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Born Both: An Intersex Life
From one of the world's foremost intersex activists, a candid, provocative, and eye-opening memoir of gender identity, self-acceptance, and love.
My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth.
It wasn't until I was twenty-six and encountered the term intersex in a San Francisco newspaper that I finally had a name for my difference. That's when I began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. I tried living as a feminine woman, an androgynous person, and even for a brief period of time as a man. Good friends would not recognize me, and gay men would hit on me. My gender fluidity was exciting, and in many ways freeing--but it could also be isolating.
I had to know if there were other intersex people like me, but when I finally found an intersex community to connect with I was shocked, and then deeply upset, to learn that most of the people I met had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Realizing that the invisibility of intersex people in society facilitated these practices, I made it my mission to bring an end to it--and became one of the first people to voluntarily come out as intersex at a national and then international level.
Born Both is the story of my lifelong journey toward finding love and embracing my authentic identity in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or, and of my decades-long fight for human rights and equality for intersex people everywhere.
My name is Hida Viloria. I was raised as a girl but discovered at a young age that my body looked different. Having endured an often turbulent home life as a kid, there were many times when I felt scared and alone, especially given my attraction to girls. But unlike most people in the first world who are born intersex--meaning they have genitals, reproductive organs, hormones, and/or chromosomal patterns that do not fit standard definitions of male or female--I grew up in the body I was born with because my parents did not have my sex characteristics surgically altered at birth.
It wasn't until I was twenty-six and encountered the term intersex in a San Francisco newspaper that I finally had a name for my difference. That's when I began to explore what it means to live in the space between genders--to be both and neither. I tried living as a feminine woman, an androgynous person, and even for a brief period of time as a man. Good friends would not recognize me, and gay men would hit on me. My gender fluidity was exciting, and in many ways freeing--but it could also be isolating.
I had to know if there were other intersex people like me, but when I finally found an intersex community to connect with I was shocked, and then deeply upset, to learn that most of the people I met had been scarred, both physically and psychologically, by infant surgeries and hormone treatments meant to "correct" their bodies. Realizing that the invisibility of intersex people in society facilitated these practices, I made it my mission to bring an end to it--and became one of the first people to voluntarily come out as intersex at a national and then international level.
Born Both is the story of my lifelong journey toward finding love and embracing my authentic identity in a world that insists on categorizing people into either/or, and of my decades-long fight for human rights and equality for intersex people everywhere.
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First published March 14, 2017
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About the author
Hida Viloria
2 books25 followersHida (“Heeda”) Viloria is a writer, author of the 2018 Lambda Literary Award nominated memoir, Born Both: An Intersex Life (Hachette Books), and one of the world’s foremost intersex and non-binary activists, bringing an intersectional analysis to he/r work as the queer child of Latinx immigrants. Viloria is the founding director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality (IC4E), a frequent consultant (UN, Lambda Legal, Human Rights Watch), speaker (Columbia, Princeton, Stanford, NYU…), television and radio guest (Oprah, Aljazeera, 20/20, NPR, BBC…), and one the most extensively published intersex writers (TheHuffington Post, The NYT, The Daily Beast, The Advocate, The American Journal of Bioethics, CNN.com, Ms…). Born Both has been praised by The NYT Book Review, The Washington Post, Rolling Stone, NPR, Psychology Today, and People, and will be published in German in summer 2018.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 157 reviews
February 27, 2022
Bullet Review:
Rounding up to 4-stars because while this memoir is flawed, it is bringing something to light that is HUGELY important in our society.
I venture to say that the first half is the strongest, with a cohesive narrative while the second half reads as a litany of various projects and activism that Hida participates in.
This book will HUGELY challenge you in talking about sex and gender, even more than I thought possible in this day of marriage equality and trans visibility. Sometimes I had trouble wrapping my head around it, when sex is used to describe like 13 different things (biological sex, assigned sex, sex as a synonym for gender, etc.). Part of that is modern society's blurring of the issue.
Full review:
Disclosure: I received this free from Amazon Vine. This did not influence the rating whatsoever.
NOTE: I acknowledge I am a white, cisgendered female, so I am reading Hida's story as a privileged outsider being given the honor to learn something new. Thanks to Hida for their courage and the gift of their story.
NOTE: Hida’s pronouns as of 2021 are they/them and my review has been updated accordingly. If incorrect pronouns are still present, I will update appropriately. My intention is NOT to misgender anyone or to use incorrect pronouns; I am more than willing to apologize and correct myself. Any mistakes are my own and were not made in malice.
Hida Viloria was born with "ambiguous genitalia", but unlike most intersex children born in the late 1960's, they were not subjected to gender normalization surgeries. They lived with their enlarged female genitalia as a "normal" female child.
It wasn't until Hida was in their 20's and living in San Francisco when they first came across the word "intersex" - and then the realization hit that they were intersex. They spent many years figuring out what intersex meant to them, and became a spokesperson for the entire community - appearing on Inside Edition, Oprah, and more. At the time of the book's writing, they run the OII-USA, which is an intersex organization in the USA working on promoting intersex visibility.
Hida's memoirs opens the door on something we just don't talk about much - our bodies, sex, whether there is male/female or more than that, and what it means to be male/female/intersex. It's hugely appropriate for their memoir to come out now, with marriage equality, the transgender bathroom bills and transgender activists like Laverne Cox and Jazz Jennings. I applaud Hida for breaking down barriers, being unashamed to talk about themselves especially such a private part. Through their activism, they are making young intersex people realize there is nothing shameful with their bodies and educating parents about how trying to "fix" their genitals can create more problems than it solves. They are also a living example of a person who rejects our highly binary gender roles - that you MUST choose between being a woman or being a man. Between looking pretty, wearing make-up and dresses and being tough and having short hair. (Among other things.) This binary is something that my sibling and I discuss a lot, as the binary suits neither of us well.
That said, I feel like in places the book was far too long and far too short and in places far too repetitive. The first half is definitely the best, as it has a narrative and flow. It paints the setting for Hida's young adult years, their exploration of being a lesbian, their exploration of being intersex and switching from girl to boy to girl to boy to ultimately neither and both. As I am thinking about this, a day after finishing, I can vividly repaint some of the scenes in the early book, they stick with me so well. As for the latter half - well, it mostly reads like a summary of activism Hida has been involved in, along with more philosophy on sex and gender and appropriate terminology (according to Hida - they are okay, for instance with "hermaphrodite" and "herm" (ETA: at least as of the writing of this book) while other intersex persons do not like that). It's far more tedious than the first half; sometimes I feel like it's just a bunch of random dates (with new friends peppering the entries that never have the nice background and fleshed out "character" that friends like Jade and Beth had in the beginning section).
And then the repetition! Good lord! In the middle of the book particularly, Hida relates numerous events that feel like the same story with the same lesson - something happens (usually they start dating someone), they "become" one gender (man or woman) and then something bad happens (the breakup) in which they realize - they are neither man nor woman, so they should start combining the two sides. It's frustrating, because instead of feeling like it's a revelation (after the 3rd or 4th time hearing the variation of this story), I feel like it's justification - which of course, Hida does NOT need. I suppose as a human being, we often have these revelations multiple times in our lifetime (coming from a religious background, I am reminded of those people responding to alter calls or rededicating their lives to Christ because they have "fallen away" - or in my personal life, having to realign how I eat to life a more healthy life). Perhaps it would not have felt so repetitive if Hida had mentioned relearning this or rediscovering this fact, but it felt to me that every time they mentioned it, it was as if discovering it for the first time.
Hida is unafraid of speaking rather bluntly about the intersex community and the division in it. Most people wouldn't want to air "their dirty laundry", but in this case, Hida is so concerned that intersex people will think of themselves as broken and "wrong" that they are willing to be honest to make sure everyone realizes how beautiful they are.
A book like this is hard to review, because I am not one to judge a person's life story. I think Hida wrote the most authentic memoir they could. They shared their story for young people like themselves seeking some answers. If one person is encouraged by this memoir, then it doesn't matter how belabored and boring the second half is - the book would have been more than worth the time Hida spent writing, the publishing costs, etc.
I do recommend everyone read this book. Open your mind, your heart and listen to Hida. Remember that the world is filled with many types of people, and try to put your own ego on the shelf and accept your fellow human being - whether that person is male, female, neither or both.
Rounding up to 4-stars because while this memoir is flawed, it is bringing something to light that is HUGELY important in our society.
I venture to say that the first half is the strongest, with a cohesive narrative while the second half reads as a litany of various projects and activism that Hida participates in.
This book will HUGELY challenge you in talking about sex and gender, even more than I thought possible in this day of marriage equality and trans visibility. Sometimes I had trouble wrapping my head around it, when sex is used to describe like 13 different things (biological sex, assigned sex, sex as a synonym for gender, etc.). Part of that is modern society's blurring of the issue.
Full review:
Disclosure: I received this free from Amazon Vine. This did not influence the rating whatsoever.
NOTE: I acknowledge I am a white, cisgendered female, so I am reading Hida's story as a privileged outsider being given the honor to learn something new. Thanks to Hida for their courage and the gift of their story.
NOTE: Hida’s pronouns as of 2021 are they/them and my review has been updated accordingly. If incorrect pronouns are still present, I will update appropriately. My intention is NOT to misgender anyone or to use incorrect pronouns; I am more than willing to apologize and correct myself. Any mistakes are my own and were not made in malice.
Hida Viloria was born with "ambiguous genitalia", but unlike most intersex children born in the late 1960's, they were not subjected to gender normalization surgeries. They lived with their enlarged female genitalia as a "normal" female child.
It wasn't until Hida was in their 20's and living in San Francisco when they first came across the word "intersex" - and then the realization hit that they were intersex. They spent many years figuring out what intersex meant to them, and became a spokesperson for the entire community - appearing on Inside Edition, Oprah, and more. At the time of the book's writing, they run the OII-USA, which is an intersex organization in the USA working on promoting intersex visibility.
Hida's memoirs opens the door on something we just don't talk about much - our bodies, sex, whether there is male/female or more than that, and what it means to be male/female/intersex. It's hugely appropriate for their memoir to come out now, with marriage equality, the transgender bathroom bills and transgender activists like Laverne Cox and Jazz Jennings. I applaud Hida for breaking down barriers, being unashamed to talk about themselves especially such a private part. Through their activism, they are making young intersex people realize there is nothing shameful with their bodies and educating parents about how trying to "fix" their genitals can create more problems than it solves. They are also a living example of a person who rejects our highly binary gender roles - that you MUST choose between being a woman or being a man. Between looking pretty, wearing make-up and dresses and being tough and having short hair. (Among other things.) This binary is something that my sibling and I discuss a lot, as the binary suits neither of us well.
That said, I feel like in places the book was far too long and far too short and in places far too repetitive. The first half is definitely the best, as it has a narrative and flow. It paints the setting for Hida's young adult years, their exploration of being a lesbian, their exploration of being intersex and switching from girl to boy to girl to boy to ultimately neither and both. As I am thinking about this, a day after finishing, I can vividly repaint some of the scenes in the early book, they stick with me so well. As for the latter half - well, it mostly reads like a summary of activism Hida has been involved in, along with more philosophy on sex and gender and appropriate terminology (according to Hida - they are okay, for instance with "hermaphrodite" and "herm" (ETA: at least as of the writing of this book) while other intersex persons do not like that). It's far more tedious than the first half; sometimes I feel like it's just a bunch of random dates (with new friends peppering the entries that never have the nice background and fleshed out "character" that friends like Jade and Beth had in the beginning section).
And then the repetition! Good lord! In the middle of the book particularly, Hida relates numerous events that feel like the same story with the same lesson - something happens (usually they start dating someone), they "become" one gender (man or woman) and then something bad happens (the breakup) in which they realize - they are neither man nor woman, so they should start combining the two sides. It's frustrating, because instead of feeling like it's a revelation (after the 3rd or 4th time hearing the variation of this story), I feel like it's justification - which of course, Hida does NOT need. I suppose as a human being, we often have these revelations multiple times in our lifetime (coming from a religious background, I am reminded of those people responding to alter calls or rededicating their lives to Christ because they have "fallen away" - or in my personal life, having to realign how I eat to life a more healthy life). Perhaps it would not have felt so repetitive if Hida had mentioned relearning this or rediscovering this fact, but it felt to me that every time they mentioned it, it was as if discovering it for the first time.
Hida is unafraid of speaking rather bluntly about the intersex community and the division in it. Most people wouldn't want to air "their dirty laundry", but in this case, Hida is so concerned that intersex people will think of themselves as broken and "wrong" that they are willing to be honest to make sure everyone realizes how beautiful they are.
A book like this is hard to review, because I am not one to judge a person's life story. I think Hida wrote the most authentic memoir they could. They shared their story for young people like themselves seeking some answers. If one person is encouraged by this memoir, then it doesn't matter how belabored and boring the second half is - the book would have been more than worth the time Hida spent writing, the publishing costs, etc.
I do recommend everyone read this book. Open your mind, your heart and listen to Hida. Remember that the world is filled with many types of people, and try to put your own ego on the shelf and accept your fellow human being - whether that person is male, female, neither or both.
April 5, 2017
An illuminating memoir by an intersex activist. It’s not particularly well-written and I think it could have been shorter but it’s an important book on a topic that isn’t talked about enough.
April 30, 2017
I'm so glad that Hida Viloria shared her life experiences in this memoir, she is amazingly candid about her anatomy and sexuality in a way I thought was helpful to understanding her experience. I thought the first hundred pages were fascinating.
She talks about dressing like a man and using the women's rest room and people using male pronouns to refer to her. Her experiences reminded me of another book about gender identity called 'Self Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back Again' by Nora Vincent. Nora impersonates a man and shares her insights, she has different reasons for doing so, but with similar results.
Hida is an outspoken leader in promoting the rights of and empowering intersexed people around the world, she's a brave inspiration to anyone who feels marginalized or different. I admire her willingness to share her experiences and her determination to fight for what she believes in. I was glad to have read her memoir.
I was a little disappointed that her editors didn't encourage her to tighten up the narrative which gets bogged down toward the later half of the book with repetition and lack of forward momentum. Hida has done so much to open up people's minds about accepting people who are born intersexed that it would have been nice to focus more on the positive impact she's had. The discussion and debate about using the designation DSD (the term that refers to intersexed people as individuals with disorders of sex development) is important and worthy reading but it could have been consolidated with the same or better impact.
I also thought it was counterproductive to the story as a whole to include the four day trip to Black Rock City, Utah, which reads like an advertisement promoting tripping on acid. I have to be honest and tell you that I do not censor what my children (15 yrs. and 12 yrs old) read, period. However, I do encourage them to read a whole sh*t ton of stuff by making it available and accessible to them. When I read the first hundred pages I thought this would be a great book for my daughter to read. After reading Hida's endorsement for tripping on acid it made me pause and reconsider if I would recommend the book to her or not. I wish the author and editor had been thinking about the potential impact a book like this could have for young people. As it is I can't really recommend it to young readers, which disappoints me. Adult readers should also know the book has graphic descriptions and a healthy dose of swearing, none of which should turn readers away from reading this eye opening memoir.
She talks about dressing like a man and using the women's rest room and people using male pronouns to refer to her. Her experiences reminded me of another book about gender identity called 'Self Made Man: One Woman's Journey into Manhood and Back Again' by Nora Vincent. Nora impersonates a man and shares her insights, she has different reasons for doing so, but with similar results.
Hida is an outspoken leader in promoting the rights of and empowering intersexed people around the world, she's a brave inspiration to anyone who feels marginalized or different. I admire her willingness to share her experiences and her determination to fight for what she believes in. I was glad to have read her memoir.
I was a little disappointed that her editors didn't encourage her to tighten up the narrative which gets bogged down toward the later half of the book with repetition and lack of forward momentum. Hida has done so much to open up people's minds about accepting people who are born intersexed that it would have been nice to focus more on the positive impact she's had. The discussion and debate about using the designation DSD (the term that refers to intersexed people as individuals with disorders of sex development) is important and worthy reading but it could have been consolidated with the same or better impact.
I also thought it was counterproductive to the story as a whole to include the four day trip to Black Rock City, Utah, which reads like an advertisement promoting tripping on acid. I have to be honest and tell you that I do not censor what my children (15 yrs. and 12 yrs old) read, period. However, I do encourage them to read a whole sh*t ton of stuff by making it available and accessible to them. When I read the first hundred pages I thought this would be a great book for my daughter to read. After reading Hida's endorsement for tripping on acid it made me pause and reconsider if I would recommend the book to her or not. I wish the author and editor had been thinking about the potential impact a book like this could have for young people. As it is I can't really recommend it to young readers, which disappoints me. Adult readers should also know the book has graphic descriptions and a healthy dose of swearing, none of which should turn readers away from reading this eye opening memoir.
May 10, 2017
I picked the book up to learn more about the topic and to develop further understanding. I was disappointed in its length (way too long) and poor writing style (redundant and not descriptive). The author has an interesting story, yet too much time was spent discussing how attractive they are, how many drugs they used, how many people want to have sex with them. It was simply boring.
October 8, 2021
I seem to be on quite the bad run of books lately. The last three boos I’ve read have lost me at the halfway point.
This book, like the previously other two, started out really interesting. I was fascinated by learning more about the author who is intersexed/hermaphrodite. Intersex a term I’d never heard of before.
One in 2000 people are born as intersex, having both male and female traits.
There were many times in the book the author writes: my clitoris is large, enough that it resembles a small penis. That became a bit repetitious, but I could overlook it.
The part where the author really lost me is the chapter about going to the Burning Man event. If every chapter of a book is to move the story forward, I do not know what the point of this chapter was.
But I continued on, but the book only got worse from there.
There was just too much about her activism. I feel that part of the book lost the connection I felt to the author.
Yes, I liked being educated about the struggle but I felt I lost the author as a person. That the author became more of a performer. She was on 20/20, Inside Edition, Montel, Tyra Banks, and Oprah. And involved in the Caster Semenya, Olympic controversy.
The author insists that doctors, etc. should recognize that sex comes in more than two categories. That there is a third gender: male, female, and intersex.
I feel horrible learning about the surgeries performed on infants to change them into being male or female. The author was one of the fortunate ones who had not had surgery.
This book has great parts, and some not so great unless you are closely connected to the fight for intersex rights. I do feel a lot more editing should have been done to hold the reader’s interest.
I do thank the author for what I did learn.
This book, like the previously other two, started out really interesting. I was fascinated by learning more about the author who is intersexed/hermaphrodite. Intersex a term I’d never heard of before.
One in 2000 people are born as intersex, having both male and female traits.
There were many times in the book the author writes: my clitoris is large, enough that it resembles a small penis. That became a bit repetitious, but I could overlook it.
The part where the author really lost me is the chapter about going to the Burning Man event. If every chapter of a book is to move the story forward, I do not know what the point of this chapter was.
But I continued on, but the book only got worse from there.
There was just too much about her activism. I feel that part of the book lost the connection I felt to the author.
Yes, I liked being educated about the struggle but I felt I lost the author as a person. That the author became more of a performer. She was on 20/20, Inside Edition, Montel, Tyra Banks, and Oprah. And involved in the Caster Semenya, Olympic controversy.
The author insists that doctors, etc. should recognize that sex comes in more than two categories. That there is a third gender: male, female, and intersex.
I feel horrible learning about the surgeries performed on infants to change them into being male or female. The author was one of the fortunate ones who had not had surgery.
This book has great parts, and some not so great unless you are closely connected to the fight for intersex rights. I do feel a lot more editing should have been done to hold the reader’s interest.
I do thank the author for what I did learn.
August 6, 2019
Fascinating topic of intersex. The complexities intersex person have to deal with in their everyday live are, almost by nature, doubled to those of "regular" persons. How about complexities and repercussions of how we use language related to being intersex? Mind crunching.
September 14, 2017
I didn't find this book fierce or brave or shocking any of the other superlatives describing it in its blurbs. I've read many books by and about people who fall outside of the conventional ideas of sexuality, so this was not my first rodeo. This particular book reads more like a poorly written personal diary with a pervasive interest in the size of her clitoris. How big it is, how surprising it is, what she does with it, what other people think of it, how it feels about itself (not really!) etc. And then the subject moves on to what clothes s/he will wear today, will s/he be a boy or a girl, how will she be perceived or reacted to, how will s/he feel about it and so on. I really wanted to like this book but unfortunately it is little more than a narcissistic rant. I even wonder if she is aware that other women have radical variations in clitoris size, shape & length. One begins to feel that she really has little interest in the world outside herself.
July 10, 2017
A brilliant, extremely important book. I feel we will look back on this book in decades to come as a major turning point in our understanding, awareness, and compassion for intersex people.
June 9, 2017
When Hida Viloria was born, the doctor took he/r father (also a doctor) aside and they had a quiet conversation. Whatever the doctor told he/r father, he rejected, and Hida was presented to he/r mother as a baby girl, and that is how s/he was raised. Hida had a rough life; he/r father was abusive, s/he was drugged and raped at a bar, s/he was a budding lesbian in a culture that doesn’t take well to that. Along with that, s/he struggled with he/r gender identity: was s/he really the girl s/he was raised to be, was s/he male instead, or was s/he somewhere in between?
The answer turned out to be ‘in between’. It took Hida years to figure that out; s/he’d didn’t hear the word ‘intersex’ until 1995. After that, things started falling into place. S/he also learned about female genital mutilation and the common practice in the US of surgically altering intersex babies so their genitals ‘look like’ girls- depriving them of a source of sexual pleasure. S/he has become a writer and an activist for the intersex community, trying to educate the world on gender fluidity and letting babies grow up as they are born.
I found the first part of the book very interesting, as Hida told about he/r journey of discovery. The latter part I found less interesting; it was all about he/r activism and it was very rushed. While I agree he/r activism is incredibly important, it’s just not as interesting to read about. Warning to the sensitive: there are graphic descriptions of sex and violence, as well as liberal use of The Big Swear Word.
Four and a half stars out of five.
The answer turned out to be ‘in between’. It took Hida years to figure that out; s/he’d didn’t hear the word ‘intersex’ until 1995. After that, things started falling into place. S/he also learned about female genital mutilation and the common practice in the US of surgically altering intersex babies so their genitals ‘look like’ girls- depriving them of a source of sexual pleasure. S/he has become a writer and an activist for the intersex community, trying to educate the world on gender fluidity and letting babies grow up as they are born.
I found the first part of the book very interesting, as Hida told about he/r journey of discovery. The latter part I found less interesting; it was all about he/r activism and it was very rushed. While I agree he/r activism is incredibly important, it’s just not as interesting to read about. Warning to the sensitive: there are graphic descriptions of sex and violence, as well as liberal use of The Big Swear Word.
Four and a half stars out of five.
March 30, 2024
I loved this book. I learned so much about my community. I am so thankful to the lifetime of work that Hida has put into furthering visibility and rights for intersex people.
I loved all of this book. I disagree with other reviewers saying that the second half of the book is all over the place. I think that a persons life is a bunch of fragments and Hida did a great job of compiling the interesting and educational bits. I loved all of the experiences that they shared with us and felt that they all added up to an incredible journey that I was happy to read.
Thank you for writing this book, it means a lot to me.
I loved all of this book. I disagree with other reviewers saying that the second half of the book is all over the place. I think that a persons life is a bunch of fragments and Hida did a great job of compiling the interesting and educational bits. I loved all of the experiences that they shared with us and felt that they all added up to an incredible journey that I was happy to read.
Thank you for writing this book, it means a lot to me.
June 23, 2019
3.5 stars
This was very interesting. I learnt many new things about what it is like being intersex and what it means (I didn't have much prior knowledge about it anyway). I was surprised to learn about the extent of the discrimination they face because I had no idea it was happening. I think this book shows the evolution of a movement really well because it follows Hida's whole life and how it took time for her to figure out that she was intersex and then she started fighting to bring awareness and rights for intersex people. Then towards the end of the book, it shows really well how much movements grow as they gain more awareness.
I liked the way this was written as it made it very easy to read: it was as if it was a fiction book. However, towards the end, I would have liked more descriptions about Hida's activism itself (by which I mean the content) and not what exactly happened. I felt that the latter half of the book was basically just: I was invited to this show to speak and I did this and that. It got a bit repetitive but don't get me wrong, it was still interesting to read how Hida went from a "nobody" to such a significant activist in the intersex community. But still, I feel that too much time was spent on telling about the places where Hida was when I wanted to know more about what was said.
Overall, I think this is an important read because the intersex community still needs to get more awareness and more people need to know what it means.
This was very interesting. I learnt many new things about what it is like being intersex and what it means (I didn't have much prior knowledge about it anyway). I was surprised to learn about the extent of the discrimination they face because I had no idea it was happening. I think this book shows the evolution of a movement really well because it follows Hida's whole life and how it took time for her to figure out that she was intersex and then she started fighting to bring awareness and rights for intersex people. Then towards the end of the book, it shows really well how much movements grow as they gain more awareness.
I liked the way this was written as it made it very easy to read: it was as if it was a fiction book. However, towards the end, I would have liked more descriptions about Hida's activism itself (by which I mean the content) and not what exactly happened. I felt that the latter half of the book was basically just: I was invited to this show to speak and I did this and that. It got a bit repetitive but don't get me wrong, it was still interesting to read how Hida went from a "nobody" to such a significant activist in the intersex community. But still, I feel that too much time was spent on telling about the places where Hida was when I wanted to know more about what was said.
Overall, I think this is an important read because the intersex community still needs to get more awareness and more people need to know what it means.
January 27, 2018
While the subject of this book is important and we must reexamine how we define gender in this day and age, I feel this book gave only a sliver view of the world of the intersex person. This young woman gives an honest account of her body and the emotional pain and confusion she and others go/have gone through. When I heard how some intersex people have been physically mutilated in the name of science and medicine, I was brought to tears.
And while the drugging and drinking she did is tied in to the emotional rollercoaster one rides when one comes from an abusive family, I sometimes wondered exactly what the point of this book was.
Perfect example of unnecessary story line was the trip to Burning Man. Who the hell cares how much acid you dropped, what you wore and what you ate for breakfast?!
At that point of the book, I simply turned it off because it seemed like the story was just wandering, obligatory filler from then on.
Also, the narrator did not do a very good job. Their reading was choppy and mangled and at times. The narrator did the book and this story no favors.
And while the drugging and drinking she did is tied in to the emotional rollercoaster one rides when one comes from an abusive family, I sometimes wondered exactly what the point of this book was.
Perfect example of unnecessary story line was the trip to Burning Man. Who the hell cares how much acid you dropped, what you wore and what you ate for breakfast?!
At that point of the book, I simply turned it off because it seemed like the story was just wandering, obligatory filler from then on.
Also, the narrator did not do a very good job. Their reading was choppy and mangled and at times. The narrator did the book and this story no favors.
September 17, 2018
OMG this was an eye opening book for me! I can’t believe how unaware I was and am thankful I read this. About the same number of people who were born redhead are born intersex. Some people are born male, some female and some with both genital organs, those formerly known as hermaphrodite but are now known as intersex. This is an amazing book which I highly recommend to everyone who does not understand intersex, which would be 98.3 per cent of all human beings.
June 13, 2017
I was really into this, found it really interesting and enjoyable (Hida is a very fun sounding person!) but for some reason the last quarter of the book I could NOT stay interested in it, not sure why, it just got more detailed about her activism and the politics with it, and it got fairly dry and draggy and I guess I gave up.
March 26, 2018
A very interesting look at gender, the way it is perceived and what it means to not fit the norm. It really opened my eyes. It is a tender subject with more facets than I initially imagined. An important introduction to the issue. I hope it gets a wide audience.
March 30, 2025
I really enjoyed this. I'm not usually a memoir person, but there were a lot of great moments and discussions in this one. I read it with my book club, and we had a fantastic discussion.
On the complimentary side, the writing style is accessible and charming. It was extremely fun reading about their dating escapades, and the gender exploration is handled in a really approachable way.
Critically, this book needs content warnings like Whoa, because the traumatic stuff really blindsided some of our members. I did okay, but folks with issues around parental abuse, sexual assault, and relationship issues might struggle with this read. There were also a few issues of things like pretty privilege going unexamined that we would have liked to see more about.
That said, so many intersex books can be dark and painful, and this book is full of queer joy and plain language that makes some really interesting, extremely comprehensible thoughts of gender and activism. One of the best reads we've done for the club, and i recommend it.
On the complimentary side, the writing style is accessible and charming. It was extremely fun reading about their dating escapades, and the gender exploration is handled in a really approachable way.
Critically, this book needs content warnings like Whoa, because the traumatic stuff really blindsided some of our members. I did okay, but folks with issues around parental abuse, sexual assault, and relationship issues might struggle with this read. There were also a few issues of things like pretty privilege going unexamined that we would have liked to see more about.
That said, so many intersex books can be dark and painful, and this book is full of queer joy and plain language that makes some really interesting, extremely comprehensible thoughts of gender and activism. One of the best reads we've done for the club, and i recommend it.
April 30, 2023
very informative on the intersex community, i was able to learn a lot. it was less a memoir and more a series of events that taught the reader about the process of fighting for intersex rights, regardless i was able to gain a lot from reading it
November 21, 2024
CW: SA, use of the H word, f*g, and tr***** (but by queer people in a non-derogatory and sometimes loving way, also keep in mind it’s usually from a conversation from the 90’s when that language was more common and more accepted)
This book is compelling, honest, and well-written. There are bits of history in here as well. I really enjoyed the authors exploration or gender and feminism combined with her activism.
This book is compelling, honest, and well-written. There are bits of history in here as well. I really enjoyed the authors exploration or gender and feminism combined with her activism.
May 8, 2017
I had never heard of Hida Viloria and after reading her/his book, I felt a bit ashamed of that fact. But then again, while I know that biological sex is not a duality, I've been so conditioned by society to think in terms of binary that I haven't paid much attention to developments in the recognition of intersex people.
Hida's biography uses a lot of flashbacks but in general it does progress chronologically, showing us her/his journey of self-awareness and social activism. But the book isn't only personal stories and revelations. S/he share the scholarship from the time periods of her/his life. S/he is about my age so I recall a lot of the television shows, political events, and social phenomenon eve if I was going to all of them. I can recall the same news stories about intersex but I didn't know about the debates over using that term or others that "experts" were attempting to develop.
As good as the book is, the powerful and details start to fall apart at the end of the 2012 period. The book continues through 2013, 2014, 2015, and then epilogues into 2016 but the details are much slimmer. Always free with who s/he was in love with or dating, that disappears with "C" and then no one. I'm not sure why the change in details happens. Is Hida in a relationship where her/his partner wants more privacy? Did less happen? If so to either of these then why the book now?
Whether you are also intersex or merely curious about the multitude of ways that biology, society, and the individual connect, if you can have an open mind and have a sense of empathy, you might get a lot out of this book.
Note: I'm using fem/mas pronouns because at the end of the book, this seems to be Hida's preference and I try to respect that.
Hida's biography uses a lot of flashbacks but in general it does progress chronologically, showing us her/his journey of self-awareness and social activism. But the book isn't only personal stories and revelations. S/he share the scholarship from the time periods of her/his life. S/he is about my age so I recall a lot of the television shows, political events, and social phenomenon eve if I was going to all of them. I can recall the same news stories about intersex but I didn't know about the debates over using that term or others that "experts" were attempting to develop.
As good as the book is, the powerful and details start to fall apart at the end of the 2012 period. The book continues through 2013, 2014, 2015, and then epilogues into 2016 but the details are much slimmer. Always free with who s/he was in love with or dating, that disappears with "C" and then no one. I'm not sure why the change in details happens. Is Hida in a relationship where her/his partner wants more privacy? Did less happen? If so to either of these then why the book now?
Whether you are also intersex or merely curious about the multitude of ways that biology, society, and the individual connect, if you can have an open mind and have a sense of empathy, you might get a lot out of this book.
Note: I'm using fem/mas pronouns because at the end of the book, this seems to be Hida's preference and I try to respect that.
November 26, 2019
This is a fascinating subject to me and the author has obviously been through things I can't even imagine. The book itself though contained too much political background of the movement itself to hold my interest. Ze also seems to vacillate between feelings of extreme confidence almost to the point of haughtiness to sobbing "hide in the bottom of the closet" Insecurity. While the author seems to chalk this up to being intersexed, it does not ring true. The story seems to be told with some distance and detachment to the actual events. It was an interesting read, just not the strong book I was hoping for.
did-not-finish
April 23, 2017Not the book for me, but I'm grateful to be introduced to this topic, and plan to read up on it more. I'm glad that Intersex people have more support now than during the time the author grew up.
In compliance with FTC guidelines, I disclose that I received this book for free through GoodReads' First Reads.
In compliance with FTC guidelines, I disclose that I received this book for free through GoodReads' First Reads.
September 24, 2017
I learned so much from reading this book. Being born intersex occurs as frequently as red hair. There are 46 different ways that a human body can be intersex. If you are interested in a good memoir about gender identity and gender identity politics, read this.
May 28, 2017
(Please excuse the absence of italics. I don't have the time to reformat everything for Goodreads.)
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
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
November 28, 2024
This memoir is all at once eye-opening, entertaining, and gut-wrenching at times. With the current social climate surrounding gender and sexuality, works like this are extremely important. In sharing their journey, Hida humanizes a portion of the population that is all too often misunderstood and pathologized, if acknowledged at all, and demonstrates that existence outside the binary gender/sex roles has and will always occur. They shed light on the history of medical abuses, of lgbtqia and genital integrity activism, and the struggles (both internal and external) such activist groups face. I would highly recommend this book.
November 17, 2019
This is a best first book to read, for those interested in intersexuality. The author describes life and activism as an intersex individual. I have background in sexuality study, and I learned a lot from this book.
May 5, 2022
Hilda Viloria is an intersex person and has been a leading activist for the last 20 years. This memoir is helpful in learning more about folks whose identities and bodies lie outside the gender binary. The author is sometimes a bit long winded and repetitive, but I so appreciate their vulnerability and openness. I was glad for the opportunity to learn more.
December 31, 2020
Essential reading. Valeria provides insight into a thoroughly misunderstood group of people, humanizing the intersex experience by exploring her life’s journey.
July 8, 2024
This book should be required reading for every human being! Well, every adult human being. I want to say more, but I don't have the words. It's just a really important story.
November 6, 2024
Really enjoyed this memoir, thoughtful and well-written
April 2, 2024
Fascinating and honest and thought-provoking. A gentle warning that there are some comments which came across as biphobic to me which was disappointing.
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