Latest news with #SurvivingMichaelJackson
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Leaving Neverland 2 Michael Jackson Documentary Released for Free on YouTube
The post Leaving Neverland 2 Michael Jackson Documentary Released for Free on YouTube appeared first on Consequence. Director Dan Reed has released a second documentary surrounding the Michael Jackson sexual abuse allegations. Titled Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson, the 53-minute film follows the two alleged victims from the first miniseries (Wade Robson and James Safechuck) as they come to terms with their grooming and sexual abuse, begin their decade-long attempt to file lawsuits, and handle the vitriol and support that stemmed from the initial documentary. Both Leaving Neverland projects were directed and produced by Dan Reed. Leaving Neverland was released in 2019 on HBO, which led the Jackson Estate to file a $100 million lawsuit against the network. With HBO choosing not to air the sequel, Leaving Neverland 2 is instead available to stream for free in the US on YouTube.) In Leaving Neverland, Robson and Safechuck both allege they were sexually abused by Jackson as children. The two had previously defended Jackson during his 1993 child molestation allegations, publicly denying any claims of abuse or inappropriate behavior at the time. The sequel follows the same two alleged survivors as they attempt to bring their sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson to trial over 10 years. Throughout the film, the pair recalls each time they were denied legal standing due to time restraints, lack of evidence, and other obstacles. The documentary also includes appearances from the pair's two lawyers, LAPD detectives, prosecutors in Jackson's criminal trial, MJ fans, and podcast hosts. The film concludes by revealing the pair's appeals are finally moving forward to a trial which will likely occur in November 2026. Near the end of the documentary, Robson expresses his belief that going to court will allow him to be transparent in a legal setting. 'If I get the opportunity to return and take the stand, to tell the truth in a way I wasn't able to for decades, that's a win for me.' The Michael Jackson Estate has strongly denied the sexual abuse allegations presented in the 2019 miniseries and has yet to comment on the upcoming sequel film. In 2003, Jackson was the focus of Living with Michael Jackson, a documentary interview conducted by Martin Bashir. This led to the People v. Michael Jackson trial in 2005, where Jackson faced 14 charges, including child molestation and the intoxication of a minor. He was acquitted on all counts. In January, it was revealed that the forthcoming MJ biopic Michael may undergo reshoots after violating an agreement not to feature Jordan Chandler—the child involved in Jackson's 1993 case—or his family. Watch Leaving Neverland 2 here. Note that Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson contains graphic descriptions of sexual assault that may make some users uncomfortable. If you or someone you know needs help, you can contact the RAINN-operated National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or chat online at Both are confidential, free, and open 24/7. Leaving Neverland 2 Michael Jackson Documentary Released for Free on YouTube Jaeden Pinder Popular Posts JD Vance Booed at Kennedy Center Dropkick Murphys Make On-Stage Wager with Trump Supporter Over Where His Shirt Was Made Documentary Claims Jim Morrison Is Alive, Living in Syracuse In 2025, Lollapalooza Has Shed Its Rock Past for Good j-hope of BTS Makes Triumphant Return with Solo Tour "Hope on the Stage": Review American Pie Actress Jasmine Mooney Spends Two Weeks in ICE Detention Facility Subscribe to Consequence's email digest and get the latest breaking news in music, film, and television, tour updates, access to exclusive giveaways, and more straight to your inbox.
The Guardian
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson review – the shocking exposé of the megastar is a hard act to follow
Leaving Neverland, Dan Reed's 2019 film, which laid out accusations that the singer Michael Jackson sexually abused children, is among the most impactful and important documentaries of the past 10 years; the view of one of the 20th century's biggest stars irreversibly changed, as rumour and innuendo were replaced by a detailed narrative that was hard for all but Jackson's most committed fans to doubt. As well as altering Jackson's reputation for ever, Leaving Neverland offered a wider look at how abusers groom their victims, why those victims can choose to protect their abuser, and how and why the parents of victims might fail to protect their child. It was also about the extremes of fame. His celebrity allowed Jackson to bewitch young fans, and disarm families who would otherwise have balked at an adult stranger befriending their child. It gave him the drivers, bodyguards, hotel suites and mansions he needed to spend time with young boys. (Nobody denies that a series of children were alone with him for long periods, and shared his bed, although his estate strongly denies all allegations of sexual abuse.) And his fame gave him the power to settle lawsuits. It helped Jackson deflect public suspicion too, since it was just about plausible for his eccentrically childlike persona to include being seen with a string of pre-pubescent companions. The mega-famous can hide in plain sight. Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson is another film about life in the public eye, but this time the world's gaze is on Jackson's two accusers from the original film, Wade Robson and James Safechuck. The story starts in 2013 when Robson appears on US television to make his claims, and extends for the next decade and beyond as Robson and Safechuck seek redress in court, a process made more complicated by the lag between the alleged abuse and the accusation – about 20 years – and by the fact that Jackson died in 2009. The two men have to overcome legal arguments, which are initially successful, that their claims are beyond the statute of limitations and that they cannot be directed at Jackson's estate or at the company that still handles his affairs, MJJ Productions. When Leaving Neverland is released in 2019, they also face a wave of vitriol and misinformation from Jackson supporters and media agitators who know nothing about the facts of the case, but earn a kick or a buck from posing as experts. The reaction to Leaving Neverland forms the most memorable section of Leaving Neverland 2: there is an extraordinary clip of Robson and Safechuck appearing on a show hosted by Oprah Winfrey, herself an abuse survivor, who praises them for their courage while warning them of the negative reaction they are about to endure. The new film, however, struggles to deal with how comprehensive the old one was. Although Safechuck talks movingly here about reconnecting with the younger version of himself, fighting for that boy's interests and wondering what he would say to him, the obvious topics for a film about the aftermath – the difficulty survivors of abuse have with forming adult relationships, the pain of maintaining a relationship with the parents who didn't step in, the lifelong anguish of those parents – were all covered in Leaving Neverland. So we are left with the somewhat dry legal battle. Robson and Safechuck have their case thrown out, so they appeal, helped by the release of Leaving Neverland contributing to a change in the law regarding abuse victims belatedly speaking out. The tale culminates in a recording of a Zoom hearing – luckily a split-screen video call is as visually engaging as courtroom footage would have been – in which the MJJ Productions lawyer is dressed down and tripped up by visibly annoyed judges. But we've gone through a lot of arcane legalities to get to this point. The film's closing caption tells us that the big trial, as opposed to these pernickety preliminaries establishing whether there is a case to answer, will take place in 2026. Leaving Neverland 2, which has arrived six years after the original film, might as well have waited seven. We also feel the absence of the other side of the debate. While Leaving Neverland could be forgiven for setting out the accusers' testimony without peppering it with denials from their more powerful opponent, it would be useful now to hear from MJJ Productions. Reed shows us a letter where he begs them to participate in this new film – he highlights a paragraph where he literally writes: 'I'm begging you.' Their refusal means the question of who knew what within Jackson's staff can't properly be explored. Reed has done fine work in telling us a highly significant story, but at this stage there is not enough more of it to tell. Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson is on Channel 4 now.
The Guardian
14-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘I've had murderers try to find me. I've had armed people say they'll shoot' – Dan Reed on the fallout from his Michael Jackson films
'I've kept company with very violent people for a very long time,' says documentary-maker Dan Reed, in his office whose location has to be kept secret – I was led here, from a decoy address, by the Channel 4 publicist. 'I've had murderers try to find me. I've had people threaten to shoot me who are armed. I've been threatened many, many times. I don't want to say I'm a tough guy, but the needle doesn't go into the red until I've got something quite specific. The threats delivered face to face I took seriously. People trying to find my home address to post me a parcel I took seriously. People in China sending me emails? I don't take so seriously. They're going to have to get on a plane.' OK, well he does sound like a tough guy, or at least a foreign correspondent of the old school, and that's fair enough. From the Kosovan war (The Valley, 1999) to the Russian mafia (From Russia With Cash, 2015), Reed's films have long been threaded together by the reasonable fascinations of the hard-hitting documentary-maker – corruption, crime, natural disaster, war. Yet the death threats we're talking about – and there have been thousands – the ones that urge him to die like a dog in the gutter, or say simply 'You're really disgusting. Go to DEAD. FUCK YOU', are from Michael Jackson fans, following his 2019 film Leaving Neverland. In it, Wade Robson and James Safechuck give detailed, devastatingly plausible accounts of Jackson as a serial paedophile, moving from one seven- or eight-year-old to the next at 12-month intervals, lovebombing them, sexually abusing them, discarding them. The follow-up which airs this week, Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson, is about the fallout from that film, and the awful fact that, when you combine the casual victim-blaming in the mainstream media and the fury of fans, Wade and James have been victimised all over again. We see how they have struggled with depression as adults, particularly since they've become fathers themselves. But perhaps more than anything, Surviving Michael Jackson feels like a completely new, feature-length outrage, exploring the attempts of the Jackson estate's lawyers to keep the allegations from ever reaching open court. Their testimony is graphic and hard to watch. 'When I met with James,' remembers Reed, 'I said: 'If we're going to do this, we have to go there. We have to be absolutely clear, this was sexual abuse. This wasn't affection gone wrong.' Wade immediately got that as well. It was going to be absolutely hardcore, no room for ambiguity. Jackson surfed on that ambiguity for his entire life.' From a documentary point of view, it's almost distracting how famous Jackson was, because Leaving Neverland isn't about his fame or music or the lavish, childlike lifestyle for which he was known – except to explain the hold he had over the boys' families, particularly their mothers. Rather, it is an anatomy of grooming, which 'doesn't happen the way we think it does. Your kid has a secret agreement with the predator. It will be very obvious to you what your kid is getting from it: your kid will be excited to see the person, will resist attempts to limit that time, they're like a teenager in love. To show that, I had to get the guys to say: 'It was amazing.' Until it wasn't.' That is what makes the film petrifying: however much you might judge Robson and Safechuck's mothers who were often, if not in the room, in the environs when the abuse took place, you can also see how hard it would be to protect your child from a paedophile who wooed them so cynically. Reed – who has four children, ranging from two months to 22 – doesn't think it's that complicated: 'I don't care what anyone says or does. I would never, ever allow my child to spend the night in bed with someone who wasn't a member of the family, and even then …' His demeanour as he interviews Stephanie, James's mother, and Joy, Wade's, isn't studs-first, it's neutral (in the films, questions are asked off-camera, but you can generally tell how they have been posed). 'I loved that quote of Stephanie's: 'I had one son, I had one job, and I fucked up.' Joy is a little more evasive.' Critically, Leaving Neverland was a great success. Robson and Safechuck were astonished and moved by the warm receptions they got at film festivals. They hadn't expected to be congratulated for their bravery. But they also had strident detractors, on mainstream chatshows, making excuses for Jackson that you can't imagine anyone making today – and this was only six years ago when #MeToo as a hashtag was in general use. It seems like extremely recent history for anyone to have been uttering the argument that 'Jackson was just being affectionate', says Reed. 'In some of the ridiculous media that came out afterwards, that line 'Maybe they were sharing a bed, and maybe nature took its course, and maybe his penis got hard …', and you're thinking, what the fuck?' Others, including Piers Morgan, made an argument less inflammatory but more easily falsifiable: that the pair were money-grabbing. Reed bats this off easily – he says that when Leaving Neverland came out, five more people came forward with allegations, and the estate paid them off with millions of dollars – but you can tell by the way he says 'Piers Morgan' that the aspersion vexes him. If the poorer party in a relationship is always thought to be on the make, the logical end point is that rich people can get away with anything. 'The thing I've never understood,' Reed continues, 'is the people who said: '[Michael Jackson] never had a childhood, he never grew up.' Why does not having a childhood entitle you to molest children?' Lawyers acting for the estate, blocking Robson and Safechuck at every turn, are just doing what lawyers do, is Reed's urbane opinion. He brings the same shrug-energy to the rage of the diehard fans, who muster mostly online but occasionally spring into real life protesting outside the offices of Channel 4, for instance (who have distributed the films along with HBO). 'Nowadays, most people get their information online, and there, people will regularly say: 'You know Leaving Neverland was debunked, right?'' Does he never find that frustrating? He cares about Wade and James, and has seen at close hand what it has cost them to describe what happened. 'In 2019, I'd try to counter it. But you realise it doesn't matter because those people don't want to know the truth. They want an excuse to continue being in their tribe, to continue worshipping Michael Jackson. It is a bit of a cult.' And now 'we live in a world of disinformation. If I shed a tear every time some piece of disinformation pops up online, I'd be a pile of dust on the floor.' Reed has returned to these themes in films between the Neverland sequence: in The Truth vs Alex Jones, he tells the story of how disinformation has been monetised; in that case, famously, with the brutal falsehood that the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting was a hoax. In Stopping the Steal, covering Trump's challenge to the 2020 election results, Reed found himself back at the subject of paedophilia. A 'hyper-conservative, Mormon politician was asked to throw the election, and he said no – at which point, the online scumosphere starts calling him a paedophile. It's become this hand grenade that people throw around, and I don't think that existed in 2019.' He's currently working on a documentary about the riots last summer after the Southport murders, and describes this curious internationalism that has taken hold – Elon Musk, driving far-right narratives, as well as hosting, on X, the violent content that spurred the real-life violence. 'That's the frontline – cultural spaces where the left cannot go and the right is supreme. That space contains a lot of concerns that ordinary people have, and it contains a lot of madness as well. Whoever is prepared to stand on that hill gets to sing the song they want to sing. The hill is a real place, built on immigration and family values. The liberal social democratic centre steers clear of these hard discussions, which has allowed the right to take the hill.' The splenetic misinformation war waged by the Michael Jackson faithful didn't launch the far-right, obviously. It took no interest in democratic elections; it was only interested in defending child abuse for the sake of Thriller. But Leaving Neverland 2 is a fascinating and sad account of the sheer complexity of a world in which new norms of bad faith constantly challenge the truth, and make the price of telling it unimaginably high. Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson is on Channel 4 on Tuesday 18 March at 9pm.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
New Doc Explores Medically Unnecessary Surgeries Given to Intersex Kids — And the Trauma They Cause
Jim Ambrose was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana in 1976 with what he describes as 'a body that was really upsetting to my parents and my doctors.' Though medical tests determined that he was perfectly healthy, his doctors seemed more concerned about what was between his legs: either 'a really, really small penis, or a really large clitoris,' Ambrose explains. Genetic testing came next. The results showed that he had XY chromosomes — indicating he was male. That's when a local urologist advised his parents to put him through the first of two surgeries in order to make him look more like a girl. More from Rolling Stone Bono's 'Stories of Surrender' Documentary Heading to Apple TV+ 'Leaving Neverland' Director Has More to Reveal in 'Surviving Michael Jackson' Documentary Benson Boone, Megan Moroney, Ivan Cornejo, and Rema to Play Rolling Stone's Future of Music Showcase at SXSW '[The doctors] were like, 'Look, we can't raise this baby as a boy,'' Ambrose tells Rolling Stone. ''Would it be able to stand to pee? We're gonna clear out the male reproductive organs and clear out the phallus and we're going to raise it as a girl.' This was considered the standard treatment for babies born with differences of sex development (DSD), previously described as being 'intersex.' In some hospitals in the U.S. and around the world, it still is. Doctors presented these surgeries to parents as their child's best hope for a normal life, without discussing the long-term implications of permanently altering their body — and, in many cases, their gender — at a time before they're able to provide consent or assent. After the surgery, Ambrose's parents named him Kristi, and their doctor told them to keep the truth to themselves. 'They were prescribed the awful trinity of shame, secrecy, and isolation,' Ambrose says. 'My mom made sure not to have anybody change my diaper. There was a lot of anxiety around my body and who might see it.' Ambrose grew up wearing dresses and feeling loved. 'My parents raised me as best they could,' he says. 'They sent me to school, they clothed me, they gave me shelter, and they loved the little girl that they saw me as and wanted to raise me to be.' While there's no scientific evidence that reinforcing a surgically achieved gender actually works, the prevailing idea at the time was that it was possible. This is the focus of a new documentary, The Secret of Me, which premieres March 9 at the South by Southwest film festival in Austin, Texas. The film explores the history of these medically unnecessary genital mutilation surgeries and their lasting psychological impact through the lens of Ambrose's experience. It marks the directorial debut of British filmmaker Grace Hughes-Hallett, the producer of the 2018 documentary Three Identical Strangers. The award-winning film tells the story of three identical triplets who were intentionally separated at birth and adopted into different families as part of an undisclosed experiment, and reunited later in life with heartbreaking repercussions. Production on The Secret of Me began in 2021, after Hughes-Hallett first learned of the surgeries done on infants with DSD from her brother, an adult urologist ('He doesn't do these surgeries, I might add,' she clarifies) who heard about them at a conference. 'He told me that there's now a lot of adults who are very unhappy with these surgeries,' Hughes-Hallett tells Rolling Stone. 'That sounded very interesting to me, so I Googled it, and started sort of going into a wormhole on this subject, and quite quickly came across John Money.' Money, a medical psychologist at Johns Hopkins University who believed that nurture was more important than nature when it came to gender identity, was the chief proponent of these surgeries. He spent the 1950s and 1960s researching human sexual behavior, but was handed the case study of a lifetime in 1967, when he convinced the parents of David Reimer, a baby boy who lost his penis to a botched circumcision, to allow their child to undergo what he called 'sex reassignment.' This involved surgery constructing female-passing genitalia, then raising him as a girl. Money also put the child, named Brenda, and their identical twin brother, Brian, through years of psychological and sexual abuse, masquerading as research. His experiment was an indisputable failure: in spite of his upbringing as a girl, Brenda always felt like a boy and endured a childhood of torment. Yet Money published his findings, fraudulently claiming that his work was a resounding success. This cemented his position as a leader in his field, and his 'sex reassignment' protocol as the standard treatment for babies born with DSD. The Secret of Me delves deeper into Money's experiments and the impact they had on the Reimer twins. 'I knew [Money] was of the past, but there's a present to this story,' Hughes-Hallett says. 'So I spoke to quite a few intersex people. I also spoke to doctors who have done and are doing the surgeries. But it was speaking to Jim — I immediately connected with his story, and thought that the way to tell the wider story is through Jim.' At first, Hughes-Hallett planned to include the stories of multiple intersex people, but then 'came to realize that a single narrative would be a stronger film' and decided to focus on Jim. As it turned out, Ambrose was a fan of her work. 'In 2018 I saw Three Identical Strangers, and thought, 'Wow, these people really get the themes of secrecy, isolation, manipulation of children and families,'' he says. 'And about midway through, I remember thinking, 'If these people called, I would take that call.' So when [Grace] called [in 2021], I was like, 'Yeah, I'll definitely talk to you.'' BACK IN BATON ROUGE IN the 1980s, Ambrose was being raised as a girl, according to the standard 'treatment' plan for children born with DSD, as devised by Money. 'There was some fantastical idea of being able to imprint the gender at an early age, and that it will stick,' Ambrose says. 'She will be the little girl. She won't be able to give you babies right out of her vagina, but she'll marry a man, and she'll have a vagina constructed, and the man will be able to have sex with this vagina, and then everything will be OK.' Around age 12 or 13, Ambrose's mother pulled him aside and told him that he'd have to start taking pills that would make him look more like other girls, and informed him of the surgery she'd have in a few years to create a vagina. '[She said] 'You're gonna grow breasts, and hopefully you'll grow taller' — it was really about the phenotypical female characteristics,' he says. 'It was all about carrying off the illusion.' The pills worked. Then, during winter break of his freshman year of college, he was admitted to Children's Hospital New Orleans for a vaginoplasty. 'At this time, I'd never had a boyfriend,' Ambrose says. 'I had never had a sexual interaction with a boy. In fact, by that point, I was already on to my second girlfriend, and she wasn't, like, 'When are you going to get a vagina so we can have proper sex?' She didn't give a shit.' Around a year later, Ambrose was in a feminist studies class, catching up on the assigned reading, when he came across an essay on the medical construction of gender on intersex infants. 'Reading through the essay, it hit me,' Ambrose says. 'I think, 'This is me. This is what happened to me.'' His medical records confirmed his suspicions. Soon after that, Ambrose connected with intersex activists, including one who contacted him in December 1997 with some news. 'She called me and said, 'Go to the nearest magazine shop and buy Rolling Stone — you have to read this,'' Ambrose says. It was an article by John Colapinto titled 'The True Story of John/Joan.' The feature told the true story of the Reimer twins and the years of medical, physical, psychological, and sexual abuse they experienced at the hands of Money. Five years after the article was published, Brian died from a drug overdose at the age of 36. Two years later, David died by suicide. While academics and intersex activists had been familiar with David's story, it had now reached a mainstream audience. 'It blew up with Colapinto's Rolling Stone article,' Ambrose says. 'Basically, everything that I learned [about David Reimer] was from that article.' It also provided activists with a new entry point to the discussion on intersex issues. 'It gave tremendous context to people,' Ambrose says of the article. 'You could start using it as shorthand: the John/Joan case. You could start using that in presentations and conversations. You could actually start out by saying, 'Are you familiar with the John/Joan case?'' It was also right around that time when Ambrose first started telling his story in public. He moved to San Francisco and worked in a bookstore and as a bike messenger, while volunteering with the Intersex Society of North America. Ambrose began working with a team of doctors in Oakland who actually listened to him and took his medical needs seriously. 'At one point, I just said, 'I want this vaginoplasty out,'' he says. 'So I got that removed in an attempt to decolonize my own body.' Ambrose stopped taking estrogen around age 20. '[It was] an act of defiance, an act of rebellion, an act of 'fuck you,' he says. 'But the fallout is that when you castrate — or you rip out ovaries, or testes, or ovotestis, or reproductive organs — you medicalize a child for the rest of their life.' After three or four years without estrogen, a bone scan revealed that Ambrose had developed osteopenia — a precursor to osteoporosis. For the sake of his bones, his doctor told him he'd either have to start taking estrogen or testosterone. He chose testosterone. 'It was much less about 'I am a man now, and I am going to take testosterone, and my pronouns will be honored, and I will wear these clothes, and I'm going to tell everybody at work,'' he explains. 'It was much more about not going back on estrogen.' After several years on the frontlines fighting for the rights of intersex people, Ambrose started to burn out. 'I kept doing the public speaking and activism and writing and traveling and speaking and things like that,' he says. 'Then I kind of just hit a wall of inexplicable depression, and I really had to step away around 2015 and 2016, which really broke my heart.' Now, Ambrose is sharing his story again in The Secret of Me. When Hughes-Hallett learned of Ambrose's experience with the John/Joan Rolling Stone article, it solidified her plans to center the documentary on his story. 'The fact that Jim actually picked up a copy of Rolling Stone and learned about the John Money Story himself, as a storyteller, I was like, 'Oh, that's perfect, because then I don't need to crowbar that story in — it exists organically in Jim's journey,'' she says. In addition to hearing from Ambrose directly, the film features interviews with Colapinto, the urologist who performed Ambrose's surgery, intersex activists, and archival footage of Money, who died in 2006. When work on The Secret of Me began, Ambrose had been retired from activism for several years. 'When I was first approached by Grace, it was my understanding that there would be more people — that I'd be on the screen for five minutes as part of an ensemble,' he says. 'I still remember the phone call where Grace was like, 'We want the story to be you.' I remember thinking, 'Gosh, I would have said no if she had come to me right away.'' But then he started thinking. 'I work at a university with some pretty progressive people; I'm not going to lose my job,' Ambrose says. 'I have an incredibly supportive partner who I've been with for a long time, who knows me and loves me fiercely. I have a family that loves me and supports me. So I thought with all of this privilege, I'm obliged. If I have the opportunity to tell people my story, so they feel less alone in this world, then that's worth everything.' Hughes-Hallett believes that telling this story is especially important in the current political climate. 'I'm glad that this is coming out now and not last year, actually, for that reason, because it's even more important to get the message out there and to make sure people see this and understand what it's actually about,' she says. She hopes the film raises awareness of the surgeries performed on infants with DSD and their far-reaching implications. 'My ambition was to get create a narrative that was interesting and edge-of-your-seat and fast-paced enough to keep today's very distracted, impatient audience engaged for 90 minutes, and hide that education within that strong narrative, so that people leave thinking, 'Wow, I just watched a story that blew me away. And also, oh, wow, shit. Didn't know that. OK, I know that now,'' Hughes-Hallett says. Ultimately, Ambrose wants viewers to come away from the film with a better understanding of kids with DSD, knowing that there's nothing disordered or wrong about them. 'There's nothing about their bodies that threatens the world,' he says. 'There's nothing about their bodies that threatens themselves or their families. They are not problems or mistakes to be fixed. The intended erasure is damaging to the child, and to the families and the people that love them. Bodily autonomy and self-determination are subjects that are important to everyone, and when they're not honored — and when they're not addressed and respected — it destroys lives.' For more information on intersex issues, get in touch with interACT, an organization that works to empower intersex youth and advance the rights of all people with innate variations in their physical sex characteristics. Best of Rolling Stone Every Super Bowl Halftime Show, Ranked From Worst to Best The United States of Weed Gaming Levels Up
