Review: ‘Every Body,’ a radical text on the fight for rights and moving beyond pink and blue

In 2023, more than 560 anti-trans bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country. Some have failed, many have succeeded, and more than 350 are currently active, as elected officials debate the relationship between gender identity and biology, while trans individuals and allies continue to fight for their rights to access medical care and exist in public space.

In this cultural and political context, Julie Cohen’s documentary, “Every Body” — which focuses on the “I” in LGBTQIA (intersex) — becomes a radical text, a crucial component in our evolving understanding of gender, and an important representation of the intersex experience.

The existence of intersex people is walking, talking, living, breathing proof that biological sex has never been so binary. In fact, there are some 35 to 45 chromosomal and physical variations that intersex people can present that complicate the XX/XY chromosome delineation, proving that our concept of two genders with corresponding physical features is limiting as to the lived experience of nearly 2% of the population.

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Socially, we code sex and gender as pink/blue, girl/boy, as Cohen illustrates in an opening montage of “gender reveal” stunts that escalates to outlandish extremes. Against this landscape she introduces the subjects of “Every Body,” three intersex rights activists: Alicia, Saifa and River, who were all born intersex. As babies and young children, they all had doctors and their parents make decisions about their bodies and gender presentation, undergoing surgeries and treatments to make their bodies fit a more “normal” boy or girl appearance.

Much of Cohen’s film is dedicated to scientific and medical details, framed through the lives of her three subjects, and within a historical context, particularly the work of psychologist and “sex researcher” John Money and his most famous patient, David Reimer. Money’s theories — founded on one failed experiment — made their way into medical textbooks, and much of the treatment for intersex children has resulted in forced surgery and secrecy.

The intersex movement, which started in the mid-1990s, seeks to shed this shame and demands the end of forced surgeries on babies and children without their consent. Cohen follows Alicia, a Texas resident, as she publicly comes out as intersex in order to testify against an anti-trans bathroom bill in that state. A blue-eyed blond, Alicia is blunt and forthright, smartly weaponizing her traditionally feminine appearance in these testimonies and public debates, announcing that she’s a woman who was “born with balls” in order to point out the hypocrisy of bills that deny medical care to trans youth but force it on intersex children. She debates right wing agitator Steven Crowder as he demands “change my mind about gender.” When he whines that “society can’t keep up,” she exits the conversation with the mic drop line: “Sorry, I didn’t bring you enough tissues.”

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All three subjects have come into their own as activists, asserting that because society told them who to be their whole lives, it took time to figure out who they are. Saifa reads through his childhood medical records with anger and frustration, but reaches a point of peace with his body to put it vulnerably on display for the movement. River, a performer and filmmaker, carves out a niche for themselves as an artist in Hollywood by staying true to who they are, despite the normative gender binaries in the industry.

Cohen, who co-directed “RBG,” “Julia” and “My Name is Pauli Murray” with Betsy West, has perfected the art and science of packing information and compelling personal stories into 90 minutes. She does lean too heavily on acoustic pop covers on the soundtrack, but it’s a part of the lightness she brings to the film, which is heavy with medical trauma and intimate stories that have been previously regarded as shameful. The intersex movement is about living fully without fear, shame or trauma, to live life on one’s own terms, and the brightness and vigor that Cohen applies to the tone follows the energy of the activists themselves. At the end, Cohen asks this trio to “frolic” in a moment of much-needed, much-deserved and fully embodied joy that represents a little-seen aspect of intersex life and captures the spirit of what the leaders of this movement are fighting for in the next generations.

Katie Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.