‘Let Us Be’ Director Viviane D’Avilla Talks About Shining a Light on Intersex Rights in the U.S.: ‘Their Rights Are Being Taken Away’
Over a decade ago, Brazilian photographer and filmmaker Viviane D’Avilla traveled to India looking to develop a photography project based on the country’s culture and spirituality. There, she met memb
Over a decade ago, Brazilian photographer and filmmaker Viviane D’Avilla traveled to India looking to develop a photography project based on the count
Read Full Story at Variety →Why This Matters
The fight for intersex rights in the U.S. has long operated in the shadows of LGBTQ+ advocacy, often overshadowed by more visible battles for marriage equality or transgender protections. Viviane D’Avilla’s documentary *Let Us Be* challenges that silence by centering the lived experiences of intersex individuals—whose bodily autonomy is increasingly under siege in state legislatures and medical boardrooms. Her work underscores a disturbing reality: while public discourse fixates on binary gender progress, intersex people face systemic erasure, from forced surgeries on infants to legal attempts to redefine sex as strictly male or female.
Background Context
Intersex traits—affecting roughly 1.7% of the global population—have historically been medicalized rather than acknowledged as natural variations in human biology. In the U.S., the intersex rights movement gained traction in the 1990s, but progress stalled as broader queer and trans rights movements prioritized different priorities. Meanwhile, conservative lawmakers in states like Tennessee, Oklahoma, and Missouri have recently passed bills to restrict medical care for transgender youth, policies that often conflate intersex and transgender bodies under the same restrictive frameworks. The U.S. remains one of the few developed nations without explicit legal protections for intersex people.
What Happens Next
D’Avilla’s film arrives at a pivotal moment, as federal agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services consider new regulations that could either expand or contract protections for sex characteristics. Legal challenges to state-level bans on gender-affirming care may force courts to confront the distinctions—or lack thereof—between intersex and transgender bodily autonomy. Meanwhile, grassroots organizations like InterACT and the Intersex Justice Project are pushing for policy shifts, including bans on medically unnecessary surgeries on intersex infants, a practice the UN has condemned as a human rights violation.
Bigger Picture
Intersex rights are emerging as a critical front in the global backlash against bodily autonomy, mirroring patterns seen in attacks on reproductive rights and transgender healthcare. The framing of "protecting children" has become a pretext for stripping rights from marginalized groups, with intersex people caught in the crossfire of both medical paternalism and ideological warfare. Globally, countries like Malta and Portugal have led the way with intersex-inclusive legal
