Yesterday, we saw a video on an unusual woman—Hida Viloria, who was born a girl biologically but had high level of testosterone and an enlarged clitoris. She was suggested to have her clitoris removed like other girls, but her mother, as well as her father who was actually a doctor from Columbia chose not to have their baby girl operated. She grew up as a girl who is more like an aggressive tomboy without knowing anything about her different genitalia and found it out one day in the locker room. She was, unlike most intersexual people, actually very outgoing and popular as a girl in school. Although Hida dated boys at a young age, she found out later that she actually was lesbian at the age of 19, since she “has sex drive that seems more male.” She didn’t found out the word ”intersex” until the age 27, on a bus, where she read this new word and felt like the rest of the world stopped. She then found the right identity and place for her and lived along with it, happily.
Although she grew up feeling like a different type of girl, she developed fantastic personality and didn’t experience any difficulties interacting with everyone else around her. Her parents, who “didn’t say anything,” raised her up like any other normal girl and it “turned out to be fine.” Hida is a special case in the intersexual individuals. She did experience difficulties finding her identity, though, but that didn’t trouble her as it does to most intersexual people. For her “one of the biggest things to embrace intersex is not choosing a side. Society pressures you to choose a side just like they pressures mixed-race people.” And as Operah said, she “walks between both worlds.” She now owns a degree in Gender and Sexuality from Berkeley(which surprises me), and is living her life on being herself, making money as a public figure who writes articles and books.
Hida is absolutely a positive case and can be a role model for a lot of intersexual people. A lot of young girls who were born with the problems she has experienced had surgery right after birth because doctors believe the operation is “psychologically better to be done at an earlier age. Children not operated on will have problems in society as we know it today.” This seems quite absurd for me, as well as more and more people who experience function deficiency due to the surgery. Cheryl Chase, who wrote Hermaphordites with Attitude is one example. She was one of those baby girls who experienced the operations, and it turned out that she couldn’t reach orgasm in intimate relationship since her nerve is somehow damaged during the surgery. She didn’t find out the operation until she was 21. Like a lot of people who had this experience, they blame it on the doctors and feel like they, as well as their parents are victimized.
For Hida, being born as an intersex is blessed right now as she feels people like her are extraordinary. This is really a good inspiration of many intersexual people who are caught in between and need an identity. Hida can be a living role model and her case actually proves it unnecessary to give those operations right after the girls are born. They have a right to choose, and they can be raised normally without worrying about it at the early age.
However, although we are happy for Hida, not everyone in her shoe feels the same. She is living her happy life because she has supportive parents with one of them a doctor. She was born confident and outgoing, which other born gender-nonnormal people might not be. She had a friendly community and was able to use media to express her idea. She has a degree from well-know university. Most importantly, she is good-looking. It seems more “forgivable” in her case for the wide public, and she is adored as both a woman and a man, which can be totally different from many other people. She can even be offensive for those who struggle to have one sexual identity and don't want to "embrace both" as they want to be just a woman or man.
Anyway, we are happy for Hida to find her place and it is a good thing for her to use her stories to make money while expressing herself and helping other people. Yet, the process of embracing new gender identity can be hard for the society, and painful who are living their life in it. It is going to be a long but necessary process since every evolution takes time and every idea needs it to develop. What we are doing now for sex-nonnormative people today is a bless for the future. All the pain and struggle right now is to let our children and grandchildren avoid them.
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