Document in connection with Intersex children

In the center My secret It is Jim Ambrose, who grew up as Kristi. Looking in the room as he begins to tell his story, he says, to be clear, he is not transgender. He is intersex and was in the dark about this fact for up to 19 years and discovered the truth: that he was born with male and genital chromosomes, but suffered surgery as a baby and was raised as a girl.

Grace Hughes-HallettDirecting her first feature film, she created a lucid, absorbent film, which uses Jim’s first person’s first person to reveal a much bigger story about treating Intersx children. The documentary lands as much time in a timely manner now, with the idea of ​​gender identity in the right -hand attack.

Hughes-Hellett is a producer of Three identical foreigners (2018) about separate triplets at birth as part of a social experiment, which discovered its connection only as adults. There are echoes of that movie in My secret, Both in its sharp, simple style and in the theme of how such experiments can have devastating effects.

As the subjects in Three identical foreignersJim has always felt that there is something in terms of his identity. He was in college in 1995, when, in a manual, he read about John Money, a psychologist and a respected researcher, extremely influential at Johns Hopkins. It was seen in the best known case study of Money, about treating Gemini boys. A twin was the victim of an affected circumcision, and the money told his parents to grow up as a girl. That child, David Reimer, grew, was disturbed, like Brenda until the facts learned and committed suicide as an adult in 2004.

Hughes-Hallett combines these two wires easily, forbidding Jim’s experience with interviews and archive images about money. Jim is an excellent choice to lead viewers through the film, someone who now seems comfortable in their own skin. His leadership is calm, direct and serious. After reading Money’s case, he obtained the medical documents and learned that he was born with a penis under what is considered normal in size and that his parents were advised to allow the operation and never tell him about it. He frequently refers to the operation as to mutilation and sees the treatment as a double injury, the operation composed by the deception of his parents.

In the archive films, his parents explain that they follow the best medical advice they had and recognize their anger towards them. In an interview for this movie, Jim remembers his thoughts at that time: “You cut my genitals. What do you think will happen? “There was a need for double mastectomy and removal of a built vagina, surgery that his parents approved when he was a teenager, so that he could feel like himself.

The treatment for which his parents agreed was directly from the playground for money. He insisted that gender is a socialization problem and that David’s growth that Brenda would mean that it was accepted as Brenda. Keeping the truth from children was part of its prescribed treatment, which was followed in thousands of cases around the world, largely because it has falsely written articles claiming that Brenda was a perfectly happy child. The film includes brief archive images of adult David, angry that the lies of money about him were so widely accepted. “I was terrified, disgusted and angry when I heard about it. People thought my case was a success story? There was nothing to do with truth, ”he says.

The documentary includes a few speech heads, all relevant and edited without problems. Among Tiger Devore, an activist and psychologist who is intersex and was once internal to Money, and John Colapinto, a journalist who interviewed David and exhibited Money Frains in a 1997 Rolling stone story.

Music is a minor wrong step, which is thrown throughout, with a tinkly piano at first and suspense notes when Colapinto is looking for some old files. It is a more serous defect that the film is around Jim’s desire to face Dr. Richard Carter, who performed the operation when he was a child. At the end of the film they meet in a cafe in a scene too obviously orchestrated for the cameras. Carter apologizes and Jim seems to be pleased that at least they spoke. What is meant to be culminating is an anti-climax. Worse, he plays as Gimmicky, undercut the obvious sincerity of Jim.

In the best case, which is most of the times, My secret It is strong enough to need nothing so artificial. Their events and consequences are strong enough.