Introducing Hida Viloria

We are pleased to note that Hida Viloria has joined the membership of OII. Welcome, Hida!

Hida Viloria: Intersex & Medical treatment.

In 1998 I interviewed three intersex adults for my undergraduate thesis at U.C. Berkeley entitled, “Experience Versus Theory: The Testimonies of Adult Intersexuals on the Medical Management of Intersexuality.” These adults, like myself, had not undergone surgical or hormonal treatment of their intersex conditions. The interviews revealed that, as children, they did not experience the trauma and confusion that doctors and others often presume they will, despite having very ambiguous genitalia and very unusual social circumstances to navigate through. Further, as adults, they were all in long-term, committed, seemingly happy, healthy relationships. They appeared mentally healthy, were gainfully employed, and had friends and a social life. Basically, they seemed just as happy and successful as any other group of people I’ve known.

One of the doctors who supports “corrective” surgery said to me once during a debate on the issue, “People can’t even accept people of different colors sometimes, how can we expect them to accept a third sex?” My answer to him was, “By that reasoning, if you could make everybody white would you do that too?”

Even if people do not, out of ignorance and/or bigotry, accept a group, eliminating that group of people, or the characteristics that make them different, is a poor solution to ending discrimination. If doctors or others in power had been able to do that with other minority groups in the past, we would have a much different society today. Our society would be similar to Adolf Hitler’s vision of a homogeneous race deplete of people of color, gays, and anyone else considered different by the group in power. Fortunately, Hitler was stopped before he could fully realize his dream, and Jewish people and others he considered inferior did not suffer total extinction. However, thousands suffered beforehand, just as thousands of intersex people have suffered since “normalization” began.

Outdated and unfounded bigotries towards intersex people have caused them decades of suffering. It is sometimes shocking to me and to the people I inform about this that these attitudes still exist. Then I remember that many humans are threatened by minority groups, by those who are different from them. They react with fear, rather than curiosity, and fear, as we know, sometimes leads people to hurt those they find threatening.

It’s time to stop the intersex gendercide. To let go of old notions that came out of the 1950′s (weren’t African-Americans forced to use different drinking fountains back then, etcetera…?), to stop playing God on intersex children’s bodies, and to accept intersex people as equals. Every person and particularly, parent, alive has the power to do this right now, and, I believe, the heart to want to.