"Sex, Lies and Gender" is a fascinating National Geographic
documentary about transsexuality and intersexuality, featuring Dr. Tiger Howard
Devore, the Indian celebrity Rose Venkatesan and biologist Joan (ex-John)
Roughgarden, author of "Evolution's rainbow".
Interestingly, the documentary isn't constructivist, and actually attacks John Money, the psychologist who attempted to turn a boy child into a girl, with tragic consequences. While distancing itself from the idea that gender is a purely social construct, "Sex, Lies and Gender" believes that the male-female binary *is* such a construct. In reality, humans have more than two genders, with transsexuals and intersex people representing additional "genders" along a continuum. People are born with their gender identities, but there are more than two of them!
In the documentary, we meet a former U.S. soldier who didn't realize he was hermaphroditic until rather late in life (he now lives as a female), a child who is physically a boy but who is utterly convinced of being a girl and Indian transsexuals known as hijras. The latter, for long an oppressed caste in Indian society, has finally gotten an able spokesman (or spokeswoman!) in Rose Venkatesan. "Sex, Lies and Gender" also features an interview with pro-intersex psychologist Devore and the previously mentioned Roughgarden, whose book "Evolution's rainbow" I've reviewed elsewhere here on Amazon.
All in all, a very interesting and well done documentary, taped by National Geographic, which I always assumed was something of a mainstay of dead White colonial male-ism. It seems National Geographic have finally been "queered"!
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