Gender Trouble

In this lyrical and moving documentary, four intersex women tell their stories with astonishing bravery and candour. Set against beautiful yet unsettling backgrounds of organically transforming family photographs, orchids and topiary gardens, Melissa, Mary, Barbara and Sara speak openly about hermaphrodism and the secrecy surrounding their conditions and lives.

More than one in every 2000 people are born with some sort of intersex condition but you would never know it. Most intersex people have lived in secrecy and silence – the casualties of a medical profession that believed it best to perform cosmetic genital surgery on infants in an attempt to eradicate difference and to withhold the truth from their patients.

Is society really so unable to accept difference? Perhaps the acceptance of intersex people into society is what we should be aiming for rather than attempting to fix them through surgery and conceal them through secrecy, shame and taboo.

"I actually find hermaphrodite to be a rather poetic word. I would like it to be reclaimed because it does have a hint of freakishness to it and I don't think we need to think of these conditions as being freakish." Sara