Hida Viloria
Autore di Born Both: An Intersex Life
Opere di Hida Viloria
Born both an intersex life 1 copia
Opere correlate
Etichette
Informazioni generali
- Nome canonico
- Viloria, Hida
- Nome legale
- Viloria, Hida Patricia
- Data di nascita
- 1968-05-29
- Sesso
- intersex
- Nazionalità
- USA
- Luogo di nascita
- New York City, New York, USA
- Luogo di residenza
- Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
- Istruzione
- Wesleyan University (1986-1988)
University of California, Berkeley - Organizzazioni
- Organization Intersex International
American affiliate OII-USA, aka The Intersex Campaign for Equality - Agente
- Molly Glick
- Breve biografia
- Hida Viloria (born May 29, 1968) is a Latine American writer, author, producer, and human rights activist. Viloria is intersex, non-binary, and gender nonconforming, using they/them pronouns. They are known for their writing and their intersex and non-binary human rights activism, as the first person to come out in national and international media as a non-binary intersex person, and to publish on intersex issues in mainstream national press. Viloria is Founding Director of the Intersex Campaign for Equality, which spearheaded, via its Associate Director Dana Zzyym's lawsuit against the U.S. State Department, the first American legal efforts for federal third sex/gender recognition, on passports. [Wikipedia] 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). 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. (Amazon.com Author Page)
Utenti
Recensioni
Born Both: An Intersex Life di Hida Viloria
Included in a blog post and resource list at https://booksbeyondbinaries.blog/2019/06/10/non-fiction-about-gender-and-trans-e...
The author has been annoyed all her life by people mispronouncing her first name, even when she corrects, so, the "H" is silent and it's pronounced like "Eeda."
I thought this was a fascinating and informative book. Hida Viloria wants "intersex" to be considered a third sex, neither or both male and female. I understand intellectually, but I haven't quite incorporated the idea - it will come. She rather likes both, containing both yin and yang, and, depending on how she presents herself, she can pass as male, female, or so androgynous that people are puzzled. Apparently, some intersex people are a bit on the female side, and others are more male. I find it difficult to believe that some people prefer "Disorders in Sexual Development", or, "Differences in Sexual Development," either also DSD. After all, "intersex" or the older, "hermaphrodite", which Hida sometimes uses, are both simple and informative.
Hida has become quite an activist for her sex - she has been in documentaries, appeared for interviews on television and radio, marched in parades. Considering that all this requires her to talk graphically about things that are ordinarily considered private, and that many people may not want to hear about, this is very brave of her. She sometimes faces jealously from other people born intersex. Unlike most such people, Hida never had surgery to "normalize" her genitalia. She is therefore, also a living demonstration that the supposed future social and personal problems that "uncorrected" people were predicted to suffer from, needn't happen. Of course, timing may be very important here - Hida came of age when the situation was improving, if not enough, for people not conforming to the strict male/female binary.
I must admit wanting to tear my hair out when Hida began explaining what's wrong with "cisgender." For intersex people the important thing is to get non-binary sexes recognized, but it will be an uphill fight in many places. There was also a problem when she used the pronoun "They." Since it's ambiguous, I first interpreted it as meaning that the conversation had been joined by additional people, and it didn't make sense, until I realized that it was being used as the singular preferred pronoun for the person that she was talking with. If "they" is going to be used as a singular pronoun, and it would be great to have a sex/gender neutral pronoun, I think we need to push substituting "theys" as a plural for he, she, and they, to reduce confusion.
I wondered, thinking about it, if there will be a contest over pronouns. Will non-binary gender people want it to be their special pronoun, or can it be used by anyone not comfortable with with he/she? Hida is presently using "s/he, he/r," but I don't know that that works when spoken - it needs a unique pronunciation. S/he was formerly using "ze."… (altro)
I thought this was a fascinating and informative book. Hida Viloria wants "intersex" to be considered a third sex, neither or both male and female. I understand intellectually, but I haven't quite incorporated the idea - it will come. She rather likes both, containing both yin and yang, and, depending on how she presents herself, she can pass as male, female, or so androgynous that people are puzzled. Apparently, some intersex people are a bit on the female side, and others are more male. I find it difficult to believe that some people prefer "Disorders in Sexual Development", or, "Differences in Sexual Development," either also DSD. After all, "intersex" or the older, "hermaphrodite", which Hida sometimes uses, are both simple and informative.
Hida has become quite an activist for her sex - she has been in documentaries, appeared for interviews on television and radio, marched in parades. Considering that all this requires her to talk graphically about things that are ordinarily considered private, and that many people may not want to hear about, this is very brave of her. She sometimes faces jealously from other people born intersex. Unlike most such people, Hida never had surgery to "normalize" her genitalia. She is therefore, also a living demonstration that the supposed future social and personal problems that "uncorrected" people were predicted to suffer from, needn't happen. Of course, timing may be very important here - Hida came of age when the situation was improving, if not enough, for people not conforming to the strict male/female binary.
I must admit wanting to tear my hair out when Hida began explaining what's wrong with "cisgender." For intersex people the important thing is to get non-binary sexes recognized, but it will be an uphill fight in many places. There was also a problem when she used the pronoun "They." Since it's ambiguous, I first interpreted it as meaning that the conversation had been joined by additional people, and it didn't make sense, until I realized that it was being used as the singular preferred pronoun for the person that she was talking with. If "they" is going to be used as a singular pronoun, and it would be great to have a sex/gender neutral pronoun, I think we need to push substituting "theys" as a plural for he, she, and they, to reduce confusion.
I wondered, thinking about it, if there will be a contest over pronouns. Will non-binary gender people want it to be their special pronoun, or can it be used by anyone not comfortable with with he/she? Hida is presently using "s/he, he/r," but I don't know that that works when spoken - it needs a unique pronunciation. S/he was formerly using "ze."… (altro)
I recently read the book [b:XOXY, A Memoir: Intersex Woman, Mother, Activist|51321143|XOXY, A Memoir Intersex Woman, Mother, Activist|Kimberly Zieselman|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1580253076l/51321143._SX50_SY75_.jpg|72770500] (for my review of that book see here) and wanted to learn more about being intersex. This book is a nonfiction book which aims to educate on exactly that topic. It gives an interesting overview of the subject, although it was a quicker read than I expected it to be. It's not too dense and academic, with a good mix of hard science, historical context and personal stories. There was even some information on intersex in Greek mythology, and Judaism, which I found particularly interesting.
The biology is explained in detail, and not dumbed down, but I still found that I understood most of it, despite not being a scientist. Some of it gets quite complicated, but because the science is broken up by the history and personal stories, I found that the book managed to keep my interest the entire way through. I found it helpful that a prior knowledge of much biology wasn't assumed, for example DNA was described in detail before the subject of intersex DNA was covered. The book features some diagrams which are simple and helpful, but I would have appreciated more diagrams to really help with some of the more complex science. The book goes into detail about gonadal intersex, androgen insensitivity syndrome, Swyer syndrome, Turner syndrome, Kinefelter syndrome, congenital adrenal hyperplasia and 5-ARD, and really does get across the point that intersex people vary massively.
The most important thing about this book is that it is written by an intersex person, and is celebratory and positive about being intersex. The book explains in detail why unnecessary surgeries on intersex babies and children are wrong, and celebrates natural intersex bodies. This is important because intersex voices have been ignored and spoken over for so long. The personal pieces in this book were very insightful, in particular the one written from the perspective of a Navajo intersex person. If you only read one chapter from this book, make it that one. The commentary about the intersection between colonialism and racism and the intersex experience is very powerful, and particularly important for white and non intersex LGBTQ people to read. Intersex people should be leading these discussions, and in this book they are.
There was one thing that bothered me about this book, though, and that was the discussions about trans people. The start of the book felt very positive about trans people. Whilst the trans and intersex experiences are not the same, and intersex people face unique issues and prejudices due to being intersex, there are definitely overlaps between the two. However, later on in the book there is a personal piece written by the wife of a trans woman, where the pronoun 's/he' is used to refer to her during transition, only using 'she' once transition is 'complete'. This made me feel very uncomfortable, and isn't the way that trans people usually choose to talk about themselves. I don't know whether the trans woman in question was in favour of being referred to using s/he, but it didn't feel right.
And then we get to the last chapter in the book. This was a discussion about the word 'cisgender'. Whilst there were some good points about the issues intersex people have with the word cis (are they cis if they are intersex but identify with their assigned sex? how can they be trans if they have a nonbinary body and a nonbinary identity? can someone be nonbinary and cis? intersex and cis?) but the perspective of the discussion seemed to come from a place of distrust towards trans people. The idea that talking about the difference between being trans and being gender nonconforming and using the word cis erases a gender non conforming persons identity is an argument used by TERFs to silence trans women. That trans people must say 'I am a man but I am female' or 'I am a woman but I am male' and can't transition their sex puts trans people, especially trans women, at risk of violence. It reiterates the belief that people need to know a trans person's assigned sex or else they are being dishonest. We need for all sexes and genders to be seen as valid, but this rhetoric hurts vulnerable people. I feel that there is a solution somewhere to the linguistic problems around the language used to describe trans and intersex people, but this chapter doesn't give any suggestions, just says that trans people are describing themselves wrong. This really bothered me. It felt like the attack was on the wrong people, on trans people for supposedly upholding a binary, when that binary is forced upon us by cis people, similarly to the way a binary is enforced on intersex people by people who aren't intersex.… (altro)
The biology is explained in detail, and not dumbed down, but I still found that I understood most of it, despite not being a scientist. Some of it gets quite complicated, but because the science is broken up by the history and personal stories, I found that the book managed to keep my interest the entire way through. I found it helpful that a prior knowledge of much biology wasn't assumed, for example DNA was described in detail before the subject of intersex DNA was covered. The book features some diagrams which are simple and helpful, but I would have appreciated more diagrams to really help with some of the more complex science. The book goes into detail about gonadal intersex, androgen insensitivity syndrome, Swyer syndrome, Turner syndrome, Kinefelter syndrome, congenital adrenal hyperplasia and 5-ARD, and really does get across the point that intersex people vary massively.
The most important thing about this book is that it is written by an intersex person, and is celebratory and positive about being intersex. The book explains in detail why unnecessary surgeries on intersex babies and children are wrong, and celebrates natural intersex bodies. This is important because intersex voices have been ignored and spoken over for so long. The personal pieces in this book were very insightful, in particular the one written from the perspective of a Navajo intersex person. If you only read one chapter from this book, make it that one. The commentary about the intersection between colonialism and racism and the intersex experience is very powerful, and particularly important for white and non intersex LGBTQ people to read. Intersex people should be leading these discussions, and in this book they are.
There was one thing that bothered me about this book, though, and that was the discussions about trans people. The start of the book felt very positive about trans people. Whilst the trans and intersex experiences are not the same, and intersex people face unique issues and prejudices due to being intersex, there are definitely overlaps between the two. However, later on in the book there is a personal piece written by the wife of a trans woman, where the pronoun 's/he' is used to refer to her during transition, only using 'she' once transition is 'complete'. This made me feel very uncomfortable, and isn't the way that trans people usually choose to talk about themselves. I don't know whether the trans woman in question was in favour of being referred to using s/he, but it didn't feel right.
And then we get to the last chapter in the book. This was a discussion about the word 'cisgender'. Whilst there were some good points about the issues intersex people have with the word cis (are they cis if they are intersex but identify with their assigned sex? how can they be trans if they have a nonbinary body and a nonbinary identity? can someone be nonbinary and cis? intersex and cis?) but the perspective of the discussion seemed to come from a place of distrust towards trans people. The idea that talking about the difference between being trans and being gender nonconforming and using the word cis erases a gender non conforming persons identity is an argument used by TERFs to silence trans women. That trans people must say 'I am a man but I am female' or 'I am a woman but I am male' and can't transition their sex puts trans people, especially trans women, at risk of violence. It reiterates the belief that people need to know a trans person's assigned sex or else they are being dishonest. We need for all sexes and genders to be seen as valid, but this rhetoric hurts vulnerable people. I feel that there is a solution somewhere to the linguistic problems around the language used to describe trans and intersex people, but this chapter doesn't give any suggestions, just says that trans people are describing themselves wrong. This really bothered me. It felt like the attack was on the wrong people, on trans people for supposedly upholding a binary, when that binary is forced upon us by cis people, similarly to the way a binary is enforced on intersex people by people who aren't intersex.… (altro)
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.
Premi e riconoscimenti
Potrebbero anche piacerti
Autori correlati
Statistiche
- Opere
- 3
- Opere correlate
- 1
- Utenti
- 122
- Popolarità
- #163,289
- Voto
- 4.1
- Recensioni
- 6
- ISBN
- 8
- Preferito da
- 1