Writing
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I’m DEEPLY honored to share that my memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life was selected for the New York Public Library’s list of Essential Reads on Feminism, alongside work by Belle Hooks, Roxanne Gay, Judith Butler, Gloria Anazaldua and many others whose work I admire and respect. <3 <3 <3 Very grateful to the New York Public…
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I am so very proud to have worked on a bill , introduced yesterday, Tuesday, February 25th, by Rep. Ro Khanna (CA-17), which instructs the U.S. Department of State to add an additional “(X), Unspecified” sex marker category for U.S. passports, passport cards, or Consular Reports of Birth Abroad, allowing applicants whose genders are neither…
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I’m thrilled to hear that my first non-fiction short story, “SOS Sex,” one of seventeen short stories in the Akashic noir anthology, Santa Fe Noir (March 1, 2020), was singled out as a “highlight” in an early review by Publisher’s Weekly. “One highlight is Hida Viloria’s “SOS Sex,” a traditional crime story in which a…
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As reactions to the Court of Arbitration of Sport’s (CAS) ruling against track star Caster Semenya reveal, many people are unaware that females with XY chromosomes and internal testes exist, and that sporting bodies have allowed them to compete as women, without altering their bodies, since mandatory chromosome testing ended in the ’90’s. Most are…
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My latest, “Stop trying to make Caster Semenya fit a narrow idea of womanhood. It’s unscientific and unethical,” in The Washington Post, explores the May 1, 2019 ruling by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in the case of black South African track star Caster Semenya. I discuss twelve different reasons why the ruling–which…
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Here it is, freshly updated, an almost complete bibliography (I recently realized a few older essays from my blog Intersex & Out are still not on here) of my published intersex and non-binary perspectives on gender, embracing difference, human rights, discrimination in sports, and mainly, love & equality. Enjoy! Hida V Bibliography. (Note: I’ve been…
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My latest essay, in OUT, about what the news that Revolutionary War hero Casimir Pulaski may have been intersex says about surgeries aimed to “fix” intersex kids and the military trans ban. I also discuss California’s groundbreaking legislation SB 201, which seeks to ban these surgeries, and how doctors have used false claims to support their arguments…
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Thank you to The Advocate for this fantastic article about the Smithsonian Channel documentary, “Was The General A Woman?”, which reveals that General Casimir Pulaski was intersex! Thank you also for the fantastic interview– it actually managed to get in all my main points about the implications of this fantastic news. (Quotes included here…
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I’m deeply honored to have been asked to participate in the Smithsonian Channel documentary, “The General Was Female?”, which examines years of research which conclude that American hero Casimir Pulaski was intersex! As often happens with interviews–and particularly in this case as the focus of the show was historically, not intersex–the more policy related issues…
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Happy Intersex Awareness Day 2018 everyone! In my latest oped essay for Logo’s New Now Next, I discuss how we need intersex awareness more than ever with the head of our current administration is trying to roll back the progress we’ve made by writing intersex people out of existence, and how excluding us from the LGBTQIA…
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Big thanks the my old hometown paper, the New York Daily News, for letting me address all the intersex, non-binary, and trans deniers out there who have criticized New York City’s recent birth certificate legislation. I’m so proud to be a part of the third gender revolution and to write about it in the paper…
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I couldn’t be happier or prouder about this news today, and to have played a role in it! Having a District Court Judge of the United States — where surgeries aimed at erasing intersex people from society originated, over half a century ago– acknowledge our right to be accurately identified as neither male nor female,…
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Lots of people have reached out to me in the last year and a half since my memoir came out to let me know they’d like to write too. Or asking me for advice on how to get their story out there. The easiest answer, I believe, is what two good friends once told…
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I’m very happy to announce that my memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hachette Books) will be available in German with Zaglossus Books this summer, summer 2018! Zaglossus is a publishing house based in Vienna, Austria, whose mission is to, “publish literature that makes the variety of different ways of life visible. Focusing – but by…
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OMG, my memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life has been nominated for a Lammy–the Lambda Literary Award! Queer non-binary Latinx intersex appreciation??!!!??? Whaaaat? SO excited! 🙂 🙂 🙂 I’m beyond thrilled and happy to have my first book recognized as one of eight finalists in the LGBTQ nonfiction category! It’s perhaps even more…
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Happy Valentine’s Day everyone! I love it when I can get a line into an essay–especially a serious one–that makes most people laugh out loud. See if you can find the one in my latest, “The Privilege of Pleasure.” 🙂 Big thanks ILGA-Europe for their amazing advocacy work for LGBTQIA people (and yes, they actually…
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*** FROM THE INTERSEX CAMPAIGN FOR EQUALITY (IC4E) *** 2017 was an incredible year for intersex literature. Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hachette Books), our E.D.’s groundbreaking memoir, was released to feature length, rave reviews in The New Times Book Review, The Washington Post, NPR, and more, and best new book selections by People,…
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I am so humbled and excited to announce that I am co-editing a new quarterly publication the IQ Quarterly! The IQ Quarterly is a project of the Intersex Campaign for Equality (IC4E), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting equality for all intersex people through arts, education, and action, of which I am the founding director.…
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Really love this one, my latest essay, “The Forgotten Vowel,” about how acknowledging and including intersex people and LGBTQIA+ coalition benefits us all.:) Enjoy, and big thanks to INTO magazine–the only LGBTQ website to receive the honor of being shortlisted (this past October) for the Shorty Award in news and media–for running it! It came…
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I am thrilled and honored to have my memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life selected by School Library Journal as one of 10 Adults Books for Teens, and for the fantastic accompanying review! Please order a copy if you haven’t already — maybe for that older teen in your life. 🙂
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My latest, inspired by my interview on NPR yesterday about a proposed ban on Intersex Genital Mutilation (IGM). “Doctors Resort to Nonsensical Reasoning to Support Surgeries on Intersex Children”
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I am SOOO happy and thrilled to announce that my memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hachette Books, 3/14/17) has had a great reception from the mainstream press–which means widespread attention for intersex issues! It’s my personal story of learning to love and embrace myself as someone with a visibly intersex body not subjected…
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My latest essay, “Remember: Sex-Positive = Intersex-Positive,” in The Huffington Post, examines the intersectionality of feminism and intersex issues by exploring medical and social views towards clitoral reduction surgeries on intersex baby girls and future women– AND I got to use the word “hermaphrodyke” in it! Enjoy, and please share widely to educate…
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I’m very grateful to the editors at Logo’s new online LGT magazine NewNowNext for running, “What’s Life Like Between Genders? New Memoir “Born Both” Explores Intersex Story,” an excerpt from my memoir Born Both: An Intersex Life. The excerpt covers the moment I decided to change my gender expression, one year after discovering…
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Big thanks to The Daily Beast for publishing my latest essay, “Fear of Flying–or at least the TSA–while intersex.” On March 6, I read that the Supreme Court had remanded the case filed by Gavin Grimm—the 17-year-old transgender student who’s fighting to use the same restroom as the other boys at his school—sending it back…
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I’m very grateful to the editors at OUT, the U.S.’s largest LGBT+ online magazine, for running “Intersex Activist Navigates Gendered Bathrooms, Gay Clubs in Exclusive Born Both Excerpt.” I think it’s a perfect venue for me– a long term queer activist who has at different points embodied every letter in the LGBTI acronym!…
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So nice to be writing essays again after a rather long hiatus working on my memoir. Big thanks to The Advocate for running my latest, “Why We Must Dismantle the Intersex Closet.” Please share if you like to help spread awareness and make it easier for your intersex friends and their families to come…
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My essay, “What’s in a Name: Intersex and Identity”, was selected for and appears in the college textbook, Queer: A Reader for Writers, published this January, 2016, by Oxford University Press. The book includes an interdisciplinary mix of public, academic, and cultural reading selections, and was developed for courses in first-year writing. It provides students with…
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My essay, “Promoting Health and Social Progress by Accepting and Depathologizing Benign Intersex Traits”, has been published in the Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics fall issue, which features a Narrative Symposium on Intersex. From the NIB website’s description of the symposium: What are the joys and heartaches faced by people diagnosed intersex? These symposium authors offer readers an honest look into their lives.…
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Can’t say how thrilled I am that my May, 2014 essay “What’s in a Name: Intersex and Identity” (originally published here for my blog, Intersex and Out), will be published by Oxford University Press this December in the college textbook, QUEER: A Reader for Writers, by Jason Schneiderman. My gratitude goes out to Schneiderman and…
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I am interviewed in the fantastic new book The Human Agenda: Conversations about Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity (February 5, 2015), by author and LGBTQI advocate Joe Wenke. I speak about the harmful “normalizing” non-consensual medical practices – a.k.a. Intersex Genital Mutiltion (IGM) – that intersex minors are often subjected to, the dangers of…
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Well, they changed my original title – “Bullying By Any Other Name: What’s Really Behind Regulations for Women with High Testosterone” – to, “Stop Freaking Out About Female Intersex Athletes”, but otherwise I’m thrilled to have this essay run in the Advocate! (Read here: http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/09/18/op-ed-stop-freaking-out-about-female-intersex-athletes). It elaborates on the issue in all the ways…
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Earlier this month, two intersex blog posts about the term “cisgender” reminded me that it’s high time we talk about how current cisgender rhetoric facilitates intersex erasure. But wait, how does it do that? you might be asking. I thought cisgender was the new rage in progressive gender terminology? Well, let me explain. For those…
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My latest blog post/essay — What’s in a Name: Intersex and Identity — discusses the history of society deeming people who are different as innately inferior, how this is currently happening to intersex people, and how this language does not support equality. Hope you like it, & thanks to the Advocate for running it! http://www.advocate.com/commentary/2014/05/14/op-ed-whats-name-intersex-and-identity
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Yes, there’s more to say about Germany’s new third gender law, especially to readers that understand the LGBTI perspective and the issues that affect us. Also, I got to correct inaccurate press statements about Australia’s third gender law applying to intersex babies, which it doesn’t, just adults who want it. Read “Germany’s Third Gender…
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Please read my essay Germany’s Third Gender Law: Not What Intersex People Most Need to find out the truth about Germany’s new third gender law. I interviewed several German activists for this piece, and am very happy for the opportunity to get correct information about the law, and why intersex Germans are unhappy…
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I spoke so much in the 90’s and the first decade of the 21st century about the serious harms caused by medically unnecessary cosmetic genital surgeries on intersex babies — which I and other intersex people call “intersex genital mutilation”, or IGM — that my essays in the past few years have focused…
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The novel Golden Boy, by Abigail Tartellin, features what is, by far, my favorite fictional portrayal of an intersex character. Read my review in Autostraddle to find out why. http://www.autostraddle.com/three-reasons-this-intersex-lesbian-184477/
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I’m thrilled to have one of my blog essays, “Intersex: The Final Coming Out Frontier“, published in The Advocate, the US’s oldest, largest LGBT (hopefully soon to be LGBTI) publication. Yay for inclusion! (Even if they did use the dorkiest picture of me ever, lol!)
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I am touched and excited to announce my new free resource for parents of intersex newborns: Your Beautiful Child: Information for Parents. It is available in two versions: — Your Beautiful Child Tri-fold Brochure — Your Beautiful Child One-Sheet Version This project was a labor of love, inspired by the many mothers who have asked…
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Note: This article is based on my blog post Zero Tolerance to Female Genital Mutilation — Unless They’re Intersex I’m happy to report that it was re-published in The Global Herald, but note that they changed the title, unfortunately, to: “US Ban on Female Genital Mutilation Mired in Racism and Fear.” /http://theglobalherald.com/u-s-ban-on-female-genital-mutilation-mired-in-racism-and-fear/29098/
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Discriminatory Views Create Discriminatory Medical Treatment Author: Hida Viloria, Chairperson, Organisation Intersex International (OII), Director OII USA http://oiiinternational.com/oiiusa/intersex-information/intersex-people-and-medical-treatment/ Note: A small percentage of intersex variations sometimes require medical attention for immediate health reasons. This treatment is necessary, and is not what I am referring to below. People who promote nonconsensual genital surgeries and/or hormone therapy for…
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SOOO honored and thrilled to have contacted the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (UN OHCHR) about including intersex people in their human rights efforts. With ILGA, ILGA-Europe, and all participants of the 2nd International Intesex Forum (in Stockholm) signing in support, it’s the first global call by and for…
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Criminalized Because of One’s Sex? – Hida Viloria By Hida Viloria; published on December 10, 2012 at 9:34 pm On June 14th, Indian gold medal winner Pinki Pramanik was arrested following accusations of rape and “being male” by her live-in partner. She was suspended from her job, detained in a male ward, and an MMS of…
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Brief Guidelines for Intersex Allies, co-written with OII USA’s Assoc. Director Claudia Astorino, was published yesterday in honor of Intersex Awareness Day, and is available on the OII-USA website free of charge. If want to spread awareness about intersex but don’t feel like you have all the info, this is the document for you!…
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I’m honored to have an article in Ms.–co-authored with ny intersex colleague and friend Georgiann Davis, PhD– about why the Olympics’ Testosterone regulations for Women are anti-intersex & unfair. Enjoy! Read the story online>>
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Click here to see the original posting at the NYT >> To the Sports Editor: Re “No Clear Option for Testing,” June 18: At the 2010 Winter Olympics, a sportscaster said, in reference to the figure skater Johnny Weir, “We should make him pass a gender test.” Another jokingly suggested that Weir compete in…
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An article by Hida Viloria and Maria Jose Martínez-Patino, in the American Journal of Bioethics Click here to see the original article >>
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Discriminatory Views Create Discriminatory Medical Treatment Author: Hida Viloria, Chairperson, Organisation Intersex International (OII), Director OII USA http://oiiinternational.com/oiiusa/ Note: A small percentage of intersex variations sometimes require medical attention for immediate health reasons. This treatment is necessary, and is not what I am referring to below. People who promote nonconsensual genital surgeries and/or hormone therapy for…
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Originally Posted in The Global Herald online. Click here to see the original article >>
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On Australia’s intersex & trans* inclusive passport policy, & why it’ s a great development. Originally in The Bioethics Forum online Click here to see the original article >>
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Originally published as “Gender Rules In Sport: Leveling the Paying Field or Reversed Doping?” on April 11, 2011 in The Global Herald online. https://web.archive.org/web/20130514122301/http://theglobalherald.com/opinion-gender-rules-in-sport-leveling-the-playing-field-or-reversed-doping/14837/
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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.
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From the SF Weekly. Click here to go to the story on their site >> Hida Viloria Tells Us What She Really Thinks What’s in a Name Viloria responds: Unnecessary genital surgeries of intersex infants are still standard procedure even here in San Francisco, based simply on a belief that ambiguous genitalia are undesirable…
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