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International Symposia
Intersex Genital Mutilations
Hida	admin	2020-06-03T17:01:54+00:00
We invite you to consider the personal experiences of those who were subjected to these childhood violations. Please join us in advocating for the rights of vulnerable children.
Male Genital Mutilation
Intersex Genital Mutilation
Born Both: An Intersex Life
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 interesex 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 knoiw 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 physcally 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. ~ From the cover jacket of Born Both: An Intersex Life by Hida Vilora (Hachett Books, March 2017). Hida Viloria is a writer and intersex activist, chairperson of the Organization Intersex International (OII), and founding director of its American affiliate, the Intersex Campaign for Equality, also known as OII-USA. Hida's mission is to obtain equality for intersex and nonbinary people as part of a broader vision for a world that accepts and values differences of every kind.
HidaViloria.com