01:18:05,920 --> 01:18:09,160
I had found that community
that saved me,

1389
01:18:09,200 --> 01:18:12,560
and David had to go
back to Winnipeg alone.

1390
01:18:12,600 --> 01:18:14,680
If I'd have had to go back to
Baton Rouge and stay there

1391
01:18:14,720 --> 01:18:17,720
the rest of my life,
it would have broken me.

1392
01:18:17,760 --> 01:18:19,720
I have no expectation
that I would have...

1393
01:18:21,920 --> 01:18:22,960
..be alive.

1394
01:18:30,600 --> 01:18:35,400
SKYPE RINGING TONE

1395
01:18:36,960 --> 01:18:38,320
TIGER: OK, can you hear me?

1396
01:18:43,440 --> 01:18:45,880
Hi, Tiger. How are you?

1397
01:18:45,920 --> 01:18:47,720
I'm good. How are you?

1398
01:18:47,760 --> 01:18:49,200
Good.

1399
01:18:49,240 --> 01:18:50,400
Hello.

1400
01:18:52,400 --> 01:18:54,080
What's up, Tiger?

1401
01:18:54,120 --> 01:18:55,240
Looking good.

1402
01:18:56,920 --> 01:19:01,520
Man, that is some sharp
facial hair you got there.

1403
01:19:01,560 --> 01:19:03,160
Hey, Bo. Hey.

1404
01:19:04,240 --> 01:19:06,680
So, more than 30 years
we've been working on this,

1405
01:19:06,720 --> 01:19:09,760
and they're still doing it.
Yes. Very frustrating.

1406
01:19:09,800 --> 01:19:12,040
Yeah. I was naive.

1407
01:19:15,240 --> 01:19:17,800
I thought I was - when I was
out in San Francisco,

1408
01:19:17,840 --> 01:19:20,720
and I was 21, and I was thinking,
"Oh man," you know,

1409
01:19:20,760 --> 01:19:23,080
in my head - I mean, I'm sure
I didn't voice this -

1410
01:19:23,120 --> 01:19:25,000
but I was like, "I'm going to be
part of this generation

1411
01:19:25,040 --> 01:19:27,360
"that'll really flip this shit."
I really did.

1412
01:19:28,720 --> 01:19:30,720
The kind of activism that I did,

1413
01:19:30,760 --> 01:19:32,720
I don't do any more.

1414
01:19:32,760 --> 01:19:36,880
I had to step away around 2015.

1415
01:19:36,920 --> 01:19:40,320
I just couldn't keep up anymore.
I couldn't bear.

1416
01:19:40,360 --> 01:19:42,920
And the good news is, is that
there's a whole new generation

1417
01:19:42,960 --> 01:19:45,600
of young people out there
who are loud and pissed off,

1418
01:19:45,640 --> 01:19:47,840
and determined to get
their message across,

1419
01:19:47,880 --> 01:19:49,440
and to get policy changed.

1420
01:19:49,480 --> 01:19:51,120
INDISTINCT SHOUTING

1421
01:19:51,160 --> 01:19:54,200
There's so much...
so much more to do.

1422
01:19:54,240 --> 01:19:58,080
But the wheels of history bend
toward justice, however slowly.

1423
01:19:58,120 --> 01:20:01,040
At the end of the day,
it's all about bodily autonomy.

1424
01:20:01,080 --> 01:20:05,000
It's all about intersex people
having affirming,

1425
01:20:05,040 --> 01:20:07,200
supportive health care

1426
01:20:07,240 --> 01:20:11,000
that they get to choose what to do
with their own bodies.

1427
01:20:11,040 --> 01:20:14,560
I wasn't as successful as I thought
or hoped I would be.

1428
01:20:14,600 --> 01:20:16,720
I didn't get surgeries to stop.

1429
01:20:16,760 --> 01:20:20,200
But I had a revelation in
my early 30s that

1430
01:20:20,240 --> 01:20:22,360
the thing that hurt the most

1431
01:20:22,400 --> 01:20:24,200
wasn't that I was different,

1432
01:20:24,240 --> 01:20:26,440
and it wasn't that
I was sexually mutilated -

1433
01:20:26,480 --> 01:20:28,440
it was that I was made
to feel ashamed.

1434
01:20:28,480 --> 01:20:32,040
And that there's no earthly reason
why I should be ashamed.

1435
01:20:32,080 --> 01:20:33,520
And I was going to change that.

1436
01:20:33,560 --> 01:20:35,600
I was going to decide,
by force of will,

1437
01:20:35,640 --> 01:20:38,080
that I'm not going to be ashamed.

1438
01:20:38,120 --> 01:20:41,920
Part of not being ashamed is being
able to talk about your story.

1439
01:20:43,120 --> 01:20:45,320
So, I got to make meaning out of it

1440
01:20:45,360 --> 01:20:48,280
and turn it into a mission
in helping people,

1441
01:20:48,320 --> 01:20:50,640
and have a feeling of
accomplishment about it.

1442
01:20:52,880 --> 01:20:56,640
The intersex awareness movement
that has sprung up as a result of

1443
01:20:56,680 --> 01:20:59,080
all these efforts that
so many of us made,

1444
01:20:59,120 --> 01:21:02,320
has saved innumerable lives.

1445
01:21:02,360 --> 01:21:05,240
But do these surgeries still happen?
Yes.

1446
01:21:05,280 --> 01:21:07,480
All those bad things still happen.

1447
01:21:07,520 --> 01:21:11,400
And I want to do all I can
to try to get a few more people

1448
01:21:11,440 --> 01:21:14,000
to know better, than to just
follow that old model.

1449
01:21:25,240 --> 01:21:27,760
YVONNE ON RECORDING:
Hello, my Jim.

1450
01:21:27,800 --> 01:21:29,400
I'm thinking about you.

1451
01:21:29,440 --> 01:21:31,760
I know you're going to do
something difficult.

1452
01:21:32,960 --> 01:21:35,800
And I just wanted you to...

1453
01:21:35,840 --> 01:21:38,360
My mum's greatest fear was
that she was afraid

1454
01:21:38,400 --> 01:21:39,720
no-one would ever love me.

1455
01:21:41,120 --> 01:21:45,360
That I wouldn't be able to,
you know, build a life with someone.

1456
01:21:45,400 --> 01:21:47,040
And I have.

1457
01:21:49,360 --> 01:21:50,840
And with someone wonderful.

1458
01:21:52,280 --> 01:21:53,840
Someone truly wonderful.

1459
01:21:55,280 --> 01:21:57,320
Hey, Jim.

1460
01:21:57,360 --> 01:21:59,280
Where are we? In Pennsylvania.

1461
01:22:00,760 --> 01:22:02,160
OK. What is this place?

1462
01:22:02,200 --> 01:22:04,800
It's in Riemer.
YVONNE LAUGHS

1463
01:22:04,840 --> 01:22:06,960
It's the Youghiogheny.

1464
01:22:07,000 --> 01:22:08,320
Youghiogheny.

1465
01:22:09,560 --> 01:22:14,320
I'm thinking about holding
little Jim in my heart.

1466
01:22:14,360 --> 01:22:16,800
Show him some love

1467
01:22:16,840 --> 01:22:19,120
while you're doing this
difficult thing.

1468
01:22:20,200 --> 01:22:21,960
I love you very much.

1469
01:22:22,000 --> 01:22:24,280
And I'll talk to you later.

1470
01:22:24,320 --> 01:22:25,520
Bye, sweetheart.

1471
01:22:28,360 --> 01:22:30,160
I'm about to sit down with the man

1472
01:22:30,200 --> 01:22:32,720
who pushed the first domino over

1473
01:22:32,760 --> 01:22:36,480
and, you know, started a chain
of events that continued

1474
01:22:36,520 --> 01:22:39,520
through my childhood and
my adolescence,

1475
01:22:39,560 --> 01:22:41,240
and my adulthood, and...

1476
01:22:43,400 --> 01:22:47,520
I just made some notes here,
just some questions. And...

1477
01:22:48,800 --> 01:22:51,120
..it's important to say my piece,

1478
01:22:51,160 --> 01:22:54,960
and I have this opportunity to tell
Carter what my life has been like

1479
01:22:55,000 --> 01:22:59,720
in a way that I feel like I can go
to my grave with him knowing.

1480
01:23:08,640 --> 01:23:12,920
If you had the opportunity
to sit down with the person

1481
01:23:12,960 --> 01:23:14,680
who was in charge of your care,.

1482
01:23:14,720 --> 01:23:16,840
not only what would you say,

1483
01:23:16,880 --> 01:23:18,320
but how would you...

1484
01:23:20,440 --> 01:23:22,920
..like, posture yourself?
Like, what outcome?

1485
01:23:22,960 --> 01:23:26,520
Anyway, that's like three
questions in one. But...

1486
01:23:26,560 --> 01:23:27,920
From the standpoint of just...

1487
01:23:29,640 --> 01:23:32,080
..the raw experience of walking
into this kind of a meeting,

1488
01:23:32,120 --> 01:23:33,600
I think it's incredibly important.

1489
01:23:33,640 --> 01:23:36,800
We know that most of these doctors,
they'll tell you straight out

1490
01:23:36,840 --> 01:23:38,520
they've never had any complaints.

1491
01:23:38,560 --> 01:23:42,440
You just can't expect to get to get
anybody to sit across from you

1492
01:23:42,480 --> 01:23:44,520
and say, "Yeah, we've
looked back at this,

1493
01:23:44,560 --> 01:23:46,240
"we've all decided we were
doing the wrong thing,

1494
01:23:46,280 --> 01:23:48,920
"and maybe we jumped the gun" -
and nobody's going to say that.

1495
01:23:48,960 --> 01:23:50,400
No physician is going to say that,

1496
01:23:50,440 --> 01:23:52,800
especially if they're
still practising.

1497
01:23:52,840 --> 01:23:55,880
A lot of intersex people fantasise
about meeting the surgeon

1498
01:23:55,920 --> 01:23:57,840
that mutilated them as children.

1499
01:23:57,880 --> 01:24:00,080
But it almost never happens.

1500
01:24:00,120 --> 01:24:04,520
That space is never - hardly,
almost never provided for them.

1501
01:24:04,560 --> 01:24:07,920
It's like Heidi Wolcott,
in Hermaphrodites Speak!

1502
01:24:07,960 --> 01:24:10,960
You know, saying, "I would love to
take a rusty, dull knife and..."

1503
01:24:11,000 --> 01:24:12,800
..A dull rusty knife...
"..chop up my..."

1504
01:24:12,840 --> 01:24:15,640
..and start hacking off other
doctors' genitals and say,

1505
01:24:15,680 --> 01:24:19,440
"Here, you son of a bitch!
Now, how do you think it feels?"

1506
01:24:19,480 --> 01:24:21,800
Like, the fantasy of
a hostile confrontation.

1507
01:24:21,840 --> 01:24:24,320
Like, I just know that wouldn't
give me anything anymore.

1508
01:24:24,360 --> 01:24:25,360
I mean...

1509
01:24:27,840 --> 01:24:30,000
I just want to have
a conversation with him.

1510
01:24:31,720 --> 01:24:33,240
I just want him to hear me.

1511
01:24:34,360 --> 01:24:38,120
Even though he might just possibly
clam up and be reserved.

1512
01:24:39,960 --> 01:24:44,480
It can be, you know, briefly
humiliating and disappointing,

1513
01:24:44,520 --> 01:24:45,680
but whatever.

1514
01:24:47,480 --> 01:24:49,200
Hi. How are you doing?

1515
01:24:49,240 --> 01:24:50,440
Just lay it down.

1516
01:24:51,880 --> 01:24:54,600
Jim. Richard. Richard, yeah.
It's nice to see you.

1517
01:24:54,640 --> 01:24:56,600
So good to see you. Yeah.

1518
01:24:56,640 --> 01:24:58,560
I mean, you just look great.

1519
01:24:58,600 --> 01:25:00,360
Thank you. Thank you so much.

1520
01:25:00,400 --> 01:25:02,240
Yeah.I shaved today.
RICHARD LAUGHS

1521
01:25:02,280 --> 01:25:04,640
I did not anticipate getting
all this body hair.

1522
01:25:04,680 --> 01:25:06,720
Turns out I look pretty OK
with the beard.

1523
01:25:06,760 --> 01:25:07,960
Oh, you look great with one.

1524
01:25:08,000 --> 01:25:11,480
But tell me, like,
you were a young surgeon

1525
01:25:11,520 --> 01:25:15,320
when my family and
your paths crossed.

1526
01:25:15,360 --> 01:25:20,720
I was...in 1976,
I had just come to Baton Rouge.

1527
01:25:20,760 --> 01:25:24,000
When - what's your birth date?
December 10th, 1970.

1528
01:25:24,040 --> 01:25:25,840
So, I'd been in practice
five months...

1529
01:25:25,880 --> 01:25:30,960
Five months. ..when I was called
that day that you were born

1530
01:25:31,000 --> 01:25:34,240
to come evaluate
and give an opinion.

1531
01:25:34,280 --> 01:25:35,280
Wow.

1532
01:25:35,320 --> 01:25:38,160
And I don't know
what is being done today,

1533
01:25:38,200 --> 01:25:40,840
as far as, if you were born today,

1534
01:25:40,880 --> 01:25:44,200
I don't know how the situation
would be handled.

1535
01:25:44,240 --> 01:25:47,160
And how would you have liked
to have been handled back then?

1536
01:25:47,200 --> 01:25:50,120
I think I would have liked
to have been let to go home.

1537
01:25:50,160 --> 01:25:52,280
Yeah. You know? Nothing, right?

1538
01:25:52,320 --> 01:25:55,560
I wish that my parents would have
just taken me home as I was,

1539
01:25:55,600 --> 01:25:57,800
as their healthy baby,
and been braver.

1540
01:25:57,840 --> 01:25:58,880
You know what I mean?

1541
01:25:58,920 --> 01:26:03,720
But I realise that is asking a whole
lot in the late '70s. Absolutely.

1542
01:26:03,760 --> 01:26:05,800
That would be asking an awful lot.

1543
01:26:05,840 --> 01:26:08,400
What were my parents' concerns?
I mean, again, I know...

1544
01:26:08,440 --> 01:26:10,240
They were in la-la land.

1545
01:26:10,280 --> 01:26:12,640
They had no clue what was going on.

1546
01:26:12,680 --> 01:26:16,800
I mean, "My son has...
my child has what?"

1547
01:26:16,840 --> 01:26:19,200
Mm-hm. "Well, what do we do?"

1548
01:26:20,360 --> 01:26:22,840
Yeah, so they were terrified
like any other parent would be?

1549
01:26:22,880 --> 01:26:24,360
Sure, absolutely, they were.

1550
01:26:24,400 --> 01:26:26,640
Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine
what they went through.

1551
01:26:26,680 --> 01:26:29,520
I really can't
What my parents were experiencing

1552
01:26:29,560 --> 01:26:33,920
was terror through
a social emergency, right?

1553
01:26:33,960 --> 01:26:36,160
There was nothing genetic
that I was going to have

1554
01:26:36,200 --> 01:26:37,680
to be dealing with going forward,

1555
01:26:37,720 --> 01:26:40,560
except for this problematic
presentation.

1556
01:26:40,600 --> 01:26:45,800
What proof did you have that
pursuing that path

1557
01:26:45,840 --> 01:26:48,640
of constructing a vulva,

1558
01:26:48,680 --> 01:26:50,840
you know, just cutting off the penis

1559
01:26:50,880 --> 01:26:53,600
and castration of
whatever was there,

1560
01:26:53,640 --> 01:26:55,680
where was the evidence
that would work?

1561
01:26:58,160 --> 01:27:01,440
Er, I really can't answer that.

1562
01:27:01,480 --> 01:27:03,760
Er, I...

1563
01:27:05,280 --> 01:27:07,040
I don't know what the evidence was,

1564
01:27:07,080 --> 01:27:12,520
and there probably was no evidence,
in retrospect, that that would work.

1565
01:27:12,560 --> 01:27:15,120
Have you ever heard of John Money?

1566
01:27:15,160 --> 01:27:18,680
I had never heard of him,

1567
01:27:18,720 --> 01:27:22,560
but once I got involved in
what we were doing,

1568
01:27:22,600 --> 01:27:25,960
I went back to my textbooks,
and he is in the textbook.

1569
01:27:26,000 --> 01:27:28,440
Yeah. And, like,
these surgeries were happening

1570
01:27:28,480 --> 01:27:30,160
before John Money came along.

1571
01:27:30,200 --> 01:27:33,280
But John Money gave it, like,
a psychological framework

1572
01:27:33,320 --> 01:27:35,080
that would sort of would just...

1573
01:27:35,120 --> 01:27:36,800
He was okaying what we were doing.

1574
01:27:36,840 --> 01:27:39,280
He was okaying what you were doing.
Yeah.

1575
01:27:39,320 --> 01:27:42,040
I mean, it's one of those things,
though, that, right,

1576
01:27:42,080 --> 01:27:45,000
if you're performing surgery,
you know...you know,

1577
01:27:45,040 --> 01:27:47,280
invasive surgery on a healthy baby,

1578
01:27:47,320 --> 01:27:49,640
like, if you're going to go
out of your way to...

1579
01:27:51,880 --> 01:27:55,000
..really harm a healthy child,
and cut into healthy skin...

1580
01:27:55,040 --> 01:27:57,080
Well, when you say "harm"...

1581
01:27:58,640 --> 01:28:02,840
.."harm a healthy child,"
I understand what you're saying.

1582
01:28:02,880 --> 01:28:05,800
But at the time, we...

1583
01:28:05,840 --> 01:28:10,840
..o-our thought process was,
we're not harming someone,

1584
01:28:10,880 --> 01:28:12,440
we're helping someone.

1585
01:28:12,480 --> 01:28:16,080
Maybe the question also is,
who are you doing it for? Right?

1586
01:28:16,120 --> 01:28:18,920
The child's not asking for it.
Well, that's a good point.

1587
01:28:18,960 --> 01:28:22,360
It just seems like the surgeries
were prescribed for the parents.

1588
01:28:22,400 --> 01:28:24,840
Definitely not me.

1589
01:28:24,880 --> 01:28:27,240
Well, I-I would disagree
a bit with that.

1590
01:28:27,280 --> 01:28:29,440
The surgery was for you. Mm.

1591
01:28:29,480 --> 01:28:33,280
What we thought was
the best thing for you. Mm-hm.

1592
01:28:33,320 --> 01:28:34,920
Times have changed.

1593
01:28:36,760 --> 01:28:39,800
Back in 1976, that's what was done.

1594
01:28:40,840 --> 01:28:43,440
That's what we had been
taught to do.

1595
01:28:43,480 --> 01:28:44,480
That's what we did.

1596
01:28:44,520 --> 01:28:48,600
And unfortunately, that was...
the wrong thing to do.

1597
01:28:50,760 --> 01:28:51,960
Thank you.

1598
01:28:54,400 --> 01:28:56,920
I can't tell you, it's just kind of
revolutionary for you

1599
01:28:56,960 --> 01:28:58,160
to say that it was wrong.

1600
01:28:58,200 --> 01:29:01,840
And you understand, in retrospect,
it was wrong. Mm-hm.

1601
01:29:03,080 --> 01:29:05,080
Yeah. At the time,
we thought it was right.

1602
01:29:05,120 --> 01:29:08,200
Obviously, we wouldn't have done it.
Right.

1603
01:29:08,240 --> 01:29:13,160
But...from what I have
learned since then,

1604
01:29:13,200 --> 01:29:14,920
in talking to you...
Mm-hm.

1605
01:29:16,760 --> 01:29:18,720
..is that we did the wrong thing.

1606
01:29:23,280 --> 01:29:25,240
Yeah. Yeah.

1607
01:29:26,560 --> 01:29:29,960
I mean, I would ask, does that
constitute an apology?

1608
01:29:33,640 --> 01:29:35,240
Well, sure. Yeah?

1609
01:29:42,120 --> 01:29:44,480
PHONE LINE RINGS

1610
01:29:47,360 --> 01:29:48,960
Hello?

1611
01:29:49,000 --> 01:29:51,120
Hey.

1612
01:29:51,160 --> 01:29:53,320
It's over.

1613
01:29:53,360 --> 01:29:54,360
Yeah?

1614
01:29:54,400 --> 01:29:56,160
It was so surreal the whole time.

1615
01:29:58,560 --> 01:30:00,680
Oh, Jim.

1616
01:30:00,720 --> 01:30:02,080
Erm... Yeah.

1617
01:30:07,320 --> 01:30:11,160
I was really just focused
on trying to get him to hear

1618
01:30:11,200 --> 01:30:13,920
that you pushed over a domino.

1619
01:30:13,960 --> 01:30:18,400
And...I've been dealing with
the fallout ever since.

1620
01:30:20,920 --> 01:30:23,200
I don't know,
I could see regret in his eyes.

1621
01:30:23,240 --> 01:30:25,240
You know, he wished... Yeah.

1622
01:30:26,720 --> 01:30:28,400
Er...

1623
01:30:28,440 --> 01:30:30,880
I feel like I am supposed
to be here doing this.

1624
01:30:33,040 --> 01:30:35,120
And it's not in any sort of
self-important bullshit.

1625
01:30:35,160 --> 01:30:38,240
I'm just saying, you know,
I feel like that really helps

1626
01:30:38,280 --> 01:30:41,360
just to open up the dam,
just get it out, you know?

1627
01:30:41,400 --> 01:30:43,440
Just get it out. Erm...

1628
01:30:46,160 --> 01:30:47,800
My father died in 2010.

1629
01:30:49,840 --> 01:30:52,120
And my mother is still
in Louisiana.

1630
01:30:55,280 --> 01:30:58,640
My mum is somebody
that leads with her heart.

1631
01:30:58,680 --> 01:31:03,240
And...I still have work
to do with her.

1632
01:31:05,760 --> 01:31:09,480
And she has apologised
on more than one occasion

1633
01:31:09,520 --> 01:31:11,640
for not defending me as a baby,

1634
01:31:11,680 --> 01:31:13,640
for not being stronger,

1635
01:31:13,680 --> 01:31:15,240
for not standing in the way.

1636
01:31:16,760 --> 01:31:22,080
She doesn't forgive herself
for what happened to me as a baby,

1637
01:31:22,120 --> 01:31:24,240
and as a child,
and as an adolescent.

1638
01:31:27,640 --> 01:31:31,920
But sometimes,
forgiveness doesn't come...

1639
01:31:34,200 --> 01:31:35,640
..easily.

1640
01:31:41,520 --> 01:31:43,240
Yeah, there's no finish line here.

1641
01:31:43,280 --> 01:31:45,560
I'll be dealing with
the fallout from this bullshit

1642
01:31:45,600 --> 01:31:46,720
for the rest of my life.

1643
01:31:48,320 --> 01:31:50,800
I will.

1644
01:31:50,840 --> 01:31:53,680
TEARFULLY: But Goddamn it, that is
not a reason not to do this film.

1645
01:31:53,720 --> 01:31:55,800
That is a reason TO do it.

1646
01:31:55,840 --> 01:31:57,280
You know what I'm saying?

1647
01:32:05,000 --> 01:32:06,360
Oh, man.

1648
01:32:08,960 --> 01:32:11,480
Right. I'm just keeping in
my mind that hopefully,

1649
01:32:11,520 --> 01:32:13,760
somebody will see
something like this.

1650
01:32:13,800 --> 01:32:16,400
If I have to be - if my story
has to be a cautionary tale,

1651
01:32:16,440 --> 01:32:18,320
let me use it in such a way

1652
01:32:18,360 --> 01:32:23,120
that other people can avoid
these same fates, you know?

1653
01:32:24,520 --> 01:32:27,080
These surgeries are going to stop,
you know?

1654
01:32:27,120 --> 01:32:29,680
And if they stop within the next
five, ten, 15 years -

1655
01:32:29,720 --> 01:32:31,920
and they will,
they will stop in my lifetime -

1656
01:32:31,960 --> 01:32:33,200
they'll stop in my lifetime,

1657
01:32:33,240 --> 01:32:35,360
and I'll get to talk to little
hermaphrodites running around.

1658
01:32:35,400 --> 01:32:36,920
I'll get to hold them in my arms.

1659
01:32:36,960 --> 01:32:38,880
I'll get to tell them,
you know...

1660
01:32:57,800 --> 01:32:59,760
I'll get to tell their parents...

1661
01:33:05,480 --> 01:33:07,920
..TEARFULLY: how wonderful
their children are.

1662
01:33:56,760 --> 01:34:00,320
Subtitles by Red Bee Media