About this item
From Hida Viloria, writer and intersex activist, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of life, love, and gender identity as an intact intersex person, as well as a call to action for justice for intersex people. Hida Viloria was raised as a girl but discovered early on that he/r body was different. Unlike most people who are born intersex in the first world--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--Hida had the freedom to explore the person s/he was born to be because he/r parents did not agree to have he/r sex characteristics surgically altered at birth. It wasn't until s/he was 26 and encountered the term "intersex" in a San Francisco newspaper that s/he finally had a name for he/r difference.
About the Author
Hida Viloria is a human rights activist and writer whose work has appeared in The Advocate, CNN.com, Ms., The Global Herald, The New York Times, The Narrative Inquiry in Bioethics, The American Journal of Bioethics, The Hastings Report Bioethics Forum, in her blog Intersex and Out, and in the college textbook, Queer: A Reader for Writers (Oxford University Press) . Hida's first book, Born Both: An Intersex Life, is scheduled for publication on March 14, 2017, by Hatchette Books.
Born in New York City to recently immigrated Colombian and Venezuelan parents, Viloria, who uses s/he and he/r pronouns, has been in the vanguard of intersex, non-binary and gender fluid education and advocacy since 1996 as a frequent lecturer, consultant (UN, Human Rights Watch, IOC) and television and radio guest (Oprah, HuffpostLive, Aljazeera, 20/20, BBC, Inside Edition ... ) . In 2013, he/r pioneering human rights work was recognized when s/he became the first openly intersex person to speak at the United Nations, by invitation, for Human Rights Day.
Viloria is Chairperson of the Organization Intersex International (OII) , the world's first and largest international intersex advocacy organization, and founding director of its American affiliate OII-USA, aka The Intersex Campaign for Equality. S/he currently resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
