In the heartland of the American Midwest, eight-year-old Noah is already a boy apart. Midwest America is a real difficult place for a child like Noah. We have a lot of farmers—you know, hardworking people that have always grown up that a boy's a boy, and a girl's a girl, and it's also a strong religious belief that Noah shouldn't be like that 'cause God didn't make him that way. It's hard to make people understand. >> I like to make stuff outta, like, ribbons and stuff like shirts and skirts and stuff like that. >> I know it's nothing that we've done. Noah has been that way since he's been old enough to express himself. We've done many things to try and steer Noah away from the way he is now. Nothing's been encouraging. I think with a child like Noah, if you accept him unconditionally, you're teaching him love, you're teaching him that his parents love him and they support him no matter if he's different than the other boys, and I do know one thing: he didn't choose to be like this. >> You put it this, put in the back, and you twist it in the back. Pull on it like that, put it up here and tie it. >> Noah's mother, Michelle, and her present husband, Mike. >> Did I not give you two? >> Noah's older brother, Luke— a boy like any other boy. >> For the sake of the children, the adults agreed to put their differences behind them and build a relationship that would make the boys feel equally at home in either household, their father's or their mother's— not the only decision that makes this family special. >> We don't know a single other family that deals with these issues. We're working it all out ourselves, and then when I have my family that's saying—the family I was raised in— that's saying you're doing it wrong, and I feel so much in my heart that I'm doing it right, sometimes it's overwhelming. >> Why do your family think you're doing the wrong thing? >> We're a Christian family, and that's what the Bible teaches. Literally, specifically, I think in Deuteronomy it says that men are not to wear women's clothing. In Genesis, it says, God made a man and a woman so that they might procreate. This is exactly what it says. No matter what was written in the Bible or any historical document, I can't believe in a God who would not love my Noah for exactly the way he is. He gets teased, boys and even girls come up and ask him, "Are you a girl?" I would just like to tell people that I don't feel like answering all those questions, so, don't ask me. >> What are your greatest fears? >> Just that someone will hurt him. I've read it more than once that there's about a 50% chance that these children will be killed or kill themselves. That would be my biggest concern. >> The violence against our community of transgender women tends to be really just over the top and, and angry and, and horrible. Usually, a transgender woman is not just punched or, or beaten up or, or even just murdered with a gunshot. There are transgender women who are, are shot with machine guns until they're, they're just pieces of meat—until they're unrecognizable. There, there are women who are stabbed 30, 40, 50 times and then set on fire. If you can just imagine physically, the time it would take to stab someone 40 times. >> An everyday scene: four friends out for lunch. On the surface, nothing remarkable. Nothing to suggest that two of these women are at risk, and never more so, should they fall in love. >> In 1999, I met a soldier named Barry who was able to see me as the woman I am and who loved me for the person that I am. At a certain point, his fellow soldiers discovered that the girlfriend that he talked about so much was a transsexual. You know, they discovered that I was transsexual. This all culminated in, in his murder on July 4th in 1999. They beat him to death with a baseball bat in his sleep. >> We bring out a certain fear and a certain anger in some people who interact with us, because suddenly they find themselves, questioning themselves or worrying about how their response to us affects their identity. Suddenly, something that they thought was a bedrock part of their identity has been challenged. Hey, Cal, looking at your board... >> Andrea and Calpernia run a website serving the transgender community, offering advice on everything from medical and legal issues to fashion and make-up. Their personal histories defy simple classification: male, female, hetero, homo. >> People always assume that this is all about sex, and certainly we are all sexual beings in some way or another, but that's not the entire story. People transition for a lot of reasons. One of the confusing things in my own case for some people is that I'm attracted to women, and so they think, oh, you know, why would you do all this if you're attracted to women? And I think it really points out that this isn't about who you, you know, want to be with—it's about who you are. People want to have this nice, simple, black and white, binary world where everything's easily compartmentalized, but there's always going to be people who challenge those categories, and that's what we do with gender and sex and sexuality. >> Haaa. >> So, who are these people who blur the lines between man and woman? >> Haaa. What I'd like to do with my voice, get it to the point where it is sounding like a woman's. >> What are the forces that shape them or shape any of us sexually? >> The answers to these questions begin before we are born. In the early stages of life's journey, we all develop the same basic set of organs, male and female, exactly alike. Six-to-seven weeks after conception, we reach the first fork in the road. The route we take from here is largely determined by our chromosomes: male (XY), female (XX). We take the male direction when a protein on the Y chromosome activates the testes, which produce the male hormone androgen. The female parts wither away. But what else can happen in those first three months when males (XY) and females (XX) take their separate paths? There are other combinations—XXY, XYY, XO—that can send the developing child into territory in between, neither male nor female: intersex. >> With intersex, one of the things that can happen is that the phallus can be halfway in between. You can have something that looks like a penis, but the opening is on the side. Or you can have something that looks like a clitoris but is quite large. >> One person in a hundred has a body that differs from what doctors consider standard male or female. That's over 4,000 people in a city this size. In our culture the idea of an intermediate sex seems threatening, and the whole issue has been shrouded in secrecy. Recently, though, people with these conditions have stepped out of the shadows. >> When I was born, doctors couldn't determine if I was a boy or girl. I had what are described as ambiguous genitalia. My parents were confused, scared. They weren't able to tell anyone who knew they'd had a child if it was a boy or a girl. The challenge of people who used to be called hermaphroditic— what we now call intersex, have intersex conditions—is that they really do threaten the idea that there's this clear natural boundary between the male and the female, because there isn't a clear natural boundary. So, intersex begins to raise for us the question of what gender really means and to what extent it really matters, and that's very uncomfortable. >> And, until very recently, the medical establishment was determined that there should be no ambiguity. >> The finding of ambiguous genitalia in the newborn is a medical and social emergency. When the cause is established and gender assignment is made, the abnormal genitalia must be corrected. >> Max was just a year old when his phallus was surgically reduced. >> He was brought up as a girl, Judy, who underwent a whole series of operations until the age of 15, never once being told what they were for. >> For 20-odd years, I wasn't allowed to talk to anyone about this and didn't tell—just like my mother didn't tell her best friend— I, I never even told my best friend. >> By her late teens, Judy felt confused. She tried a relationship with a boy and a girl. Whereas my male partner, boyfriend, had not commented on the differences in my genital anatomy— which, incidentally, I wasn't even aware of at the time—my female partner did. She said something. She said, "Boy, Jude, you sure are weird." I came away from that thinking of myself as a monster or a freak, and so I decided that I would avoid that upset by being with men. So, I quite literally settled down with the next guy to come along. >> Judy simply married a male friend from college, but the relationship was short-lived. Judy had met Tamara. I was really excited. It was definitely a case of love at first sight. Sparks just flew—it was magic. >> I looked at her and fell in love with her. It was love at first sight. She was breathtakingly beautiful. >> Then a bombshell hit. I needed my childhood immunization records, so I contacted my childhood pediatrician and found out he had retired, and the woman who had taken over his practice, had someone photocopy my records and mail them. And I opened my mail in a diner in, in Center City Philadelphia, and right after my name— which at the time was Judy Elizabeth Beck—were the words "male pseudohermaphrodite," and I was devastated and dumbfounded. At the same time, it was, it was almost a relief, because I had a label. Not only did I know that I was a monster, but I, I could tell, I could point in the textbook exactly what kind of monster I was. >> We started corresponding and just had this flurry of letters, and gradually just started little bitty disclosures, and, you know, "Boy, when I first met you, you really turned my head," and I would write something back and, you know, we eventually just called it peeling the onion because it was just little tiny layer after little tiny layer to get to the heart of it. I think it was a, it was a Friday evening. We, we talked on the phone, and, and, and talked right through dawn, and at some point, during the night, I, I told her. I just remember being so sad that she thought that this was going to make such a big difference in the way that I felt about her, and that she hadn't had anybody to help carry the weight of that her whole life, that she'd gone through, essentially, twenty-something years thinking that if anyone knew this, they would just not want to be with her. And I said, you know, that doesn't make any difference to me whatsoever. >> The couple lived an open lesbian relationship, but Judy's knowledge of her own medical history was gnawing at her. >> I began to question how valid the lesbian identity was. If I'm not female, can I be a lesbian? And thinking in those vicious circles and undermining this precious shred of identity that I had finally obtained threw me into, yeah, a very bad depression. I was hospitalized. >> What emerged from this turmoil was a man. Judy became Max. The full transition took four years, and incredibly, the loving bond with Tamara survived. They live as man and wife with a child conceived by Tamara. >> At first I was resistant. I was like, no, you know, I, I finally got this lesbian relationship thing lined up. You know, I've got a community and I know who I am, and I understand the terms of my relationship, and you can't go changing it on me in the middle. But, on the other hand, I had a partner that I loved desperately who was miserable most of the time and uncomfortable in himself and uncomfortable in the world. He's a much more balanced, doing-okay-psychologically guy. And, I guess I sort of chalk that up as a fair bargain. >> This old man. >> This old man? >> I don't have a male identity, and I don't know that I ever had a female identity, but I certainly don't have one now, and if pressed, I suppose I would say I have intersexed identity. I think of myself as intersexed, and I think I have a great deal more compassion than I ever did for men. Goofy's wife ran into the house. There was Goofy. >> We've been together more than 10 years now, and we're still together. This is the same person that I fell in love with. We all change over time. You get married at 19. By the time you're 69, you're not that girl of 19. Your body will change. You'll thicken in some places. Maybe you'll lose weight. What we've had is just a more quick condensed radical transformation in one of us. And yes, his body has changed. It's going to keep on changing. You know, for the next 50 years, his hair's going to fall out, and he's going to get wrinkles, and he's still going to be my Max. >> Unlike Max Beck, most of us are recognizably male or female within three months of conception. Over the next six months, hormones sculpt the brain— male or female—but the genitals can develop in one direction, the brain in another. >> One thing we have to remember from Darwin to Kinsey to any great thinker about sexuality is, variation is the norm. Biology loves variation. Biology loves differences. Society hates it. >> All creatures are united through descent. We share a common ancestry with birds, fishes, trees, and every living thing. So, what can nature tell us about ourselves? >> There's no precedent in nature for the rigid assertion of a male-female binary of the sort that people are supposed to be obeying. >> Nature consists of rainbows within rainbows within rainbows, so that even if one does manufacture some category, once you start looking within the category, you find variation within that, and then you could make a subcategory, and you find variations still within that. >> In the natural world, diversity is everywhere, from sex-changing fish to male seahorses that actually give birth. In some species, male and female are indistinguishable. In others there are two or more distinct male or female genders. There are even species where intersex bodies are in the majority. Some animals are promiscuous, others bond for life, and over 300 vertebrate species engage in homosexual behavior. But exclusive homosexuality is a human construct. Suriname—a small South American country with a vicious history. The Creole people here are the descendants of African slaves who suffered under one of the cruelest regimes ever imposed on a subject people. The Dutch plantation owners literally worked their slaves to death, continually replenishing stocks with fresh blood from Africa. Punishments were grotesque. Slaves had no rights to their own children, and were forbidden to learn to read or write. >> Under these conditions, one of the few things that enabled them to survive was their African culture. The Creole people believe that we're all visited by spirits sent by God to help us through life's trials. Sexuality is shaped by the spirits. When a woman is possessed by a strong male spirit she will desire other women, and a man will desire other men when visited by a female spirit. >> The result is a society where sexuality is fluid and carries no stigma. It's the quality of the relationship that counts. >> The spirits teach you whether you live as man and woman, woman and woman, or man and man; it's okay, as long as you handle the relationship decently. Feelings don't come from the individual—they come from God. You may live with a man for perhaps ten years, and then in the eleventh year, you get feelings for a woman. It's not your doing— it's God's doing. >> Iris and Ellie came together over 20 years ago, when Iris's marriage was breaking down. It was the first relationship either had had with another woman, and they both have children and grandchildren of their own. >> I was unlucky with men, and then I found love with a woman. Where you find happiness, that's where you should stay, and I found happiness with Iris. And so I asked my family to accept us, and they did— from the oldest to the youngest— and that pleases me very much. >> God made everybody. We don't make ourself. God made us, and he made homos, he made lesbians, he made bisexuals, and every one of them has a purpose. >> This way of thinking about same-sex desire, we find elsewhere in the black diaspora. We find traces of it in Africa itself. So, contrary to a very dominant discourse at this moment that homosexuality is un-African, that the colonialist brought it to Africa, I say that there is ample evidence that the principles are— and have been—present in Africa for a long time. It is African. It is human. It is everywhere.
