The Secret of Me

The Secret of Me, dir. Grace Hughes-Hallett, 2025, UK, 80 min. 💖
⚠️ content advisory: themes of abuse
Monday, June 23, 2025, 5:45 pm Roxie Theater

The Secret of Me

If you’re reading this blog, I figure you probably already know what “intersex” means, but, just in case, it refers to any person whose body is not unambiguously either male or female. That includes chromosomal and hormonal variations, as well as other anatomical variations. Historically, many people born with intersex conditions have been shoe-horned into one or the other binary gender as infants, long before they have any say in the matter. Worse yet, they are often raised in ignorance and/or shame of the true nature of their situation.

The Secret of Me focuses primarily on Jim Ambrose, who didn’t know until he got his medical records in college that his gender had been reassigned at birth, and everything his parents had told him was a lie. As Jim delves deeper into the subject, he comes across the stories of Dr. John Money and his horrifying abuse of some of his patients, most famously David Reimer, who Money claimed had embraced his assigned female gender when that was very much not the case.

Jim Ambrose saw an article in Rolling Stone about Reimer, the first person to be publicly visible as a victim of Dr. Money; that led Jim to contact ISNA, the Intersex Society of North America, and started his activism. We see Jim return to the neighborhood where he grew up and confront some of the people from his childhood. It’s a solid presentation of Jim’s story and some of the background behind it, never sensationalized, mostly told by Jim and other people with intersex conditions themselves, underlining the case that involuntary infant sex reassignment is neither effective nor ethical.

It’s a must see for everyone, and even moreso if you or a loved one are intersex.

• IMDb • trailer • official website • 2023 intersex documentary Every Body (Frameline47), not reviewed here but very much worth seeing •