Viloria discusses gender and sex as social constructs

Hida Viloria, founder and executive director of Intersex Campaign for Equality, said in a lecture on Thursday that s/he wants to encourage society to “challenge the binary” by thinking about sex and gender and recognizing the intersex community.

Viloria is an intersex, gender fluid writer and activist who uses the gender pronouns s/he and he/r.

Born in May 1968, Viloria is the author of a memoir to be released in March 2017, called "Born Both," and is an advocate of equal rights for intersex and nonbinary individuals. Viloria has appeared on Oprah, BBC and Al Jazeera; starred in intersex films such as "Gendernauts”, “One in 2000” and “Intersexion"; and advocated for equal rights in the American Journal of Bioethics and on CNN.com.

Viloria recounted he/r experience in 1987 of having to drop out of college and move back to New York after he/r parents stopped paying he/r tuition when s/he was “outed” by he/r older brother, who is gay. At this juncture, Viloria began working at the first lesbian/gay nonprofit organization in the country, where s/he said s/he encountered men who said they were not gay and did not want to be labeled but were “just men who happened to love other men.”

S/he said the intersex population in today’s society is facing the same struggles now as the lesbian and gay community in previous times when it was not as accepted to identify as gay or lesbian.

“We were once acknowledged, but then lost, became invisible,” Viloria said.

In the '70s, Hida stated, the gay and lesbian community was labeled as having psychological disorders, a problem which s/he said the intersex community is still facing.

Viloria described he/r own father as homophobic and h/er childhood household, which placed a great emphasis on gender roles, as sexist. S/he described memories of he/r mother asking he/r to remember to wear lipstick as s/he was heading out the door for a night and memories of family and friends not recognizing he/r because of a more masculine appearance while picking he/r up from the airport after being gone for a while. Viloria stated that s/he was perceived as a man for four years by everyone s/he knew. Viloria additionally recounted experiences of going through airport security and the discomfort s/he faced during pat downs and body scans, where s/he had to be classified as a certain gender.

“I knew since I was 5 that I liked women,” Viloria stated, as s/he begun describing he/r journey in figuring out he/r sexuality.

Growing up before terms like “intersex” would have been defined on the internet, Viloria did not have any knowledge about intersex individuals or what they were. S/he described reading the book "Herculine Barbin," a recounting of a French intersex individual who was treated as a female at birth but who later changed to being identified as a male after receiving a physical examination. Viloria said s/he identified closely with this character, before knowing about intersex persons, and was disappointed to hear that the character ultimately committed suicide after being tried in court for gender fraud and found as male.

Viloria experimented with both female and male sides of life before ultimately deciding that s/he did not want to have to choose to be either one.

“Why am I trying to fit into a certain role? I really feel both. I’m really just comfortable being masculine and feminine,” Viloria explained. S/he noted that these feelings developed for he/r after having learned a lot about gender relationships and the difficulties of being a man and a woman.

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Viloria’s birth certificate and driver’s license say female, but s/he advocates for a third option on these documents, including passports.

Viloria stated that there are 60 known intersex variations, which s/he hopes can be recognized better in the future. S/he also believes in adding an “I” for “intersex” to the existing “LGBT” organization name.

“We do actually need to talk about [this]. We can’t escape it,” Viloria said. “Accepting us really does promote acceptance. I believe that if intersex people had been accepted from the beginning, homophobia and transphobia wouldn’t even exist.”

The lecture, entitled, “‘Sex’ is Complicated: Intersectionality and Intersex Human Rights, Identity, and Discourse” was held in Frist 302 at 4:30 p.m. and was sponsored by the Princeton BTGALA with support from the LGBT Center.

Correction: Due to an editing error, a previous version of this article contained some sentences with inaccurate gender pronouns. The 'Prince' regrets the error.