Contemporary Authors

• Born Both: An Intersex Life Hachette Books (New York, NY), 2017

Library of Congress Online Catalog 1. Born both : an intersex life LCCN 2016030284 Type of material Book Personal name Viloria, Hida, author. Main title Born both : an intersex life / Hida Viloria. Edition First edition. Published/Produced New York : Hachette Books, 2017. Description viii, 339 pages ; 24 cm ISBN 9780316347846 (hardback) CALL NUMBER HQ77.98.V55 A3 2017 Copy 1 Request in Jefferson or Adams Building Reading Rooms

• author's site - http://hidaviloria.com/

  QUOTE:
  mission is to attain equality for intersex and non-binary people as part of a broader vision for a world that accepts and values difference of every kind.
  About

  “Hida Viloria, a voluble hermaphrodite with exquisite cheekbones, can pass effortlessly from ravishing femininity to sullen machismo. Having lived credibly as a woman and as a man, Hida… now seems happiest occupying ‘the middle ground’ between them.” — The New York Times

  “…a woman determined to change the way people with ambiguous gender are treated.”
  — Barbara Walters on Hida Viloria

  Hida (pronounced “Heeda”) Viloria is a queer, gender-fluid writer, speaker, author of the acclaimed Born Both: An Intersex Life, and activist who uses s/he and he/r pronouns. Hida is the founding director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality, and has been in the vanguard of intersex and non-binary activism as a frequent consultant (UN, Lambda Legal), speaker, television and radio guest (Oprah, 20/20, BBC…), and one the most extensively published intersex writers in the field (CNN.com, The Daily Beast, The NY Times, HuffPost, The Advocate, Ms., The American Journal of Bioethics…).
  Click here to see a full bibliography of Hida’s writing.

  Follow Viloria on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram at @hidaviloria.

  Hida’s mission is to attain equality for intersex and non-binary people as part of a broader vision for a world that accepts and values difference of every kind.

  For booking information, please see Hida’s most recent press update here.
  Long Bio

  Hida Viloria is a Latinx, gender fluid, intersex activist, writer and and author of the acclaimed memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life (March 2017, by Hatchette Book Group). Hida has a degree in Gender and Sexuality from the University of California at Berkeley, and has been educating people about intersex and non-binary issues since 1996, as a frequent lecturer, consultant (UN, Human Rights Watch, IOC) television and radio guest (HuffpostLive, Aljazeera, Oprah, 20/20, BBC, Inside Edition…), and in film (Gendernauts, One in 2000, Intersexion). Viloria is Chairperson of the Organization Intersex International (OII), and Founder and Executive Director of its U.S. affiliate, the Intersex Campaign for Equality, a.k.a. OII-USA. S/he has written about intersex issues in The Advocate, Ms., The New York Times, The American Journal of Bioethics, CNN.com, and others, in her blog Intersex and Out, and in the Oxford University Press college curriculum textbook, Queer: A Reader for Writers (2016).

  Viloria has also been a pioneer of what is today known as “non-binary” gender identity, speaking in 1999’s Gendernauts about living in the middle space between male and female genders, and stating on Oprah in 2007 that s/he is “both”, and that non-binary people shouldn’t be forced to choose between being men or women.

  In 2010, after garnering international support for South African track star Caster Semenya, who was banned from competition on suspicion of being intersex, Viloria served, by invitation, as the sole intersex representative at the International Olympic Committee’s meeting of experts in Lausanne, Switzerland. S/he successfully argued against the pathologization of intersex people through the use of the stigmatizing label Disorders of Sex Development (DSD) and joined in the multiple voices lobbying for the full inclusion of intersex female athletes– without mandatory, medically unnecessary “feminizing treatments”–in competitive sport.

  On Human Rights Day, 2012, s/he spearheaded the the first global demand for human rights by and for intersex people, as author of an open letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, signed by over 30 international intersex organizations.

  In 2013, Viloria created the resource Your Beautiful Child: Information for Parents, a one of a kind resource for parents of intersex infants which uses positive, non-stigmatizing language, and was selected and served as one of three intersex co-organizers of the Third International Intersex Forum, in Malta. The event culminated with the creation of the Public Statement of the Third International Intersex Forum, a.k.a the Malta Declaration, a consensus statement of human rights demands by the intersex community.

  On Human Rights Day 2013, December 10th, Hida’s pioneering human rights advocacy work was recognized with the honor of becoming the first openly intersex person to speak, by invitation, at the United Nations Headquarters in New York, for the event Sports Comes Out Against Homophobia with fellow “out” pioneers Martina Navratilova and Jason Collins.

  Throughout 2014-2016, Viloria continued to educate and advocate for intersex and non-binary people as a writer, lecturer and consultant. S/he was published widely online and in the books The Human Agenda: Conversations about Sexual Orientation & Gender Identity and the college freshman curriculum textbook Queer: A Reader for Writers, by Oxford University Press, and appeared in videos for Gender Talents, a web-based project that engages movements and discourses for gender self-determination within trans and intersex communities, and for the UN Free & Equal Campaign, in the video “What Does It Mean To Be Intersex?”

  Viloria consulted the UN Free & Equal Campaign on their groundbreaking publication the Intersex Fact Sheet. As E.D. of OII-USA, s/he educated Lambda Legal, the representatives in Intersex Campaign for Equality Associate Director Dana Zzyym’s historic lawsuit for federal gender recognition of a non-binary person on their passport. Viloria was also featured in the U.N.’s Intersex Awareness Day 2016 Campaign. In April 2017, s/he joined the movement for non-binary legal gender recognition by becoming the second American recipient of an intersex birth certificate.

  Hida holds a degree in Gender and Sexuality with high honors and high distinction from the University of California at Berkeley, and lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico with he/r partner and stepson.

• wikipedia - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hida_Viloria

  Hida Viloria
  Born May 1968 (age 49)
  New York City, New York, U.S.
  Residence Santa Fe, New Mexico
  Nationality American
  Occupation Author, Speaker, LGBTI Activist
  Known for Born Both: An Intersex Life; Pioneer in intersex and Non-binary activism

  Hida Viloria (born May 29, 1968) is a Latinx American writer,[1] intersex and non-binary rights activist, author of the memoir, Born Both: An Intersex Life, and Founding Director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality. Viloria uses the gender-neutral pronouns "s/he," "he/r," and "he/rs" to acknowledge he/r identity as an intersex, gender-fluid feminist of female upbringing.[citation needed]

  Contents

  1 Early life and education
  2 Career
  2.1 Opposing nonconsensual medically-unnecessary surgeries
  2.2 Opposing "Disorders of Sex Development"
  2.3 Addressing discrimination against intersex women in sports
  2.4 Birth registrations
  2.5 National and global affiliations and activism
  2.6 Media
  3 Selected bibliography
  3.1 Book reception
  4 Honors and awards
  5 References
  6 External links

  Early life and education

  Viloria was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York, to recently immigrated Colombian and Venezuelan parents. Her father, a physician, and mother, an ex-school teacher, chose to register and raise he/r as female without subjecting he/r to medically unnecessary cosmetic genital surgeries, also known as intersex genital mutilation (IGM), that were routinely recommended at the time for intersex children with genital variance like he/rs.[2]
  Career

  In 1996, Viloria participated in the first international intersex retreat. S/he reports that, eager to meet people like he/rself, instead s/he “met people who’d been traumatized and physically damaged by cosmetic genital surgeries and hormone treatments they’d been subjected to in infancy and childhood, and it moved me to become an intersex activist.”[3][4] In 1997, Viloria appeared in the first U.S. documentary about intersex people, Hermaphrodites Speak!,.[5]

  Viloria is the author of the acclaimed, Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hatchette Book Group, March, 2017), and has been published extensively on intersectional intersex issues such Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM), its harms, heteronormative imperatives and similarities to FGM, discrimination against intersex women in sports, racism, sexuality, legal gender recognition, and gender identity, in venues such as The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, The Advocate, Ms., The New York Times, The American Journal of Bioethics, the Global Herald, CNN.com, and others, and in her blog ''Intersex and Out.

  Viloria is also a recognized human rights activist who has educated extensively about intersex and non-binary gender issues as a frequent speaker (Stanford, Princeton, Vassar, NYU), consultant (United Nations OHCHR, United Nations Free & Equal Campaign, Lambda Legal, Human Rights Watch, Williams Institute, IOC...), television and radio guest (The Oprah Winfrey Show, HuffPost Live, 20/20, Aljazeera, BBC Radio, KPFA) and in film (Gendernauts, One in 2000, Intersexion), and s/he continues to advocate for equality and human rights for intersex and non-binary people as Chairperson of the Organisation Intersex International (OII), the world's first international intersex advocacy organization, and Founding Director of its American Affiliate OII-USA, a.k.a. the Intersex Campaign for Equality.
  Opposing nonconsensual medically-unnecessary surgeries

  Viloria has been advocating publicly against the use of medically unnecessary cosmetic surgeries and hormone therapy on intersex infants and minors, aka Intersex Genital Mutilation, since 1997,[6] reaching audiences of over forty million, most notably on ABC's 20/20,[7] ''The Oprah Winfrey Show'',[8] in Spanish on the Emmy nominated Spanish language show ''Caso Cerrado'',[9] and at the UN Headquarters in New York City for Human Rights Day 2013.

  In 2004, Viloria testified before the San Francisco Human Rights Commission in 2004, on the need to ban medically unnecessary cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex infants and children.[10]
  Opposing "Disorders of Sex Development"

  In 2006, the international medical establishment replaced the terms "hermaphrodite" and "intersex" with the term "disorders of sex development." Viloria is among a handful of American intersex activists[citation needed] who opposed the use of the term "Disorders of Sex Development" since its introduction. In 2007, s/he publicly critiqued the label and the homophobic and transphobic reasoning behind the replacement of 'intersex' with DSD.[citation needed] S/he also argued that being raised to define oneself as disordered is psychologically harmful to intersex youth:

  While some doctors and parents are, according to supporters of the term like Chase (co-author of the DSD Guidelines and founder and director of ISNA), more comfortable referring to us as having "disorders" than associating with a label supported by homosexuals and transsexuals, I do not believe adopting a pathologizing label to distance ourselves from these groups is a solution, to say the least.... I know that it would have harmed my self-esteem to be raised under a term which named my difference a 'disorder.' Even complete ignorance about what to call myself was preferable as I was able to form positive beliefs about my unique qualities."
  — Hida Viloria[11]

  Addressing discrimination against intersex women in sports

  In 2009, in response to the treatment of black South African track star Caster Semenya, who was rumored to be intersex, Hida lobbied as an independent intersex activist for equal rights for intersex female athletes on television [12] and in print on CNN.com.[13] In February 2010, as Human Rights Spokesperson of the Organisation Intersex International (OII), s/he authored a petition to the International Olympic Committee demanding that intersex women athletes to be allowed to compete as is, and be de-pathologized,.[14] The action resulted in Viloria being invited to participate in the International Olympic Committee’s October 2010 meeting of experts on intersex women in sports, in Lausanne, Switzerland, where s/he lobbied against adopting regulations which require intersex female athletes to undergo medically unnecessary medical procedures in order to compete as women, and against athletes being referred to as individuals with "disorders of sex development".[4] As a result of Viloria's advocacy, the IOC and IAAF discontinued its use of "disorders of sex development" to describe the athletes in question, and replaced it with "women with hyperandrogenism".[4]

  Viloria has argued since 2009 that Olympic sex testing is applied in a way that targets 'butch,' or masculine-looking, women.[15][16] In 2012, Viloria co-authored an article in the American Journal of Bioethics, with intersex Spanish hurdler Maria José Martínez-Patiño, the athlete responsible for overturning the IOC's long-standing mandatory chromosome testing policies, which critiqued the IOC's proposed regulations for women with high levels of naturally occurring testosterone (aka hyperandrogenism).[17] Upon the release of the I.O.C.'s final regulations for intersex women with hyperandrogenism in 2012, s/he collaborated on an opinion piece with scholar Georgiann Davis[18] and also told The New York Times that the issues for intersex athletes remain unresolved: "Many athletes have medical differences that give them a competitive edge but are not asked to have medical interventions to 'remove' the advantage.... The real issue is not fairness, but that certain athletes are not accepted as real women because of their appearance."[19]

  On Human Rights Day, 2013, Viloria became the first openly intersex person to speak at the U.N., by invitation, at the event "Sport Comes Out Against Homophobia", along with fellow "out" pioneers, tennis legend Martina Navratilova, and NBA player Jason Collins.[20][21]

  In 2014, Viloria advocated against the IOC and IAAF's regulations for women with hyperandrogenism on a panel on the Aljazeera television show The Stream.[22] S/he also wrote about the interphobia and common misunderstandings around naturally occurring testosterone which drive sporting regulations for intersex women, in The Advocate.[23]
  Birth registrations

  With the advent of a new German law assigning visibly intersex infants to an 'indeterminate' gender, Viloria has argued that this approach to birth registrations fails to provide adequate human rights for intersex people, and fails to address the most critical need: for an end to normalizing surgical and hormonal interventions on infants and children.[24][25][26]

  In April, 2017, Viloria became the second American recipient of an intersex birth certificate, issued by the city of New York.[27]
  National and global affiliations and activism

  In spring 2010, Viloria joined the Organisation Intersex International, or OII, the first international intersex organization, was appointed Human Rights Spokesperson, and began lobbying against discriminatory regulations for intersex women athletes. In Spring 2011, Viloria was voted Chairperson of OII, upon founder Curtis Hinkle's retirement.

  In the fall of 2011, Hida founded the American affiliate of OII, OII-USA, aka The Intersex Campaign for Equality, to work for equality and human rights for intersex Americans. He/r first action, in December, 2011, was contacting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to request inclusion of intersex people in human rights protocols and protections. In early 2012 s/he received a response from the U.S. Department of State in early 2012 affirming the importance of including the intersex community in human rights work[28]

  In 2012, Viloria spearheaded the first unified, global call for human rights by and for intersex people, in a letter signed by thirty leading intersex advocacy organizations, to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights .[29]

  In 2013, Viloria served as one of three intersex co-organizers of the Third International Intersex Forum in November 2013, in Malta, which led to the creation of the Malta declaration, the most widely agreed upon statement of human rights' demands by the international intersex advocacy community.[30]

  In 2016, Viloria became a board member of Genital Autonomy America (GA America), an advocacy organization working with groups worldwide who are seeking to end non-therapeutic genital cutting of all female, male, and intersex infants and children.
  Media

  Hida spoke about being non-binary, also known as genderqueer, in the groundbreaking, award winning 1999 documentary Gendernauts.[31]

  In 2007, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Viloria likened society's lack of understanding of non-binary people, and the pressure non-binary people experience to identify as men or women, to what people of mixed African-American and caucasian race sometimes experience, saying, "Society pressures you to choose sides, just like they pressure mixed race people to decide, you know... 'Are you really black? Are you really white?'" S/he went on to say "I have both [sides].".[32]

  In early 2015, s/he was featured in the web-based project Gender Talents, by artist Carlos Motta, in which s/he discusses the many harms produced by, and erroneous presumptions about, Intersex Genital Mutilation.[33] In September 2015, the UN's Free & Equal Campaign for Equality produced a video of Hida[34] in conjunction with the release of their groundbreaking resource the Intersex Fact Sheet,[35] and in 2016 Hida was one of the "Intersex Voices" featured in the Free and Equal Campaign for Equality's Intersex Awareness Campaign.[36] In addition, she has also advocated against Intersex Genital Mutilation via essays,[37][38][39] and in he/r memoir Born Both: An Intersex LIfe.[40]
  Selected bibliography

  Viloria, Hida. Born Both. Hatchette Book Group. ISBN 9781478940715.
  Viloria, Hida (2016). "What's In A Name: Intersex and Identity". In Schneiderman, Jason. Queer: A Reader for Writers. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190277109.
  Viloria, Hida (2015). "Promoting Health and Social Progress by Accepting and Depathologizing Benign Intersex Traits". Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics. Volume 5, Number 2: 114–117.
  Viloria, Hida Patricia; Martínez-Patiño, Maria José (July 2012). "Reexamining Rationales of “Fairness”: An Athlete and Insider's Perspective on the New Policies on Hyperandrogenism in Elite Female Athletes". The American Journal of Bioethics. 12 (7): 17–19. ISSN 1526-5161. doi:10.1080/15265161.2012.680543.
  Viloria, Hida (May 16, 2013). "Your Beautiful Child: Information for Parents" (PDF). OII-USA.

  Book reception

  In January 2017, Kirkus reviewed the memoir saying: "Intelligent and courageous, [Born Both] chronicles one intersex person's path to wholeness, but it also affirms the right of all intersex and non-binary people to receive dignity and respect".[41] In May 2017, The New York Times reviewed Born Both, saying: “Viloria does us the even greater service (it’s more of a gift, really) of showing us what it means to live not just as both a man and a woman but also as a third gender that eventually emerges as the right one.”[42]
  Honors and awards

  In April, 2013, Viloria's intersex advocacy organization OII-USA was selected as a finalist for the Kalamazoo College Global Prize for Collaborative Social Justice, administered by Kalamazoo College's Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Viloria's memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life was selected by Bustle (magazine) as one of "The 20 Best Non-fiction Books Coming in March 2017",[43] and as one of six books in People magazine's "The Best New Books" list in April, 2017.[44]

• facebook - https://www.facebook.com/hidaviloria/

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  Queer, gender-fluid, Latinx Intersex author and activist. s/he and he/r pronouns (pronounced she/her)... for now!

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  Born Both: An Intersex Life. http://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hida-viloria/born-both/9780316347846/
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  Intersex Latinx writer, speaker, activist & author; https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/hida-viloria/born-both/9780316347846/. Founding director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality, aka OII-USA { S/he * Her/r } Gender-fluid left handed hermpahrodyke from Queens. #BornBoth #IntersexPositive♥

• rollingstone - http://www.rollingstone.com/culture/intersex-activist-hida-viloria-on-being-born-both-w472894

  Intersex Activist and Writer Hida Viloria on Being 'Born Both'

  "One of the biggest challenges I think we have is that our culture is very shy and prudish about talking about genitals," Viloria says
  "Everyone benefits from accepting intersex people. Literally," says Hida Viloria. Courtesy of Hachette Book Group
  By Larissa Pham
  March 20, 2017

  As a young child changing into a swimsuit at the pool, Hida Viloria first noticed that other girls looked different "down there." From this moment, more personal revelations ensued, some funny, some poignant – and all leading to the realization that Viloria was intersex: one of thousands of babies born each year with physical sex characteristics that don't fit stereotypical definitions of male and female.
  Related
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  It was supposed to be the first transgender-rights case to make it to the nation's highest court – so what happens now?

  After connecting with fellow intersex people – who are as common as redheads – Viloria attended the first-ever intersex conference. After learning that intersex babies with indeterminate genitalia were being subjected to surgeries, often leaving them with pain, body dysphoria, and difficulty experiencing sexual pleasure as adults, Viloria was determined to end these surgeries and provide a better future for the intersex youth of the future.

  This personal story and a wealth of history around the intersex movement, begins Viloria's memoir, Born Both, which is simultaneously the story of a personal journey, a chronicle of an activist's work, and a depiction of a movement. Viloria, who escaped medical intervention, uses "s/he" and "he/r" pronouns as an acknowledgment of he/r feminist upbringing and to honor her genderfluid identity. In Born Both, through Viloria's revelations around sex, gender and presentation, we gain an evolving understanding of the movement and what it means to be intersex – both publicly as an activist and on a deeply personal level.

  On the phone, Viloria is trying to remember a Prince lyric. After a moment, s/he gets it: "I'm not a woman, I'm not a man, I’m something you'll never understand."

  "Make sure you put that in!" s/he says, laughing.

  Rolling Stone spoke on the morning of Born Both's pub day to talk about Prince, language, activism, love and self-discovery.
  Hida Viloria

  In the book, you talk a lot about the importance of narratives and language; could you could speak to that a little bit more?
  I think that language is a lot more important than people really give it credit for. People are becoming more aware of its importance, with what's going on politically and what they see in the press – all this spinning of the truth.

  Oh, absolutely. Now more than ever.
  Right? And I think that the one good thing about that is it's making people aware of exactly how important language is for a species like ours that uses it constantly. We've gotten into a position where there's so much division in our culture and our society, and I think that a lot of that could be avoided if people were more careful and precise with their language and really kept in mind what they're trying to say when they say things.

  For people that are marginalized – I think this happens especially for trans people – people say things that don't take them into account, and inadvertently either devalue who they are or devalue their existence or reality. Picking words so that everyone is affirmed is a lot easier to do than we realize.

  When you're writing about your first appearances in the media, you talk about being anxious about representing your entire community, as not every intersex person feels the way about their body or identity the way you do. That's a real struggle in activism, so how did you go about that? Who do you appeal to? How do you represent yourself?
  One of the things that I've always kept in mind which I think has been very helpful as an activist is: Who is my audience? The people that I was trying to appeal to were conservative parents, especially in those early appearances.

  My goal was that a parent who might have recently had an intersex child or have one in the future would see my interview and think, "Oh, being intersex is fine and this person has been able to grow up happy and successful and feel good about themselves. There's no reason I have to cut up my child's body in this non-consensual, irreversible way. I'll just let them grow up and decide later on if they want to change anything about their body, the way most people get to decide."

  With that goal in mind, there were certain things that I chose to speak about instead of others. There were ways that I chose to dress instead of others. I think that keeping your goal in mind is the most important aspect, because there are points that we could make that will be missed if we're saying them to the wrong people.

  That's so true. Though throughout your attempt to appeal to really conservative parents, you never conformed to either side of a gender binary.
  You know, it's funny because I didn't realize until much later – in fact, until kind of recently – that that was a notable thing. I just did it because I felt that if I'm going to be advocating for human rights and equality for intersex people, I needed to really be very honest about the fact that, as an intersex person, I felt neither male nor female.

  It was such a given for me, especially growing up as a person that experienced a lot of racism as a child, which most people are surprised about, because I'm pretty pale. I grew up with a family with really thick accents; we were obviously not American and we weren't white in the way that the people in our neighborhood were white, and I learned very early on that you can't try to escape discrimination by pretending you're something that you're not.

  That is a tough lesson.
  Right? I know! And I would see people doing it all the time, all the other Latinxs saying, "Oh, we're from Spain!" And I was thinking, "Please! You're from Ecuador, you're from Peru!” They were literally lying just to try to be whiter. And I really didn't like that. I just didn't respect it because I thought, "Oh, okay. So you're throwing everyone else under the bus? You're just gonna pretend you're not what you are so you can get white approval and try to assimilate into a white community?"

  So when it came to finding out I was intersex, and I saw how all these surgeries happened because of the idea that everyone has to be either a man or a woman, I thought, "Well, I have tried to pick my 'true gender,' and the truth is they are both me." There was really no community around that and even in the intersex community it was still stigmatized, but I just felt there was no way I could hide it. In the same way that I wasn't going to pretend that I was white and not Latinx, I couldn't pretend that I was binary just to try to escape this.

  Racism has a huge impact on activism in general, on how it happens and who is advocated for. I was hoping you'd elaborate a little bit more about that.
  I think that people have traditionally been very defensive about just the notion of racism, especially in activist settings. If it gets brought up, what I've seen is a lot of denial and backpedaling from white people, to the point where the focus is lost. My approach has been like Michelle Obama's "When they go low, we go high." They go low, I work harder. They push us out, I push myself back in even harder. The only thing that's gonna change this dynamic is for people of color to make ourselves part of the conversation.

  As uncomfortable as it is, as difficult as it is, as painful as it might be at times because we'll get portrayed as divisive or critical, and even further marginalized… if we dare to speak out, we just have to keep going. When I see people like Laverne Cox and Janet Mock getting their voices out there, it makes me so happy because it's change that I've been wanting to see. For me to have my memoir, the first memoir from a big four publisher by an intersex person, and to know that all these themes of racism are in there because of my Latinx identity, it's the most fulfilling thing that I could have asked for.

  The idea of non-binary as an identity feels really expansive. It seems like whenever social climates change, norms change and that affects how we identify. People who are in high school now have access to this language that I never had, so they're expressing themselves in ways that are truer to themselves than I could have, when I was younger.
  I lecture at universities pretty frequently and one person approached shyly and said, "Wow, it's kind of incredible to see you because I saw you back in '99 when I was young." They said that I really helped them to begin to look at gender entirely differently, that they began to think, "Oh, I actually can contextualize myself as both." And that was a really deep and beautiful moment for me because I realized that in being authentic to who I was, especially early on, helped and supported other people for being themselves.

  I've heard adults my age talk about their concerns with how many young people are identifying as nonbinary, and there's usually a sadness from women that a lot of young women seem to be discarding their female identity. I understand that as someone who grew up in an incredibly sexist home and wanted to embrace being an empowered, feminist woman. But I get it when I think about what's going on culturally. I think it started in the 80s with the Reagan years. After having this fluid era, with Prince and Bowie, things got kind of conservative, and things got very binary in terms of gender expression. I think if I was a youth growing up today I might look at that highly gendered adult structure in mainstream society and be like, “Forget that! I'm not any of those things. I'm not buying into any of those ridiculous stereotypes, and I don't even know why they exist!”

  The subject of romantic love is a huge part of the book in a subtle way. You talk about desirability and attractiveness in connection to being intersex, and pushing against the stigma that different kinds of bodies are somehow undesirable.Your depiction of struggling with romantic love is so honest. What was your motivation for incorporating it into the book in the way you did?
  My motivation is that I think love is an issue that is critical to intersex people. An enormous part of the reason that we face the human rights violations that we do, such as intersex genital mutilations, is that people have these misconceptions that intersex people can't be loved.

  When you start to talk to parents, their main concern around having an intersex child who has a visibly intersex body is, "Who will love my child? Will my child be lovable?" And different doctors and psychologists and other stakeholders have decided that "No. It would be very difficult for an intersex person to find love," and honestly, I think that is so far from the truth. One of my oldest friends actually said to me during some of my struggles that she thought that my biggest challenge around love was that because I was so fluid in my presentation, I appealed to so many people and it made it hard for me to choose and make the right choices. [Laughs] So that's funny, right? And that's pretty much the opposite of what people like to speculate around being intersex.

  In fact, the end of the book was a bit of a risk for me. I put in the relationship I was in, which felt like the true love that I had always been searching for, even though it was new at the time. And now I will share that there is a happy ending, because I am actually now with the person that the book ended with, and we're committed, and I've never been happier, or felt more at peace and stable and content and deeply full of joy as I do.

  That is so wonderful to hear.
  Yeah, and I think that I really needed to believe that I could have this. For different reasons not really related to being intersex, but more related to having grown up with a lesbian identity. I had absorbed this belief – and I hadn't even realized that I had absorbed it – that love was going to be unattainable for me because I wasn't straight. It's only when I realized that and then discarded that and really embraced that I wanted love and I deserved it, and I believed I could have it, deep down in my soul, that it came. And it actually came very quickly after that.

  That's the secret.
  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

  Toward the end of the book, you get into all of the legal work happening right now. Issues around protections for specific people have come up again, most recently in these bathroom bills. Do you have any advice for activists and young people who are dealing with these issues?
  I think that the bathroom laws are going to be brought down by intersex people. The existence of intersex people is very helpful in this bathroom debate because you have intersex people all the time using restrooms. I've been using restrooms for over two decades that don’t match the gender on my birth certificate or the reproductive organs that I have!

  My advice to activists and young people is to start talking about intersex people because if intersex people were welcomed and acknowledged from the beginning, transphobia and homophobia would not even be a thing. You can't have these binary, transphobic and homophobic attitudes when you realize that biological sex comes in a multitude of categories and expressions. If intersex people, if we had been known about, these anti-trans bathroom bills would have never been drafted.

  The whole structure of things would be different, outside of a binary.
  Exactly. And yet, you know, sadly, there is an aversion, even within alternative communities, to really embracing that intersex people exist and are out there. Everybody knows an intersex person, they just don't realize it because that person hasn't shared it with them. I don't think that we should learn anything about men and women or males or females without learning about intersex people. All of this is just an illusion. This binary model of sex and gender is in fact an illusion that was set up centuries ago to subjugate people.

  Talking about intersex people is very difficult for people. I think they're afraid of getting it wrong for sure. But I think there is still this real prudishness around talking about it even though everyone has parts, and everyone is different but there is a real taboo, still, about talking about genitalia and talking about different manifestations of human sex.
  I think that one of the biggest challenges I think we have is that our culture is very shy and prudish about talking about genitals. And trans people should be able to say, it's none of your business what's between my legs. Yet for me to educate about who I am and how I'm intersex, I have to talk about what's between my legs, right? I have to demystify that, and that's what I've been doing, and it's a taboo topic.

  Even within the intersex community, I've noticed that there is a lot of focus on people who have typical genitals but just have these differences in chromosomes. However, let's not forget those of us who are most marginalized. The whole intersex movement was started by people who were born with genital variance and had been subjected to surgeries to try to make them more male or female. Those are the intersex people, still, who are suffering the most—vulnerable babies who are born with genital variance and run the risk of being irreversibly cut up.

  Despite that fact there is this real prudishness about just talking about it, I think again that it will change. I think that that is just something left over from our puritan cultural narrative.

  And acceptance of intersex traits will allow for more awareness and more variance in whatever is medically classified as normal.
  Everyone benefits from accepting intersex people. Literally.

  What's next for you?
  I'm going to be kind of shifting my focus to be specifically about creating protections for adults. Initially, we've been fighting to end these surgeries, right? Because it's so harmful. However, the movement as a whole hasn't been addressing what it's like to be an adult with an intact intersex body. But you can't ask parents or other stakeholders to stop operating all of a sudden without creating a safe world in which to be intersex, right?

  So, my next focus is going to be on addressing the TSA body scanner issue. I think that's a real potential pathway for gaining this recognition for sex discrimination that intersex adults experience. The scanners literally check the body for male or female genitals, so if you have neither, you're being singled out and treated differently just because they didn't create an inclusive system. If I'm being singled out just because of the body I was born with, that is sex discrimination. Pure and simple. So I think that's a really strong avenue for legal protections.

  I'm really excited about the future, honestly, because I think that there's a lot of ways that intersex oppression can be addressed and is going to be addressed and that's going to help the whole human species.

• santa fe new mexican - http://www.santafenewmexican.com/pasatiempo/books/readings_signings/born-this-way-intersex-author-hida-viloria/article_480d8771-13c8-5ee4-8c96-1c9b6ad45742.html

  QUOTE:
  I think part of the reason that people have a problem with intersex is that they don’t like complicated issues. Everyone has a very individual gender expression and gender identity. Some people don’t allow for that; they marginalize anyone who falls outside the binary system. But not all trans people have the same experience; not all intersex people have the same experience; not even all women have the same experience
  Born this way: Intersex author Hida Viloria

  Jennifer Levin Mar 24, 2017 (…)

  Viloria

  Hida Viloria

  As legislatures around the United States debate the use of public restrooms by transgendered people, there is a population with a vested interest that is usually left out of the conversation: intersex people — those born with male and female sex traits. Though policies are slowly beginning to change on this front, there is no official intersex-gender designation in the U.S., so babies are declared male or female at birth according to their most defining external sexual characteristics. Medical protocol since the middle part of the 20th century has been to operate on newborns in order to “normalize” their genitalia if it is considered too ambiguous to assign a gender. Intersex activists refer to the surgery as infant genital mutilation, or IGM, and consider it a devastation that does not help most intersex people adapt to a binary gender in the long run. Even when they are not told the truth about themselves as children, they always feel that something is different. In adulthood, the effects of surgery can mean sex is at best unsatisfying or at worst painful. It is ultimately the parents’ decision whether or not they allow doctors to operate. In recent years, as more intersex adults have stepped out of the shadows to object to what was done to them, some families are choosing to keep their intersex children’s genitalia intact.

  Hida Viloria is intersex and has no qualms about being called a hermaphrodite, a term that fell out of fashion long ago because it was generally considered derogatory. But with features that don’t read as either completely male or totally female, Viloria is likely to be taken for either a man or a woman on any given day — and that is perfectly acceptable. “I am truly gender-fluid, so whatever someone perceives me as is fine. That’s the gender expression that I’m giving to the world,” Viloria told Pasatiempo.

  Viloria, whose first name is pronounced “Heeda,” was raised as a girl in Queens, New York, and did not find out that intersex people existed until the age of twenty. Now, at forty-nine, even as the gender-neutral pronoun “they” has come into somewhat common usage for many people who identify as transgender or gender-queer, Viloria prefers “s/he” and “he/r.” Pronounced aloud as “she” and “her,” these options account for he/r childhood and female socialization while appearing clearly intersex when written out — yet they do not present significant confusion on the page, a sticking point for he/r as a writer. Viloria, who moved to Santa Fe nine months ago after decades of living in California, is the author of the memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life, published recently by Hachette Books. Viloria reads from and discusses Born Both at Collected Works Bookstore on Saturday, March 25.

  Possibly because he/r father is a doctor and his training was in Colombia in the years before IGM became standard practice in the United States, Viloria was never operated on, nor was s/he given hormones at puberty to push her body in one direction or another. As a prominent activist at the forefront of the intersex visibility movement since the 1990s, and the founder of the Intersex Campaign for Equality (the American affiliate of the Organization Intersex International), s/he is comfortable speaking openly about the physical logistics of being intersex.

  Viloria knew s/he was a lesbian from an early age. When s/he became sexually active, more than one woman suggested that s/he might be a hermaphrodite, but none of her sexual partners — man or woman — ever became angry with he/r or refused to have sex. If anything, Viloria’s sex life has been especially robust. Born Both offers numerous anecdotes about dating and intimacy as well as the story on he/r three weeks working in a peep show, where male customers were not at all put off by what they saw through the little window. Viloria made several excursions to the Burning Man gathering in Nevada, where s/he would dance furiously for days on end, stopping once in a while to sleep or eat, feeling free there to fully express androgyny. S/he made successful rounds of the television talk-show circuit at a time when LGBT topics were often presented as a kind of lurid societal underbelly. Later the budding writer appeared on 20/20 and the Oprah Winfrey Show and eventually began writing articles and essays about being intersex. Invariably, Viloria is told by interviewers how well-adjusted she seems — not just as an intersex person, but in general — s/he comes across as remarkably happy and easygoing.

  “The person who promoted the use of ‘normalizing surgery,’ Dr. John Money, was a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in the 1950s and ’60s,” Viloria said. “His doctoral dissertation was a study of 200 intersex adults — and he found that intersex adults had less psychopathology than non-intersex adults. He found that we are psychologically healthier. It’s ironic that he went on to promote the idea of ‘fixing’ us. However, his research remains.”

  Viloria has been questioned about he/r gender in women’s restrooms, even though s/he is legally a woman. Men’s rooms are only an option if they have private stalls. Either way, there are people who will believe s/he isn’t where s/he is supposed to be. When Viloria was first getting involved with the intersex community, s/he was surprised to encounter pressure there to choose a gender identity. S/he experienced some similar tensions in the lesbian community when it came to gender expression — potential partners wanted either a femme or a butch woman. It was in the trans community that Viloria found a sort of acceptance, despite not being trans, but even there the issues can become so binary that s/he feels squeezed out.

  “I think part of the reason that people have a problem with intersex is that they don’t like complicated issues. Everyone has a very individual gender expression and gender identity. Some people don’t allow for that; they marginalize anyone who falls outside the binary system. But not all trans people have the same experience; not all intersex people have the same experience; not even all women have the same experience,” Viloria said. “I like that ‘queer’ has become a label. It’s perfect for me. I’ve had people in presentations ask me how I can be a lesbian if I’m intersex, and I understand what they’re asking, but I think we can have multiple labels.”

  Intersex people make up about 1.7 percent of the population; they are nearly as common as redheads. Viloria accepts that humans have an innate instinct to identify and categorize their environment and that it is natural for people to try to figure out if s/he is a man or a woman. A third gender designation for birth certificates and driver’s licenses— and a generation or so of education around it — would go far toward solving the problem of people’s discomfort or confusion. To that end, last year New York State issued the first intersex birth certificate in the country to an intersex adult, and because that is where s/he was born, Viloria has applied for he/rs. “I think the propensity to assess someone’s gender is hard-wired, because I see children do it constantly. I’ve had children ask me about my gender, and when I am allowed to explain intersex to them, they incorporate it so quickly it’s almost shocking. It is more confusing to them if I say I am a boy or I am a girl than if I say I’m a boy-girl, because that’s what matches the reality in front of their faces.”

• daily princetonian - http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2016/04/q-a-hida-viloria-intersex-activist

  QUOTE:
  I would like students to make sure to mention intersex people every time they talk about sex and gender. I don’t think the words “male” or “female” or “man” or “woman” should ever be uttered without including intersex people in that conversation. And I think just by simply doing that, students can be involved in changing the world and helping societies currently most oppressed in visible communities.
  Q & A: Hida Viloria, Intersex activist
  By Rachel Glenn | Apr 21, 2016

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  Hida Viloria, a Latinx intersex writer and activist, gave a lecture titled "'Sex' is Complicated: Intersectionality and Intersex Human Rights, Identity, and Discourse" on Thursday. S/he is also the author of "Born Both," which will be published in 2017. Viloria sat down with The Daily Princetonian immediately following the lecture to talk about he/r lifelong work as an intersex advocate.

  The Daily Princetonian:To start off, you were talking about how many intersex infants are subject to surgeries to change their identity to become either male or female. Could you tell me a little bit more about this surgery, what indicators make doctors and parents decide to do it, and your thoughts on parents deciding to do it?

  Hida Viloria: Sure. Typically, ambiguous genitalia are the first thing that will tip off a parent. There are other ways to detect certain variations in utero as well, but if a baby is born with the body, and it will be a phallus, which is the gender-neutral term. So, either a clitoris that is considered too large or a penis that is considered too small — this sets off the alarms. “How do we gender this child? How do we sex this child, more specifically?” Sex of the baby has immediate gender implications, right? That’s why in first world countries, where sexism isn’t as strong, it’s considered okay to make the baby a female.

  But in third world countries, where sexism is stronger, we find that they actually do procedures to try to raise the baby as male. So that happens. And, typically, I feel that parents are very vulnerable after birth. I know this from knowing many parents now as I’ve gotten older. They are tired. They’ve been nervous. It’s scary to give birth in general, and that moment when it’s done is that moment they’ve been waiting for nine months. So, if they’re presented with something negative at that time, it has a really, stronger than usual, impact.

  And language has such a strong impact. A simple change in language on how an intersex birth is presented could make all the difference. I feel that all a doctor would need to say is, “You have a healthy baby. They are born with a variance in sex characteristics.” And the parents would go, “What do you mean, a variance in sex characteristics?” “Well, their genitals have a variance. It’s common. It’s as common as having red hair. There are many different options.”

  We’ve found that adults can grow up very healthy and normal with genital variance. I personally would not recommend the surgery, but just knowing the way that medicine is right now, and even with the advent of surgeries becoming more popular because of the trans community, I feel that people would want to present that option more. And so you could say, “There is the possibility of altering the genitals. However, there are very serious health risks involved. We recommend not doing that because you don’t know, nobody knows, what gender their child is going to grow up. We recommend letting them grow up with the body they have. They appear to be more male than female.” And so, I just feel like it could easily be presented in a way that would calm parents down rather than create chaos and worry and fears about their future. So I think that’s really what happens to parents. If a doctor says there is something wrong with them, and from what I’ve heard from all the parents I speak to, who are being told there is something wrong with their child, they’re not doctors, they don’t know.

  And unlike my family, where my father was a doctor so they had to be very honest with him, and he also had his own medical knowledge to know what would be best for me, most parents are completely dependent on their doctors’ opinions. Most people, actually, especially people from low socioeconomic backgrounds, don’t even get second opinions.

  So they are really completely vulnerable to whatever the doctor recommends, and I’ve heard so many stories of parents whose gut told them not to do it, but they were slowly convinced to do it and so I think that’s really what happens. I think that as parents become more educated, we are going to see a steep decline. We already see a steep decline in circumcision which has none of the extreme negative health impacts and that’s already about 50-50 apparently, according to some recent reports, in terms of people not circumcising anymore. It’s just about education that that happened. So I think the same thing would happen but I think we really need visibility because if there is not an adult, visible intersex community, parents will feel like, what can their child grow up to be? I think that’s probably the biggest obstacle for parents. It used to be the biggest obstacle for parents of gay and lesbian children. There just wasn’t a way to be an open gay or lesbian person, so if their child was gay or lesbian it was like, we have to hide that. We are now facing that same kind of treatment.”

  DP: So in the media and today’s society, the terms “intersex” and “genderqueer” are often used almost interchangeably. How would you relate these two terms?

  HV: Well I think there’s a huge connection between the genderqueer community and the intersex community. I actually personally don’t see them connected as often as I would like, but I just think it’s important to constantly be clear and I think that when things are presented clearly, people are actually able to understand them. For example, people are able to grasp the difference between trans and LGB people even though they’re part of the same acronym. We’ve been able to easily understand that there are different issues involved.

  So I think in the same way people can understand that intersex means you are born with certain physical characteristics and your gender identity will develop into whatever it develops into. Genderqueer means specifically that it doesn’t necessitate being intersex.

  DP: What would you say that your sexuality has taught you about your life thus far?

  HV: Wow, [laughs] that’s a big-time question. How do I give you a concise answer…well, I can think of a few things…my sexuality has taught me that people are actually a lot more open-minded and accepting than we often portray them to be. Bottom line. I’ve had almost no negative reactions to my very noticeably ambiguous genitalia. And in fact, I would say that it’s enhanced my sex life. And my long-term friends of many decades wouldn’t have said the same. They’ve actually told me before I met my partner that my biggest problem was that too many people were attracted to me. Because being intersex meant for me — and obviously not all intersex people — but because of my androgynous gender presentation, I would have men and women and all sorts of people attracted to me. And I’m very open-minded, so it became very difficult for me to choose. So what I would honestly say is that people just fall in love with people. The best thing is if the person they fall in love with can enjoy sexual relations with them. So that’s not going to happen if the person has had their sexual capacity diminished.

  DP: What do you believe that you need to be best supported in this society, and in addition to that, in what ways can Princeton specifically and other Universities address “interphobia” and other connected forms of discrimination?

  HV: I think we need additional materials and dialogue to be constantly utilized. I know that it’s harder, but we see for example a lot of Scandinavian countries that have had a lot of progress with issues of sexism and homophobia. But people that I know from these countries argue that it’s easier because it’s such a homogenous society. Until recently they have not been dealing with too many issues of ethnic diversity, so in a way they can just focus on this one issue. So it is easier to be a homogenous culture, but I would argue it’s a less rich culture than one that embraces diversity. And I think that humans are intelligent enough to really embrace and acknowledge all humans. I don’t think we have to erase certain identities.

  DP: So, I’m aware that you’re the author of “Born Both,” to be released in 2017. Would you be able to explain just a little of what your book is about?

  HV: It’s mainly about my journey to embrace an identity that isn’t supposed to exist and I wasn’t supposed to be. And throughout that journey there’s a lot that gets revealed about sexuality, about gender identity, about how people from marginalized communities can exist in a very healthy and successful way. And that’s the short of it. I’m very excited for it to come out!

  DP: Absolutely, that is so exciting! So do you have any other comments that you would like students to know?

  HV: Sure, I guess to reiterate what I said in the lecture, I would like students to make sure to mention intersex people every time they talk about sex and gender. I don’t think the words “male” or “female” or “man” or “woman” should ever be uttered without including intersex people in that conversation. And I think just by simply doing that, students can be involved in changing the world and helping societies currently most oppressed in visible communities.

• CNN.com - http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/09/18/hida.viloria.intersex.athlete/index.html

  QUOTE:
  I was raised in a strict Catholic home, where nudity and sex talk was unheard of, so having no one to compare my genitals to, I was unaware that mine were different.

  I'm very lucky to have escaped the "corrective" surgeries and/or hormone treatments that are the norm for intersex infants, because my father went to medical school before these practices began (in the mid-late '50's), and knew that you shouldn't operate on a baby unless it's absolutely necessary.
  Commentary: My life as a 'Mighty Hermaphrodite'
  STORY HIGHLIGHTS
  Intersex writer Hida Viloria shares her experience of growing up intersex
  Viloria: I found out at age of 26 I was intersex, I think I'm a different kind of woman
  Viloria: Since then, I've been outing myself as intersex just to let folks know we exist
  updated 8:57 a.m. EDT, Fri September 18, 2009
  Next Article in Health »

  By Hida Viloria
  Special to CNN
  Decrease font Enlarge font
  Hida Viloria is a writer who holds a degree in Gender and Sexuality from U.C. Berkeley. She is also an activist for intersex people -- (formerly known as hermaphrodites) Her memoir "Mighty Hermaphrodite" will be published next spring.

  SAN FRANCISCO, California (CNN) -- A lot of people have been outraged by the gender verification testing that South African athlete Caster Semenya has been put through, and have been trying to be supportive of her; but in doing so, they often further prejudice against the very thing which she appears to be: intersex.

  Hida Viloria says she looks forward to a day when intersex conditions like hers are widely accepted.
  Hida Viloria says she looks forward to a day when intersex conditions like hers are widely accepted.

  Intersex people (formerly known as hermaphrodites) are those born with bodies that are difficult to classify as either "male" or "female."

  Since results of Semenya's tests were apparently leaked, it seems that her body doesn't conform to the definition of "female" as one who has ovaries.

  I'm intersex because, while I have ovaries, menstruate and can get pregnant, my genitalia is somewhat male-looking (simply put, I have a clitoris that's much larger than average.)

  Throughout my childhood, I never thought I was anything other than "female" because that's what I was labeled and raised as. While I felt more aggressive than other girls, I didn't think that anything other than male and female could exist. So I just thought of myself as a "different kind of woman." Ultimately, my assessment was pretty accurate.

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  I was raised in a strict Catholic home, where nudity and sex talk was unheard of, so having no one to compare my genitals to, I was unaware that mine were different.

  I'm very lucky to have escaped the "corrective" surgeries and/or hormone treatments that are the norm for intersex infants, because my father went to medical school before these practices began (in the mid-late '50's), and knew that you shouldn't operate on a baby unless it's absolutely necessary.

  Later, when he wanted to give me estrogen pills at puberty to ensure that my body "feminized" (he told me that the pills were to make me grow taller), my mother objected, saying it was experimental and that I didn't need it. Thankfully, she won out.

  Thus, no one ever told me there was anything wrong with my body (that didn't happen until a gynecological visit when I was twenty), and I grew up loving it just the way it is. I still do. While many doctors would refer to my clitoris as "grossly enlarged," I have to tell you, having an overabundance of the only organ in the human body whose sole purpose is pleasure is far from a negative thing!

  Don't Miss
  Semenya intersex claims
  What is intersex?
  I came of age sexually with my second boyfriend in high school. I broke up with him because I knew that I preferred girls, but I couldn't act on it yet. Once I did, in college, it confirmed that girls were what I'd always longed for, and it was then that I realized how much my body differed from theirs.' Still, I had no name for my difference.

  At the age of twenty-six, I finally discovered I was "intersex" from a newspaper article. Fortunately, it was not about me specifically but about intersex in general, and I'm glad that I, unlike Semenya, had time to process the information and come out about it when I was ready to. I still had other issues I was dealing with -- namely: racism and homophobia -- so it took a year for me to embrace this additional minority status.

  Once I did, it was a positive turning point. I'd always felt strongly masculine and feminine, and now it made sense why these two presumably "opposite" traits existed, in me, side by side. I didn't think being intersex was a bad thing to be. I'd already learned that people can be prejudiced against things they're unfamiliar with, or are taught to dislike, and that we shouldn't take on their bigotry.

  On April 19, 2002, I appeared on the television news program "20/20" with a prominent urologist and "expert" on intersex conditions. When asked why he supported "corrective surgeries" he answered, "Society can't accept people of different colors, and now we're supposed to accept somebody with genitalia that don't match what their gender is? I do not believe this society is ready for it."

  Intersex folks are not some new invention that people need to be "ready for:" we exist and always have. Resistance to accepting us has created the mess that Semenya now finds herself in. If medicine had been more upfront about intersex conditions rather than pretending they're just male and female as usual, they could have avoided ruining the career of some athletes.

  Whichever condition Caster Semenya has, she shouldn't be made to suffer for others' mistakes. Since infancy, she's been legally labeled, raised, and accepted as female. To be told that she can't compete as one now would be like being a U.S. citizen all your life, but being suddenly denied a passport because somebody decided that the city you were born in is actually, sorry, on the wrong side of the border.

  For thirteen years I've been outing myself as intersex just to let folks know we exist, and I'm happy to say I've seen progress. I look forward to one day telling my god-daughter about how it used to be for us, and to hearing her say, "Wow, I can't believe some people had problems accepting intersex. Humans can be so weird." E-mail to a friend E-mail to a friend | Mixx it | Share

QUOTE:
Intelligent and courageous, the author's book chronicles one intersex person's path to wholeness, but it also affirms the right of all intersex and nonbinary people to receive dignity and respect. A relentlessly honest and revealing
Viloria, Hida: BORN BOTH
(Feb. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Viloria, Hida BORN BOTH Hachette (Adult Nonfiction) $27.00 3, 14 ISBN: 978-0-316-34784-6

A noted intersex activist tells the inspiring story of her struggles living as a lesbian hermaphrodite.Until she was 20 years old, Viloria lived her life as a female. But when a doctor said that the size of her clitoris "just [wasn't] normal" and asked to run tests on her, Viloria began to question her identity. Her femaleness had never been an issue at home; neither her mother nor her doctor father had ever discussed her physical differences and never allowed for any surgical alterations at birth. At the same time, however, her Catholic upbringing had made it difficult for Viloria to acknowledge to her parents that she was a lesbian. A move to San Francisco in 1990 propelled the author on a journey of sexual self-discovery that included relationships primarily with women and occasionally men. Five years later, and after reading a newspaper article on intersex people, she finally came to the realization that she, too, was intersex, or as she would say later on, a "hermaphrodyke." Viloria began experimenting with her identity and, for a time, dressed and acted like a male before settling into a more consciously androgynous mode of self-presentation. She also became involved with intersex organizations, where she not only learned the vocabulary to articulate her identity, but also about the surgeries that deprived other hermaphrodites "the opportunity to explore who and what they were, from the beginning." Her awakening consciousness to the plight of intersex people drove her to shed all remaining vestiges of inhibition regarding her differences and become a passionate advocate of the intersex community. In her personal life, Viloria came to understand and eventually break self-destructive patterns that had kept her from the loving lesbian partnership she had always wanted for herself. Intelligent and courageous, the author's book chronicles one intersex person's path to wholeness, but it also affirms the right of all intersex and nonbinary people to receive dignity and respect. A relentlessly honest and revealing memoir.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Viloria, Hida: BORN BOTH." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA479234370&it=r&asid=4eb58f67f85b032f377a13f1dc3e745b. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A479234370

QUOTE:
valuable resource for those seeking first-person narratives by intersex people.
Born Both: An Intersex life
263.47 (Nov. 21, 2016): p99.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Born Both: An Intersex life.

Hida Viloria. Hachette, $27 (352) ISBN 978-0316-34784-6

Viloria, a writer and activist who identifies as both male and female and uses s/he and he/r as, pronouns, describes he/r life as an intersex person and what led he/r to become a spokesperson for intersex and genderqueer/nonbinary people. Born in New York in 1968 to parents who had recently emigrated from Central America, the author was raised as a girl and was mostly unaware of he/r anatomical difference from other girls. It was not until s/he was in he/r mid-20s that the author read an article on intersex people and began to piece together clues. Eventually, s/he came to identify as intersex and as someone who experiences he/r gender as fluid. The memoir is written episodically, with scenes arranged in roughly chronological order and introduced with a location and date ("San Francisco, California, May 1996"). The author's childhood and adolescence are touched on, but the majority of the narrative focuses on he/r activist awakening and recent advocacy. The present-tense narrative and recreated dialogue are clunky at times, and readers unfamiliar with certain events and organizations described may wish for more context. Despite these drawbacks,' the book will be a valuable resource for those seeking first-person narratives by intersex people. (Mar.)

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Born Both: An Intersex life." Publishers Weekly, 21 Nov. 2016, p. 99. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA471273989&it=r&asid=31379ddb003c141ba0825a1b21392fe0. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A471273989

QUOTE:
This brave and empowering book deserves a wide audience.
Viloria, Hida. Born Both: An Intersex Life
Barrie Olmstead
141.19 (Nov. 15, 2016): p97.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Viloria, Hida. Born Both: An Intersex Life. Hachette. Mar. 2017.352p. ISBN 9780316347846. $27; ebk. ISBN 9780316347815. MEMOIR

In this groundbreaking memoir, writer and intersex activist Viloria eloquently gives voice to living as an intersex person, especially one who takes pride in he/r gender fluidity. Viloria's parents elected not to have nonconsensual surgery performed at birth; the author discovered s/he was intersex--a person born with sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the standard definition of male or female--after becoming sexually active as a teenager. After coming out in he/r 20s, Viloria found a community but also realized that many had not been spared unnecessary surgeries that scarred them for life, both physically and psychologically. This experience combined with an evolving sense of self inspired the author's involvement in the movement for intersex rights. Speaking frequently about the uniqueness of embodying yin and yang elements in equal measure and how intersex people can manifest this difference as profound and compelling, rather than shameful or transgressive, Viloria describes the ways in which language, especially labels, matter deeply when discussing identity. As the author demonstrates, the words "disorder" and "diagnosis" are stigmatizing, unhelpful, and even harmful. Owing to the dedicated research and advocacy of writers like Viloria, the intersex community is making meaningful progress toward equal rights. VERDICT This brave and empowering book deserves a wide audience.--Barrie Olmstead, Sacramento P.L.

Olmstead, Barrie

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Olmstead, Barrie. "Viloria, Hida. Born Both: An Intersex Life." Library Journal, 15 Nov. 2016, p. 97. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA470367224&it=r&asid=a7e766c6a4789a6730e666df7a0beefe. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A470367224

QUOTE:
Viloria's memoir "Born Both" tells the poignant and powerful story of h/er struggle to understand and speak out about gender identity. Calmly and with dignity, Viloria describes h/er experience and how it blossomed from the personal to the political.
Book World: Overcoming trauma and intolerance as an intersex activist
Juliet Jacques
(Mar. 24, 2017): News:
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Byline: Juliet Jacques

Born Both: An Intersex Life

By Hida Viloria

Hachette. 339 pp. $27

---

Hida Viloria was born neither completely male nor completely female - but was raised as a girl.

Viloria's memoir "Born Both" tells the poignant and powerful story of h/er struggle to understand and speak out about gender identity. Calmly and with dignity, Viloria describes h/er experience and how it blossomed from the personal to the political. Today, Viloria is an activist for the intersex community. ("Intersex" refers to a person born with a reproductive or sexual anatomy that doesn't fit the standard definition of female or male, such as someone who appears to be female on the outside but has a mostly male-typical anatomy inside.)

"I think we intersex folks are just one of nature's marvelous variations - like redheads in a world of blondes and brunettes," Viloria writes. "But each time I out myself publicly I remember that not everyone feels this way, and the fear sets in. I have to remind myself that ultimately it doesn't matter ... as much as people may view those who are different in a divisive, us-versus-them way, in actuality we are all fellow human beings who feel and want the same thing."

Viloria's awakening emerges out of family trauma, sexual violence and medical interrogation. H/er childhood was marked by an abusive father, anti-Hispanic racism and homophobia. Viloria, who was born in 1968 in New York, found solace and connection with androgynous cultural icons - Grace Jones, David Bowie and Prince, and the memoirs of 19th-century French hermaphrodite Herculine Barbin - who broke the silence around gender nonconformity. (After a long search for an appropriate pronoun, Viloria notes a preference for s/he and h/er.)

The book begins with an extraordinary level of violence: from Viloria's father toward the rest of the family (particularly Viloria's mother) and from racist bullies at school. Viloria finds that the advice to "ignore them" not only doesn't work but makes h/er feel powerless. Later, a nightclub rape leads to injuries to her female body parts.

This sets up the book's key political issue: the intersex community's aim to stop doctors from performing nonconsensual genital surgeries on intersex infants and allow them to decide what - if anything - to do with their bodies as adults. Having been spared such invasion as a child (despite her mother saying, in a surprisingly casual aside, that the doctors "thought you were a boy"), Viloria becomes aware that h/er experiences are not like those of many people she meets through the Intersex Society of North America (ISNA).

Early on, Viloria tells a friend that both male and female "feel right," and h/er playful humor and sharp observations about gender roles derive from moments when Viloria switches between male and female, or masculine and feminine. Viloria notes the different ways people interact with h/er and the different types (and genders) of people s/he attracts according to h/er presentation.

At one point, Viloria, as a man, is arrested for attacking police officers during a protest at the University of California at Berkeley. In court, dressed as a woman, s/he manages to get the charges dropped. "I know getting out of trouble wouldn't have been so easy if I hadn't been able to hide behind being a girl," Viloria writes. "I also find it interesting to consider whether any of this would have happened if the police hadn't thought I was a guy."

As in Janet Mock's "Redefining Realness" (2014), Viloria's experiences of misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, racism and erasure of her intersex status form h/er social consciousness and draw h/er into activism. S/he tries to raise awareness through the mainstream media, making a lot of stressful decisions while earning very little.

"Born Both" is especially strong on the dilemmas of "respectability politics," as Viloria details not just the challenges of deciding how to dress for high-profile television appearances (on "Oprah," "20/20" and elsewhere) and how much of h/erself to give away in pursuit of h/er goals, but also their effects on h/er personal life. S/he splits with other activists over different approaches - for example, when ISNA endorses efforts to replace "intersex" (which denotes a physical status) with "disorders of sex development," which Viloria fears will be used to facilitate nonconsensual medical treatments.

There's a lot of sadness in this book but no self-pity. The personal is not neglected: Viloria shares deep anguish in struggling to convey exactly what being intersex means to h/er mother, who finds various ways to avoid a full discussion; the relationship collapses in an argument about how Viloria played down h/er father's abusive behavior during h/er biggest television appearance.

Viloria's difficulties in reconciling h/erself with her family background tie into h/er struggles to find love, coming to a bittersweet conclusion after years of misunderstandings and violations. But the way s/he uses sex and sexuality to comprehend h/erself is rare in memoirs of this type. Viloria refuses to rein in h/er personality to fit some nebulous idea of a "good" intersex role model. The epilogue draws us back into a wider realm, looking at how transgender and intersex activists should support one another, with a brief reference to the Orlando massacre - a chilling reminder of this book's urgency.

---

Jacques is a journalist and critic based in London and the author of "Rayner Heppenstall: A Critical Study" and "Trans: A Memoir."

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Jacques, Juliet. "Book World: Overcoming trauma and intolerance as an intersex activist." Washington Post, 24 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA486905966&it=r&asid=e836a1c595a531df6df6b33b502d9267. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A486905966

Intersexuality's medical causes and cultural future
(Mar. 9, 2011): p1.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2011 Uloop Inc.
http://uwire.com/?s=UWIRE+Text&x=26&y=14&=Go
Byline: Amy Stewart

When Hida Viloria was born in New York in 1968, her South American parents had to decide if she should have surgery. The infant Viloria did not have a defective heart or sick lungs; in fact, she did not have any disease at all. The only thing different about her was that the doctors had difficulty telling if she was a boy or a girl.

Viloria's father went to medical school in Colombia before sexual corrective surgery became the norm for children born intersex. Her father refused the surgery for his baby, believing surgery should be avoided in infants unless completely necessary. Viloria was raised a girl in a strictly religious Latino home in which sex was not discussed.

"I didn't even know I was intersex, and I had no identity issues," said Viloria, who now works as a spokesperson for the Organisation Intersex International. "I didn't want to be a boy, I didn't think I was a boy."

One day, when Viloria was eight years old, her mother let slip that the doctors didn't know if Viloria was a boy or a girl when she was born. Viloria, ignorant of how she was physically different from the other girls, thought that she meant her aggressive behavior and attraction to girls.

There are several physical conditions that can cause an infant to be intersex. Typically, women have a pair of sex chromosomes in the shape of XX while men have a pair of sex chromosomes in the shape of XY. However, sometimes a baby will be born with a triplet instead of a pair.

When the triplet is XXX or XYY, the child is still a female or male, respectively and will often not be diagnosed unless they have a genetic test for another reason. When the triplet is XXY on the other hand, a condition called Klinefelter's Syndrome, the affected male will experience infertility and small testicles and may also experience other physical and neurological issues, such as language impairment, gynecomastia (increased breast tissue) and possible osteoporosis later in life.

Even if the chromosomes are structurally typical, they may still contain mutations in the DNA itself to cause an intersex condition. For example, the sex chromosomes may be XY but the Y chromosome lacks the sex determinant gene (called Swyer Syndrome); therefore, the child would be chromosomally male but have female characteristics.

Something similar happens in Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome in which the Y chromosome has the sex determinant gene but the cells can't adequately process the androgens (male sex hormones like testosterone). The expression of this condition ranges from a male with not fully masculinized genitals (partial AIS) to having female external genitalia but internal testes (complete AIS).

Ambiguous genitalia can also be caused by mutations in the genes encoding sex hormones or by the prenatal environment. A female fetus could experience clitoromegaly (enlarged clitoris) from an enlarged adrenal gland that produces excess androgens, or from a mother using anabolic steroids while pregnant.

Viloria did not know that she had clitoromegaly until she went to college at UC Berkeley in the 1980's.

"It was just bizarre, but I already had an identity as the bizarre goth girl, so it wasn't as bad as if I were trying to be Miss Clean-Cut," Viloria said.

Unlike Viloria, most intersex people at the time had experienced life-altering surgeries and hormone therapies.

Sexual corrective surgery was being developed for infants around the 1950s, and by the 1960s the surgical techniques were widely admired and performed upon intersex babies. Clitorectomies, complete removal of the clitoris, were performed up until the 1970's when they were largely abandoned in favor of "nerve sparing" clitoral recession.

"It was a cosmetic issue, not a health issue," said Viloria, who in college became more involved in intersex activism.

Today, Viloria works for Organisation Intersex International. She spoke at UC Davis last Wednesday to bring awareness to the fact that gender isn't just about men and women - intersex individuals are variations, not disorders.

Viloria recently served as an intersex representative during the Caster Semenya incident, the South African runner who won the 2009 World Championships and was subsequently accused of not actually being a woman. Through gender testing she was found to be externally female but with internally male anatomy.

Viloria and the OII oppose sexual corrective surgery for infants due to the lack of evidence that the surgery is needed at all for psychological health. The organization is working to keep the medical establishment from enforcing gender binary through surgeries.

"They can try to heal their psychological scars," Viloria said, "but the physical wounds are irreparable."

AMY STEWART can be reached at science@theaggie.org.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Intersexuality's medical causes and cultural future." UWIRE Text, 9 Mar. 2011, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA339600235&it=r&asid=06fc8f86f28704e01bbba75884b91518. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A339600235

Viloria discusses gender and sex as social constructs
(Apr. 21, 2016): p1.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2016 Uloop Inc.
http://uwire.com/?s=UWIRE+Text&x=26&y=14&=Go
Byline: Rachel Glenn

Hida Viloria, founder and executive director of Intersex Campaign for Equality, said in a lecture on Thursday that s/he wants to encourage society to "challenge the binary" by thinking about sex and gender and recognizing the intersex community.

Viloria is an intersex, gender fluid writer and activist who uses the gender pronouns s/he and he/r.

Born in May 1968, Viloria is the author of a memoir to be released in March 2017, called "Born Both," and is an advocate of equal rights for intersex and nonbinary individuals. Viloria has appeared on Oprah, BBC and Al Jazeera; starred in intersex films such as "Gendernauts", "One in 2000" and "Intersexion"; and advocated for equal rights in the American Journal of Bioethics and on CNN.com.

Viloria recounted he/r experience in 1987 of having to drop out of college and move back to New York after he/r parents stopped paying he/r tuition when s/he was "outed" by he/r older brother, who is gay. At this juncture, Viloria began working at the first lesbian/gay nonprofit organization in the country, where s/he said s/he encountered men who said they were not gay and did not want to be labeled but were "just men who happened to love other men."

S/he said the intersex population in today's society is facing the same struggles now as the lesbian and gay community in previous times when it was not as accepted to identify as gay or lesbian.

"We were once acknowledged, but then lost, became invisible," Viloria said.

In the '70s, Hida stated, the gay and lesbian community was labeled as having psychological disorders, a problem which s/he said the intersex community is still facing.

Viloria described he/r own father as homophobic and h/er childhood household, which placed a great emphasis on gender roles, as sexist. S/he described memories of he/r mother asking he/r to remember to wear lipstick as s/he was heading out the door for a night and memories of family and friends not recognizing he/r because of a more masculine appearance while picking he/r up from the airport after being gone for a while. Viloria stated that s/he was perceived as a man for four years by everyone s/he knew. Viloria additionally recounted experiences of going through airport security and the discomfort s/he faced during pat downs and body scans, where s/he had to be classified as a certain gender.

"I knew since I was 5 that I liked women," Viloria stated, as s/he begun describing he/r journey in figuring out he/r sexuality.

Growing up before terms like "intersex" would have been defined on the internet, Viloria did not have any knowledge about intersex individuals or what they were. S/he described reading the book "Herculine Barbin," a recounting of a French intersex individual who was treated as a female at birth but who later changed to being identified as a male after receiving a physical examination. Viloria said she identified closely with this character, before knowing about intersex persons, and was disappointed to hear that the character ultimately committed suicide after being tried in court for gender fraud and found as male.

Viloria experimented with both female and male sides of life before ultimately deciding that s/he did not want to have to choose to be either one.

"Why am I trying to fit into a certain role? I really feel both. I'm really just comfortable being masculine and feminine," Viloria explained. She noted that these feelings developed for her after having learned a lot about gender relationships and the difficulties of being a man and a woman.

Viloria's birth certificate and driver's license say female, but s/he advocates for a third option on these documents, including passports.

Viloria stated that there are 60 known intersex variations, which s/he hopes can be recognized better in the future. S/he also believes in adding an "I" for "intersex" to the existing "LGBT" organization name.

"We do actually need to talk about [this]. We can't escape it," Viloria said. "Accepting us really does promote acceptance. I believe that if intersex people had been accepted from the beginning, homophobia and transphobia wouldn't even exist."

The lecture, entitled, "'Sex' is Complicated: Intersectionality and Intersex Human Rights, Identity, and Discourse" was held in Frist 302 at 4:30 p.m. and was sponsored by the Princeton BTGALA with support from the LGBT Center.

Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Viloria discusses gender and sex as social constructs." UWIRE Text, 21 Apr. 2016, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA450246571&it=r&asid=e590284c4e3ca68e759c64358dd72ee8. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.

Gale Document Number: GALE|A450246571

"Viloria, Hida: BORN BOTH." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Feb. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA479234370&asid=4eb58f67f85b032f377a13f1dc3e745b. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017. "Born Both: An Intersex life." Publishers Weekly, 21 Nov. 2016, p. 99. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA471273989&asid=31379ddb003c141ba0825a1b21392fe0. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017. Olmstead, Barrie. "Viloria, Hida. Born Both: An Intersex Life." Library Journal, 15 Nov. 2016, p. 97. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA470367224&asid=a7e766c6a4789a6730e666df7a0beefe. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017. Jacques, Juliet. "Book World: Overcoming trauma and intolerance as an intersex activist." Washington Post, 24 Mar. 2017. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA486905966&asid=e836a1c595a531df6df6b33b502d9267. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017. "Intersexuality's medical causes and cultural future." UWIRE Text, 9 Mar. 2011, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA339600235&asid=06fc8f86f28704e01bbba75884b91518. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017. "Viloria discusses gender and sex as social constructs." UWIRE Text, 21 Apr. 2016, p. 1. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&it=r&id=GALE%7CA450246571&asid=e590284c4e3ca68e759c64358dd72ee8. Accessed 13 Aug. 2017.

• NY TImes
  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/24/books/review/memoir-human-body.html
  Word count: 1742

  QUOTE:
  Viloria does us the even greater service (it’s more of a gift, really) of showing us what it means to live not just as both a man and a woman but also as a third gender that eventually emerges as the right one.
  The author’s life experiences, especially the sexual ones, have a greater range than most of us could possibly imagine.
  New in Memoir: The Intersex Body, the Dead Body, the Body in Grief

  By MEGHAN DAUMMAY 24, 2017
  Continue reading the main story
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  Photo
  Credit Loren Capelli

  The subfield of feminist scholarship devoted to narratives of what’s commonly referred to as “the body” is having something of a heyday. Disability studies are growing in popularity, as is the prominence of intersectional theories around gender, body modification and “the politics of difference.” Often, the lines of inquiry (or “interrogations,” as academics like to say) concern themselves with power dynamics imposed by cultural norms, including those that conspire to make physicality itself a form of trauma.

  But three new memoirs dealing with bodies — often exuberantly so — would appear to have little use for the trauma narrative. Hida Viloria, the author of BORN BOTH: An Intersex Life (Hachette, $27), was born with “ambiguous” genitalia, raised as a girl, and was 26 before encountering the term “intersex.” Growing up, Viloria, who prefers the pronouns “s/he” and “he/r,” aligned with the idea of being an androgynous-looking woman who was primarily attracted to other women. Viloria’s most notable anatomical variant, a larger-than-average clitoris, proved to be a greater source of pleasure than of shame, and so there was little incentive to investigate the root cause, much less fix what wasn’t broken.

  As a memoir, “Born Both” can be as difficult to pin down as its author’s identity. Equal parts life history, anatomy textbook, sex diary and public service announcement, it seems in places to have been written as an activist gesture rather than a literary one. Gaining visibility as a public spokesperson for the intersex community, Viloria appears on “20/20” and “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and fights for causes such as outlawing the “normalizing” surgery now referred to as I.G.M., or intersex genital mutilation, which many intersex people undergo as infants. As such, the final third of the book devolves somewhat into a morass of abbreviations, reports from conferences, and policy discussions folded into canned dialogue.

  But all this can be forgiven because amid the public service announcements, Viloria does us the even greater service (it’s more of a gift, really) of showing us what it means to live not just as both a man and a woman but also as a third gender that eventually emerges as the right one. It’s not hard to see why. Many Native American tribes “believed that, unlike regular people,” intersex people “had an elevated view of life’s experiences and could ‘see down both sides of the mountain,’” Viloria writes. Viloria also shows how gender privilege works both ways. Despite enjoying the swaggering confidence that comes from presenting as male, Viloria tires of “the limitations around expressing my emotions and the tough veneer that I have to put on to protect myself every time I get around a group of young men.” Roughed up by cops while getting arrested at a protest in Berkeley, Viloria finds that the police suddenly become gentler when they believe they’re dealing with a girl instead of a boy. The charges are later dropped.
  Continue reading the main story

  “I know getting out of trouble wouldn’t have been so easy if I hadn’t been able to hide behind being a girl,” Viloria writes. “I’m completely aware that I played that card.”

  The author’s life experiences, especially the sexual ones, have a greater range than most of us could possibly imagine. Viloria has sex with both women and men as both a woman and as a man (stop and think about that for a moment). In daily interactions with the world, Viloria has seen down both sides of the mountain and tunneled through for good measure. Ultimately, there’s no need to choose a side. “‘I’m both,’” Viloria says. “Or alternatively, ‘I’m neither.’”

  The bodies in Carla Valentine’s THE CHICK AND THE DEAD: Life and Death Behind Mortuary Doors (St. Martin’s, $25.99) belong to other people — or at least did at one time. Valentine, who now curates a collection at Barts Pathology Museum in London, worked for eight years in Britain as a certified A.P.T., or anatomical pathology technician. The book covers this period, one in which Valentine spends her days assisting in autopsies and other forensic investigations by removing organs from corpses, replacing those organs post-examination (at least when possible) and then sewing, washing and grooming the bodies into presentability.

  As a child, Valentine recounts, she tried to perform autopsies on her toys and was “enthralled by any dead animal I found on the street.” After university she pursued an advanced degree in forensic and biomolecular sciences and gets an entry-level gig at the mortuary, cleaning up after organ dissections (the job requires steel-toed Wellington boots). Eventually, she was hired as a trainee A.P.T. “And thus,” Valentine writes, “began a new chapter of my life in death.”

  “The Chick and the Dead,” which spins its title from the well-worn idiom “the quick and the dead,” is filled with such turns of phrase, and Valentine’s tone, which is meant to come across as playfully irreverent, sometimes gives way to glibness if not a surfeit of cheesy puns. Scarce space in mortuary refrigerators is described as “popular real estate; people are dying to get in there after all.” Nor can she resist reminding us that “working in a mortuary is not a dead-end job.”

  But even though Valentine might have the sense of humor of an aging uncle, her zest for gross-out depictions of bodily functions rivals that of any 10-year-old boy. And it actually works spectacularly well, at least if you’re into that kind of thing. In a chapter focusing on the five stages of decomposition, she has no problem telling us about the preservatory effects of maggots — “many experts call them ‘the unseen undertakers of the world’” — or the time she cut into a distended abdomen and “the green, taut flesh rippled and burst like a balloon from hell and I was rewarded with a face full of the most hideous gas I’d ever smelled in my entire life.”

  If the book succeeds as a morbidly galloping parade of every possible kind of dead body, it falls short when it comes to the author’s life. There are occasional mentions of parents, references to ever-changing roommates, and a disastrous affair with a co-worker, but they form a blurry background against the sharp focus of the cadavers. For what it’s worth, Valentine’s bio says she runs a dating and networking site for death professionals, a detail that may or may not have any relevance to her observation in the book that “watching someone carry out an autopsy is, in many ways, like watching someone have sex.” Let’s maybe not stop and think about that for a moment.

  A more genteel exploration of life’s inevitable decay can be found in Martha Cooley’s GUESSWORK: A Reckoning With Loss (Catapult, paper, $16.95). This splendid and subtle memoir in essays captures 14 months in the ancient rural village of Castiglione del Terziere in northern Tuscany. Cooley is on sabbatical from her teaching job in New York City, though the word she’s chosen for this leave of absence is caesura, which refers to a break between words or notes in a line of poetry or music: “In life — mine, anyway — it’s a deliberate interruption, a chance to reckon with divisions imposed by loss.”

  The losses have been piling up. Cooley has lost friends to drugs and suicide and cancer and various other illnesses. Her parents are in declining health, another friend lives in the diabolical grip of A.L.S., silent and immobile even as his brain carries on. Her husband of just a few years is a widower; his late wife was Cooley’s close friend. “She was my age, 57, when back pain turned into rampant cancer,” Cooley writes. “How did the inexplicable happen: her leaving us, loss uniting us?”

  In “Guesswork,” the body is both canvas and carapace, both superficial construct and, for better or worse, the whole damn point. Vacationing on the island of Giglio in the Tyrrhenian Sea, Cooley and her husband find themselves in the literal and figurative shadow of the Costa Concordia, the giant cruise ship that struck a rock and capsized earlier that year, leaving 32 dead and two still missing. The boat has remained partly submerged in the water, a body that can be neither exhumed nor buried.

  “In the case of tragedy,” Valentine writes in “The Chick and the Dead,” “demystifying it helps you to regain control of the emotions. I did that with death.” If Viloria’s demystification of her body evokes a similar reclamation, then Cooley, for her part, knows that she will find equilibrium only if she can fully embrace the wild fluctuations of grief. “On some days I’m lured mesmerically to the rabbit hole of loss, and am forced to thrash around down there like trapped prey,” Cooley writes. “On other days all the losses seem to recede like any object in a rearview mirror once the accelerator’s been pressed, and I’ve no trouble keeping my foot on the pedal of the present.”

  It’s a lurching way to live; simultaneously brokenhearted and in love, crushingly bereaved one moment and surprisingly O.K. the next. Must we pick a side? Maybe Viloria said it best: “I refused to choose, because … ‘I am both.’”

  Meghan Daum’s latest book is “The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion.” Her column appears every eight weeks.

  A version of this article appears in print on May 28, 2017, on Page BR27 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Memoir. Order Reprints

• bookolage
  http://www.bookolage.com/born-both-an-intersex-life-by-hida-viloria/
  Word count: 2360

  BORN BOTH: AN INTERSEX LIFE by Hida Viloria
  April 17, 2017David Herrle

  Rating: ❤❤❤❤

  Nowadays, Lord Alfred Douglas’ “love that dare not speak its name” dares to speak its name – and then some. In fact, it needn’t dare at all, because, for the most part, non-heterosexual speech is popular, widespread, bold, prevalent – and, yes, even moralistic. For me, the love hinted at in the poem by Douglas covers gay, lesbian, trans, queer, bisexual and intersex folks. (If I left anyone out, please forgive me.) Perhaps never before have sexuality and gender been such hot topics, and they certainly haven’t been so widely questioned, studied and politicized (for both good and bad). What is heartening is the existence of more receptive forums and inclusive insights in regard to non-traditional sexual orientations and gender types.

  While gay and lesbian activism has yielded extremely progressive results in the last few decades, transfolk continue to struggle for respectful recognition. All of them are in an uphill battle, but female-to-male transitions are even less accepted than male-to-female ones – and the latter fare better only if they “pass” with convincingly feminine appearances. So, in a sense, the traditional gender binary is in turn reinforced or validated by individuals striving to achieve the expected appearances as closely as possible. This isn’t to say that the binary is fundamentally problematic or tyrannical. Though it can serve as a negative gauge of who “passes” and doesn’t, it also can be spun as a marker for a sort of solar-spectrum chart on which many different gender gradations and nuances are visible.

  This wider spectrum allowed the enigmatic Candy Darling to fluctuate between drag queen and all-American platinum bombshell back in the 1960s and 1970s, and it allows actor Tilda Swinton to thrive as an androgynous icon, as well as the perfect embodiment of Virginia Woolf’s Orlando – not to mention the unlikely transformation of Bruce Jenner into Caitlyn Jenner. Activism, apologetics and acclimation are made possible by celebrity trans figures such as Paris Lees, Gigi Gorgeous, Janet Mock, Hanne Gaby Odiele, Jazz Jennings, Pidgeon Pagonis (creator of The Son I Never Had and What Do People Know About Intersex?), Laverne Cox, Amanda Lepore, Willie Wilkinson, AJ Ripley and Kye Allums from an essentially leftist perspective, and even conservative transfolk are represented by the outspoken Theryn Meyer and provocative Blaire White. (Of course, there are the many “everyday” individuals who find themselves navigating not-so-simple gender waters.)

  And then there’s the relative flatline of the socio-political clout of the intersex community. “Hermaphrodite” has a more familiar ring than “intersex,” of course, but hermaphroditism still seems to be on a mythical level, not quite taken seriously by the public at large: an oddity or curiosity rather than a flesh-and-blood-and-mind reality. Thankfully, awareness of intersexuality is growing, thanks to people such as Hida Viloria, an intersex lesbian who evolved from gender confusion to gender fluidity and found both he/r (as she pronouns herself) voice and niche as an activist, lecturer, author and consultant for intersex/non-binary gender issues. Aside from serving as chair of the Intersex Campaign for Equality (OII-USA), she has written for the Psychology Today blog, the American Journal of Bioethics, Ms., The Advocate and The New York Times, and she’s the author of a pamphlet entitled Your Beautiful Child: Information for Parents and a new memoir, Born Both: An Intersex Life, which is dedicated to, along with Hida’s mother, “all the intersex people who have had to live, and die, in secret.”

  Let me put this out there right away and without finesse: Hida has a huge clitoris. It’s been disproportionately large since childhood, so much so that her parents, Hida’s mother confessed much later in life, thought their newborn daughter was a boy at first. In fact, when Hida becomes sexually aroused, “it gets erect and looks like a tiny dick.” Fixation on her clit size resulted from a doctor’s impolite query after an emergency operation due to a dangerous ectopic pregnancy, which was the bitter consequence of Hida having been raped while drunk at a nightclub. For much of her life Hida mistook this oversized sex organ as a source of confusion and embarrassment, a negative symbol of extreme difference. Eventually, she reevaluated it as a unique gift and, in many cases, a desirable thing which continues to invigorate her sex life. And, since the rest of her physical features had always been ambiguously masculine and feminine, Hida found that she possessed a rare superpower of sorts: the ability to choose and fine-tune her gender characteristics at will, even at a whim: “As long as I remain dressed though, I can pass just as easily for a boy as a girl, depending on the clothes I wear.”

  At the Litterbox, a queer club, Hida met and fell for a stunning redhead named Christina. When the two made love, the magic of her “amazingly mysterious organ” was beyond obvious: “a great force begins to unleash itself” and “she screams with me as her body receives it.” During sex another time, Christina playfully said, “You’re such a boy.” Later down the road a gay guy named Jonathan echoed this when he said, “You seem like a boy to me. A cute boy.”

  After such a long period of confusion, by the time Hida realized that true nature, she embraced her gender-flux power with gusto:

  I’ve been dealing with polarized gender-role requirements for so long that I had no idea how liberating it would feel not to. To be able to look however I want – butch or femme, male or female, both, or something else – all the time.

  Her attendance at Burning Man in 2000 was a turning point. Uninhibited and dancing to DJ music, she felt the hypnotic force of her having been “born both”:

  I look very Is that a boy or a girl?…My energy moves back and forth from masculine to feminine and everywhere in between. It seems to mesmerize the crowd…I throw some love at both the girls and the boys because I can tell they see me for who I am.

  Hida substantiates the pride-worthiness of her bothness by referring to Herculine Barbin and the myth of Hermaphroditus, and she relates a pep talk her friend Jade gave her once: “Every spiritual philosophy talks about how it is to unite the feminine and masculine polarities. Even Jung talks about the hermaphrodite representing the union that’s necessary for psychological transformation.”

  In other words, there’s a sort of alchemy in this union of polarities, something that even so-called straight folks can’t resist honestly. Though some males responded to her clitoris with disgust (for whatever silly reason), enhanced desire from others was her main experience. Here’s my favorite passage in the entire book: “The most common reaction I’ve had, though, is a kind of hunger. Sure, there might be an initial moment of surprise, but I’ve discovered that people tend to love surprises in bed. They make them ravenous.”

  Hida’s self-acceptance and sexual embracement didn’t happen overnight, however. For quite a while she didn’t even have an adequate way to classify herself. Then, in 1995, she noticed a SF Weekly article called “Both and Neither,” in which she first encountered the term “intersex.” “Is this the word I’ve always lacked?” she wondered. “Is this the word to describe my very private, secret difference?” Still, she struggled with her self-identification as a lesbian, informed, in particular, by The Hunger movie, starring Catherine Denueve and Susan Saradon: “That’s what I’d imagined lesbians looked like: two feminine, pretty women together. But much to my disappointment, in the real world it seems like all the pretty lesbians want women who look and/or act like men: the butches.”

  After sexual involvement with some males and finding no satisfying spark with them, Hida knew that she preferred females, but she was attracted to feminine ones. And she felt that courting lipstick lesbians would require her to change herself, squelching her enjoyment of appearing feminine: “…I’ve developed a huge love of makeup…It’s probably in part to make up for feeling so ugly in middle school, but I really do like putting on makeup.” Since she had “absorbed those ideas that feminine women are into masculine men – or masculine women if they’re lesbians,” she “tried to be more masculine, for both reasons.”

  Sadly (as far as I’m concerned), Hida bought into the popular rejection of cosmetics and decoration (a topic I’d rather discuss – and reject – in a different forum) and stopped making herself up. “[S]uddenly, beautiful gay men are staring at me with open, unabashed smiles,” she marvels. Her intersex sea legs were strengthening and gaining agility. Then the gender pendulum swung back again when Hida dated a woman named Audrey:

  She doesn’t ask me to change my style; I just sort of fall into it given the effect that my looking feminine has on her. I start wearing some of my less boyish outfits and wearing makeup, because I love seeing Audrey’s eyes light up when I do. I’m crazy about her, and I want to turn her on as much as possible. However, I’m also discovering that I don’t want to live out the rest of my days as solely a man or solely a woman.

  Intersexuality’s fluidity and resilience are evident in the fact that after a breakup with another woman, Hallie, Hida quit makeup again and made herself look “more androgynous than ever.” In a sense, her outward appearance was a barometer of internal conflict.

  After struggling with whether or not to accept an invitation to Tranny Fest, Hida questioned her feminine side and how far she from it she might have been drifting:

  I’ve been through too many experiences that are uniquely female – like getting pregnant after being raped – to disconnect completely from that part of myself. Plus, the rebel activist in me has always preferred to side with the underdog anyway. So for now, I’m holding on to my f, even though what I feel inside is different – something I still haven’t found the perfect name for.

  Hida’s quest for that “perfect name” intensified after Australia lawfully established “X” to mark a third gender and the International Civil Aviation Organization designated “X” for the same after that. Then she read a bothersome editorial on the Psychology Today blog: “Australia’s Passport to Gender Confusion: Why I’m Not Thrilled with Australia’s Regendered Passport System” by Dr. Alice Dreger. Hida rebutted the article with “X Marks Evolution: The Benefits of ‘Indeterminate Sex’ Passport Designator.”

  An apparently adequate alternative pronoun for gender, ze, struck Hida. Ze was first used in Dungeons & Dragons in the 1980s, and then in Nearly Roadkill, a novel by Kate Bornstein. After wishing that all humans would agree on referring to each other as “per for person,” an idea from Marge Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time, helped Hida reach this soberer conclusion:

  Because my gender identity has the potential to change, choosing a nonbinary pronoun, and asking everyone to say it in reference to me forever, feels like more of a commitment than I want to make – especially because at different times or sometimes all at once, I’ve felt like every pronoun.

  Attempting and failing to get through law school to advocate for intersex folks, Hida gradually learned that her talents and energy thrived in other forms, which coalesced into an impressive CV: inclusion in the Hermaphrodites Speak and Gendernauts documentaries, appearances on Inside Edition, The Oprah Winfrey Show and 20/20, non-discrimination activism in response to the Olympics/Caster Semenya’s controversy in 2009, opposition to stigmatization of non-hetero sexualities as mental disorders, and articles published in American Journal of Bioethics, The Advocate and Ms. She also wrote “Open Letter: A Call for the Inclusion of Human Rights for Intersex People” for Stockholm’s Second International Intersex Forum, and caught the attention of Charles Radcliffe, senior LGBT rights advisor for the UN.

  Growing up with an abusive if not psychotic father and a mother who, though loving, couldn’t really connect with the intersex thing, Hida had to come to terms with her sexuality on her own. Down and out to the point of homelessness at one point, she kept striving and listening to the uncomfortable but assertive spirit within. Almost as an encore for her recognition and earned dignity, Hida and her mother finally shared an affectionate, validating discussion about Hida’s identity. And, thanks to fate’s usual indifference, her mother died of a brain aneurysm not long after. Devastated, Hida fell into a depressive slump for quite some time, but when she broke out of it, epiphany welcomed her:

  I suddenly realize that my connection with my mother had kept her beliefs alive inside of me: her beliefs that I would never be able to find lasting love as a lesbian. She’s dead now though, I think to myself, and those beliefs died with her. She doesn’t have them anymore, wherever she’s evolved to, so I don’t have to have them either.

  Perhaps as profound as the previous passage are Hida’s words in reaction to the death of the great Joey Ramone in 2001, words that bind the essence of Born Both in a nutshell:

  I admired Joey. He was weird-looking and weird-sounding, but his creativity and spirit were so strong that they burst onto the world stage, forever searing a mark of rebellion onto our cookie-cutter society. He showed everyone that you don’t have to fit into the mainstream mold to shine and soar.

  – David Herrle

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