The most remarkable moment of the feature-length documentary The Secret of Me (Channel 4) came right at the end when a middle-aged man, Jim, finally came face-to-face with the urologist Dr Carter, who had surgically made him a girl shortly after birth in 1976. Why? Because the baby’s phallus size “was nowhere near the size of a penis you’d expect on an infant” (so said the doctor).

This was a well-intentioned decision, green-lit by the parents, but the fact that “Kristi”, as Jim was christened, then spent years as a very confused girl because the truth was kept secret from her (under medical advice) now looks little less than cruel. Yet the confrontation between Jim and Dr Carter was notable for its civility. The doctor, while explaining why the decision was taken in the baby’s best interests, admitted that “in retrospect it was wrong”.

Jim’s intensely personal story, told directly into the camera throughout this multilayered film, was the upshot of what happens when science all too readily accepts a single wonderful theory — one, as it would turn out, based on bogus research.

In the 1960s the eminent academic Dr John Money’s idea that an individual’s core gender identity is shaped in their early years, and isn’t something innate, essentially resulted in countless intersex babies undergoing these operations — ones described at one point in his film as “genital mutilation”. Surgery at birth for babies with ambiguous genitalia isn’t banned in most countries (including the UK).

Jim, now in his fifties and hirsutely male, clarified right at the start: “I know what you’re thinking — this is a transgender story. But it’s not.” He wasn’t born into the wrong body (and he has a male XY chromosomal type); he was born into the right one. It was the doctors who decided he should be female, long before he could have any say in it.

With a candour that reflected the film’s tone — calm but laced with anger — Jim described his pained adolescence as a tomboyish girl in conservative Baton Rouge, then the further surgery encouraged by Mum when she turned 18 to create a “vaginal vault”.

It was the kind of confusion that deepens and expands into every aspect of an individual’s life. Years of knowing there’s something off about oneself, bullying remarks at school, infertility — and no clue as to why. You could only feel intense sympathy for the poor child.

A Damascene moment came during a college class when the 19-year-old Kristi learnt about intersex corrective surgery, and then, tracking down her medical notes, she finally found out everything about why she had always felt more he. The director, Grace Hughes-Hallett, was fair to track down Carter, allowing him to explain his position — Money’s research had led him and others to assume their approach was doing the right thing.

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There is so much to unpack from this film, not least the perspective it offered on the perennial debate of nature versus nurture. Money’s intransigent views on one’s gender being “learnt” at an early age were largely based on his research on two male baby twins, one of whom was raised as a girl. Notoriously, that case ended tragically, with both twins killing themselves. But Jim’s story alone presented as evidence that one’s gender is hardwired.

Ultimately, this film was an exposé, with a streak of activism, publicising how surgical interventions on infants are still happening. It’s a thorny, complex issue. By the end of all this, the closing statement that “some of these children have never been told the truth” was disturbing enough to make you gasp out loud.
★★★★☆
Available on Channel 4 streaming

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