Blue. Or pink.
There are other colors. But not for newborns, according to generations of medical, cultural and political rigidity ignoring the estimated 1.7% of the global population born with intersex characteristics.
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The intersex among us — the “I” in LGBTQIA, i.e., lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex and asexual — represent, in effect, a shade of purple, both blue and pink. These are the newborns with atypical chromosomes or sex characteristics. Often these newborn children undergo dangerous “corrective” surgery because they their internal or external bodies do not conform to the traditional binary statistical classification.
“Every Body,” director Julie Cohen’s artful documentary in theaters June 30, looks at the intersex community through the lives of three spokespeople and activists. Life, as lived very differently by Cohen’s primary subjects, has meant a life with only the most fleeting or wrongheaded media depictions of what it means to be intersex. As River Gallo, born without testes, says in the film: It’s the sheer “zero-ness of it” that stings.
Gallo, a Los Angeles-based actor and budding filmmaker, grew up on a diet of prescribed testosterone and unprescribed shame. Now using they/them pronouns, Gallo underwent puberty as a boy, equipped with prosthetic testicle implants he did not want. All Gallo knew was that their body was “a problem” in need of fixing.
Cohen’s film also showcases the story of Austin, Texas, political consultant Alicia Roth Weigel, raised as a high-achieving all-American girl. Weigel was born with a vagina and XY chromosomes, and testes instead of ovaries. Doctors removed the testes, declaring her unambiguously female for the paperwork. Weigel became politicized and then radicalized as an adult, seeing and hearing story after intersex story, no two alike.
The third subject in “Every Body,” Sean Saifa Wall, has a luminous grin and a way with words, just as Weigel and Gallo do. In separate interviews as well as group discussions, the trio acknowledges their welter of confusion, intensified by everything the medical establishment (along with American pop culture’s lazy, sinister or salaciously clueless depictions of sexual “freaks”) told them about themselves.
Born without a uterus, Wall received the “female” label and that was that. Eventually this intersex man of color was subjected to a medically unnecessary gonadectomy at the age of 13. More recently, on ABC’s “Nightline,” he went public with his anger, confronting the doctor who performed the surgery.
The documentary can be accused of speeding through, or across, some of the most difficult, tangled issues it raises. It’s a brisk 92 minutes, certainly. “Every Body” is also humane and alert to the present moment, a time of successfully repressive political strategies that, inevitably and by design, become as personal and restrictive as legally possible and then some.
The three people we meet here have worked every side of every street, by necessity: They’re artists of self-invention, activists of serious intent and just plain good company on screen. At one point, after an on-camera reunion with their naive but loving mother, Gallo notes that their difficulties have been outwitted by their love — even though, Gallo adds, smiling, “I don’t think she’ll ever get my pronouns straight.”
“Every Body” — 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: R (for some language and some graphic nude images)
Running time: 1:32
How to watch: Premieres in theaters June 30
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune