When Kristi was 19, she discovered a secret about her identity that changed everything. Now known as Jim, his story is finally being told.
Channel 4’s new documentary, The Secret of Me, was directed by Three Identical Strangers producer, Grace Hughes-Hallett, who first stumbled across Jim’s astonishing life story four years ago.
‘My brother [a urology surgeon] called me from a medical conference,’ she tells Metro.
‘He said someone at this conference is talking about this group of patients who are coming to urology surgeons as adults, saying: “We had these surgeries done on us as babies, and they’ve ruined our lives. Is there anything you can do to reverse what was done?”’
‘He said to me: “I think there’s something in this. You should look into it.” So I did.’
After falling down a research rabbit hole, soon enough, she found Jim, an intersex activist in his 40s.
His story begins decades earlier, during a feminist college class where a moment of revelation led to decades of activism campaigning the end to the life-changing surgery practice he underwent as a baby.
As laid out in NHS guidance, Intersex is an umbrella term for ‘a wide range of totally natural body variations in human beings, which means their body, either visibly or not, is not totally male or totally female, or is a combination of the two.’
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‘The moment we spoke and he told me his life story, I just thought: “This is our guy” because his story is just so incredible, and he tells it so well.’
The community is estimated to make up 1.7% of the global population.
In countries like the US and UK, there is currently no law prohibiting surgery on intersex infants which alters external genitalia to match societal norms with parental consent, according to the 2017 Medical Law Review.
In 2019, Buzzfeed also revealed that the British government was unaware of how many intersex children are being operated on in the NHS.
Louisiana-born Jim was raised as a girl throughout his childhood and adolescence.
Only as an adult did he discover his testes were ‘removed at birth’ – a decision he equates to ‘genital mutilation’ and ‘unconscious child abuse’.
‘The moment we spoke and he told me his life story, I just thought: “This is our guy” because his story is just so incredible, and he tells it so well,’ Grace shares about her decision to reach out to Jim despite his avoidance of the public eye for several years.
‘It was really nerve wracking for us as the filmmakers [to approach Jim], because this is the biggest trauma of his life. We were asking him to rake over it afresh on behalf of us and our project,’ the documentary-maker says, reiterating her gratitude of his trust.
Read more about the intersex community
‘I also spoke with medics in the US, one in particular, who told me that this is basically “a bunch of unhappy customers, and that we’re just not hearing from the happy customers”.
‘It’s really gruelling doing the kind of activism he does, because he’s been doing it for decades, and people still aren’t listening and that’s pretty exhausting.’
For many (not all) of those affected by this surgical practice, it has been characterised as a ‘global medical scandal’, slamming the procedures as ‘life-ruining and not medically necessary’ with ‘lifelong, irreversible effects’.
In her research for the documentary, Grace reached out to leading surgeons in this field in the UK and ‘got not response or agreement to talk’.
She adds: ‘I also spoke with medics in the US, one in particular, who told me that this is basically “a bunch of unhappy customers, and that we’re just not hearing from the happy customers”.
‘I know that the intersex community get that lot. That’s the stock defensive answer from doctors, which is a pretty s****y thing to hear when it’s basically just having your own experience denied.’
Nevertheless, the crew was able to arrange a meeting between Jim and Dr Carter, the surgeon who did his surgery, which she reveals was the most ‘nerve-wracking’ moment of the whole process.
As Grace explains: ‘Obviously, Dr Carter has been the bogeyman in Jim’s mind and life for so many decades.
‘Very, very, very few doctors agree to meet with the intersex patients that they operated on. In fact, part of Jim’s work, when he was an activist, was trying to facilitate these meetings, and doctors almost always say no.
‘Jim felt the weight of others on him as well, doing this meeting on camera, that he was speaking on behalf of so many of his friends and community as well.’
Although they were worried Dr Carter would be ‘barbed or defensive or aggressive’, he truly listened to all Jim had to say which offered him a ‘huge sense of relief’.
‘The Secret of Me, even though it’s about a very particular life story, there’s a lot in there about families and secrecy and shame around our bodies that we can all relate to.‘
Elsewhere, the documentary takes us back to the origins of this practice.
As Grace puts it: ‘[Kristi’s] search for truth uncovers this radical psychology experiment on a pair of identical twins that led to the global medical scandal that she was part of.’
Here we learn about Dr John Money, a ‘sexologist’ in the 60s who practiced surgery on intersex children and is famed for his experiment on a pair of identical twins.
The struggle this group of campaigners face is far from over. In fact for many, their cause has had a spotlight shone on it due to the increased scrutiny over trans rights and gender-affirming surgery which has, inadvertently, impacted the intersex community.
As transgender healthcare comes under attack in the US, the Movement Advancement Project found that at least 81% of US bills restricting trans healthcare between January 2020 and April 2023 contained exemptions for these controversial treatments on intersex infants.
The Secret of Me only scrapes the surface of this mammoth topic that impacts for more of us than the general public perhaps realise, and offers a deeply personal lens behind the ongoing protests.
As well as educating the layperson about this largely unknown world of activism, Grace hopes they can ‘reach a new generation of doctors, nurses, midwives [and] policymakers, because it’s in their hands to end these surgeries and protect babies like Jim from the harm that they do.’
As for whether she believes this documentary will become just as much of a phenomenon as Three Identical Strangers, she ‘hopes it goes as viral’.
‘What makes a documentary go viral?,’ she asks herself. ‘I think it’s a story that feels universal, that has a grain of truth about human life that everyone can relate to.
‘The Secret of Me, even though it’s about a very particular life story, there’s a lot in there about families and secrecy and shame around our bodies that we can all relate to.
‘So I’m hoping that this will strike a chord with a lot of people.’
The Secret of Me is available to stream on Channel 4.
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