An Analysis of the Film: One in 2000 (Produced by Ajae Clearway)
By Diana, Campus Organizer
In the movie One in 2000, a short film which documents the life experiences and testimonies of various intersex people, I noticed that the doctor was portrayed as one of the main contributors to the pain suffered by the intersex community, primarily because physicians ultimately use their power in society to operate on babies born with ambiguous genitalia. They [doctors] approach intersex babies as conflicts to societal definitions of gender, and immediately convince parents to agree to a series of operations that sculpt the child’s genitalia into male or female. The film suggests that these operations are not medically necessary, and are pushed onto highly emotional parents following childbirth. No mother or father wants his/her child to grow up having medical complications, but the question of whether it is proper for medical professionals to advocate that an otherwise perfectly healthy child undergo surgery to “correct” a minor “defect” to the private region has to be asked. In my opinion, the answer to the question is “No.”
Doctors are faced with a scientific phenomenon that is barely understood in the medical community, yet they quickly “correct” intersex babies with surgery, without taking the proper time to research possible treatments that do not require a scalpel and stitches. Parents should be given an option that requires no surgery until the child is mature enough to make his/her own decision as whether they even want any cosmetic surgery done. As best stated by intersex activist Caitlin Childs, “Intersex people are the true experts, not doctors.”
Another observation I made while viewing One in 2000 is that while many intersex people and activists believe that surgery is not necessarily wrong, they do believe that the child should make the decision, not the parents or doctors. The major struggle of the intersex community is that they have been stripped of the right to make their own decisions regarding their body. Hundreds of intersex people were only babies when their doctors and parents made the decision to perform ‘corrective surgery’ on their genitalia and reproductive organs. Many of these surgeries did not determine which gender a child identified with as they became adults. Imagine growing up appearing to be a boy, but really identifying as a girl (or the reverse).
We live in a diverse world where there are no two exact copies of DNA, human beings, or personalities. So I believe that in reality, there could never be a right or wrong body, because mutations occur naturally. But the label of ‘abnormal’ is given to intersex people because their very existence challenges the system of assigning gender roles through gender presentation. Thus, the push for surgery and hormones that are designed to make intersex people “normal,” meaning “easier for the rest of us to relate to.”
Like all of us, intersex people also strive to have equal human rights, choices, and a voice in society’s perception of gender. They deserve happiness and self love just as much as anyone.
To find out more about the film, One in 2000 click here!
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