The Rainbow Center is pleased to host Hida Viloria, an expert educator on the topic of intersex, which is rarely talked about in society, let alone campus communities.

Hida Viloria will speak about the Olympics’ regulations which unfairly target women with high testosterone levels (most of whom are intersex), and masculine women in general.  The topic makes for an excellent addition to the general Intersex 101 presentation.  Hida attended one of the IOC meetings on the topic (by invitation as the intersex representative), thus can offer good insight.

Hida Viloria is the Human Rights Spokesperson for the Organisation Intersex International (or OII), the largest intersex organization in the world, with branches on six continents. She has a degree in Gender and Sexuality from the University of California at Berkeley, and has spoken extensively on the topic of intersex, including appearances in the documentary films Gendernauts and One in 2000, as well as ABC’s “20/20,” “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” and, most recently, “The Tyra Banks Show.” She has also lectured extensively at universities including Stanford, U.C. Berkeley, and N.Y.U., and written about intersex for CNN.com.  Last October, in the wake of the Caster Semenya controversy, she served, by invitation, as the intersex representative at the International Olympic Committee’s meeting of experts in Lausanne, Switzerland, where she argued against the pathologization of people with intersex variations, and for the inclusion of intersex female athletes in competitive sport.

This events is co-sponsored by the Women’s Center and the David Daniel Berdon Memorial Fund.

Contact Information

For further information regarding this event, please contact:

• Rainbow Center
• rainbowcenter@uconn.edu