Julie Cohen’s latest documentary, “Every Body,” premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival, starts with clips of gender reveal parties. As a male-sung rendition of Ronnie Spector’s “Be My Baby” plays, we see happy couples celebrating their upcoming pregnancies, as pink and blue smoke/confetti/etc swirls in the air. But juxtaposed with this happy scene is the knowledge that, as the doc lays out, 1.7% of people have intersex traits, ie they are born with a combination of male and female biology.
These numbers are skewed, according to Cohen, because people are too afraid to disclose whether they belong to the intersex community, and as the rise in anti-trans legislation starts to take hold, it leaves intersex people even more fearful of advocating for themselves.