Hida Viloria is an author, writer, consultant and former intersex activist. He/r essays have appeared in The Washington Post, The Daily Beast, Ms. OUT, The Advocate, and more, and he/r memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hachette Books) received critical acclaim in The New York Times, The Washington Post, People, Rolling Stone and more. In recognition of he/r groundbreaking activism, Viloria was the first intersex person to speak at the United Nations, by invitation, and s/he has been a frequent television and radio guest (The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC’s 20/20, BBC, NPR…), and speaker (NYU, Columbia, Princeton…). Currently, s/he is a member of the Writers Guild of America West, and an executive producer, story writer, and subject of the documentary Let Us Be, premiering at the 2026 Raindance Film Festival in London.
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“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.
Long Bio
Hida Viloria is a Latine writer and author of the acclaimed memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life (2017, Hatchette Book Group), and co-author of The Spectrum of Sex: The science of Male, Female, and Intersex. Hida has been educating people about intersex and non-binary issues since 1996, as a frequent lecturer, consultant (UN, Lambda Legal, Human Rights Watch, IOC, Williams Institute) television and radio guest (HuffpostLive, Aljazeera, Oprah, 20/20, BBC, Inside Edition…), and in film (Gendernauts, One in 2000, Intersexion). Viloria served as Chairperson elect of the Organization Intersex International (OII) from 2011-2017, and is Founder and Executive Director of its U.S. affiliate, the Intersex Campaign for Equality (formerly OII-USA). They have written about intersex issues in The Advocate, Ms., The New York Times, The American Journal of Bioethics, CNN.com, and others, in their blog Intersex and Out, and in the Oxford University Press college curriculum textbook, Queer: A Reader for Writers (2016). Viloria became the recipient of the nation’s second intersex birth certificate in April 2017.
Hida is also a gender-fluid, non-binary pioneer, speaking about being both and neither male nor female in Gendernauts (1999), and stating on Oprah in 2007 that they are “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. Viloria 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, Viloria 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.
Viloria is widely published, with over two dozens op-ed essays (Washington Post, OUT, The Daily Beast, CNN.com. Ms., The Advocate...), 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. They are also the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hachette, 2017, and co-author, with biology professor Maria Nieto, of the groundbreaking text, The Spectrum of Sex: The Science of Male, Female and Intersex.
They appear in videos for Gender Talents, 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. Viloria was also featured in the U.N.’s Intersex Awareness Day 2016 Campaign. In April 2017, they became the second American recipient of an intersex birth certificate.
As E.D. of The Intersex Campaign for Equality (IC4E), Viloria consulted Lambda Legal in representing Dana Zzyym, IC4E’s Associate Director, in their historic lawsuit for federal gender recognition of a non-binary person on their passport. Zzyym was issued the first American X Passport on October 27, 2021. As Lambda Legal noted in their press release that day,
“The Intersex Campaign for Equality and its Founding Director, Hida Viloria, played a critical role in bringing Dana’s case forward.”
Hida holds an Interdisciplinary Studies degree in Gender and Sexuality with high honors and high distinction from the University of California at Berkeley.
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