#Hida Viloria

[lavendershowcase]

Queer Hispanic Stories for Hispanic Heritage Month

Summaries and notes under cut

Juliet Takes a Breath by Gabby Rivera

Juliet Milagros Palante is leaving the Bronx and headed to Portland, Oregon. She just came out to her family and isn’t sure if her mom will ever speak to her again. But Juliet has a plan, sort of, one that’s going to help her figure out this whole “Puerto Rican lesbian” thing. She’s interning with the author of her favorite book: Harlowe Brisbane, the ultimate authority on feminism, women’s bodies, and other gay-sounding stuff. Will Juliet be able to figure out her life over the course of one magical summer? Is that even possible? Or is she running away from all the problems that seem too big to handle? With more questions than answers, Juliet takes on Portland, Harlowe, and most importantly, herself.

Winner of 2017 Silver IPPY Award for best LGBTQ Fiction, selected by the ALA for the Amelia Bloomer List in 2017

The Prince and the Coyote by David Bowles, illustrated by Amanda Mijangos*

Fifteen-year old crown prince Acolmiztli wants nothing more than to see his city-state of Tetzcoco thrive. A singer, poet, and burgeoning philosophical mind, he has big plans about infrastructure projects and cultural initiatives that will bring honor to his family and help his people flourish. But the two sides of his family, the kingdoms of Mexico and Acolhuacan, have been at war his entire life – after his father risked the wrath of the Tepanec emperor to win his mother’s love. When a power struggle leaves his father dead and his mother and siblings in exile, Acolmiztli must run for his life, seeking refuge in the wilderness. After a coyote helps him find his way in the wild, he takes on a new name – Nezahualcoyotl, or “fasting coyote” (“Neza” for short). Biding his time until he can form new alliances and reconnect with his family, Neza goes undercover, and falls in love with a commoner girl, Sekalli. Can Neza survive his plotting uncles’ scheme to wipe out his line for good? Will the empire he dreams of in Tetzcoco ever come to life? And is he willing to risk the lives of those he loves in the process? This action-packed tale blends prose and poetry – including translations of surviving poems by Nezahualcoytl himself, translated from classical Nahuatl by the author. And the book is packed with queer rep: queer love stories, and a thoughtful exploration of pre-columbian understandings of gender that defy the contemporary Western gender binary.

Pura Belpré honoree, Kirkus Best of the Year, Bookpage top 10 Book of 2023

*Personally recommended by me

The House of Impossible Beauties by Joseph Cassara

It’s 1980 in New York City, and nowhere is the city’s glamour and energy better reflected than in the burgeoning Harlem ball scene, where seventeen-year-old Angel first comes into her own. Burned by her traumatic past, Angel is new to the drag world, new to ball culture, and has a yearning inside of her to help create family for those without. When she falls in love with Hector, a beautiful young man who dreams of becoming a professional dancer, the two decide to form the House of Xtravaganza, the first-ever all-Latino house in the Harlem ball circuit. But when Hector dies of AIDS-related complications, Angel must bear the responsibility of tending to their house alone. As mother of the house, Angel recruits Venus, a whip-fast trans girl who dreams of finding a rich man to take care of her; Juanito, a quiet boy who loves fabrics and design; and Daniel, a butch queen who accidentally saves Venus’s life. The Xtravaganzas must learn to navigate sex work, addiction, and persistent abuse, leaning on each other as bulwarks against a world that resists them. All are ambitious, resilient, and determined to control their own fates, even as they hurtle toward devastating consequences. 

Born Both: An Intersex Life by Hida Viloria

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 intersex 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 know 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 physically 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.

Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

In Her Body and Other Parties, Carmen Maria Machado blithely demolishes the arbitrary borders between psychological realism and science fiction, comedy and horror, fantasy and fabulism. While her work has earned her comparisons to Karen Russell and Kelly Link, she has a voice that is all her own. In this electric and provocative debut, Machado bends genre to shape startling narratives that map the realities of women’s lives and the violence visited upon their bodies. A wife refuses her husband’s entreaties to remove the green ribbon from around her neck. A woman recounts her sexual encounters as a plague slowly consumes humanity. A salesclerk in a mall makes a horrifying discovery within the seams of the store’s prom dresses. One woman’s surgery-induced weight loss results in an unwanted houseguest. And in the bravura novella “Especially Heinous,” Machado reimagines every episode of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, a show we naively assumed had shown it all, generating a phantasmagoric police procedural full of doppelgängers, ghosts, and girls-with-bells-for-eyes.

Finalist for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction, Winner of the National Book Critics Circle's 2017 John Leonard Prize, Winner of the 2017 Bard Fiction Prize, Finalist for the 2017 Kirkus Prize, Finalist for the 2017 PEN/Robert Bingham Award

[ya-world-challenge]

Intersex Awareness Day

Born Both: An Intersex Life by Hida Viloria

I got this ebook from the library due to @qbdatabase 's post a few days ago, and as I get to the last chapter, it mentions Intersex Awareness Day --- TODAY, the day I am finishing reading it.

I don't know what sign that is, but the book is super interesting. It's a memoir of one of the first prominent intersex activists. It addresses how babies born between genders were, and still are (!!) being mutilated at birth to "normalize" them, intersex people's fight to not be labeled with stigmatizing medical terminology, as well as much of Hida's personal journey. It was interesting to read different perspectives of early intersex activists and how Hida's perspective sometimes clashed with those who didn't want associated with the LGBTQ community.

Also neat to read how nonbinary perspectives often can align with intersex perspectives. I also learned the word cisgender can erase intersex people.

Some of the appearances s/he mentioned in the book are up on Youtube, including a Montel Williams interview from the 90s.

[statecryptids]

Meant to post these photos yesterday for Trans Day of Rememberance but I had a lot going on. I’m always at a lost for what to do on this day, but I feel like I need to do something besides just reposting memes.

So as a librarian, I thought I would share some of the books from my collection written by and/or about trans, non-binary and gender-nonconforming folks. Maybe y’all will find something new to read.

(Stuffed Tullimonstrum and Helicoprion buzz-saw Blåhaj for scale).

Also some fiction books written by trans/nonbinary authors

And in case you can’t read all the titles

Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe

Born Both: An Intersex Life -Hida Viloria

Trans New York -Peter Bussian

‘O Au no Keia: Voices from Hawai’i’s Mahu and Transgender Communities -Andrew Matzner

Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and identity edited by Micah Rajunov and Scott Duane

Nameless Women: an anthology of fiction by Trans Women of Color- editors: Ellyn Peña, Jamie Berrout, and Venus Selenite

Refuse- Elliot DeLine

I Know Very Well How I Got My Name- Elliot DeLine

Shiva XIV: Book I -Aryl Shanti

The Encyclopedia of Amazons -Jessica Amanda Salmonson

Tomoe Gozen Jessica Amanda Salmonson

The Swordswoman -Jessica Amanda Salmonson

The Worm and His Kings- Hailey Piper

[mxanunnakiraymarquez]

June is CAH Awareness Month | What it means to me in 2020

June is CAH Awareness Month | What it means to me in 2020

CAH Awareness Month & June Pride Month 2020 Up until this year, I typically have not celebrated June CAH Awareness month, because of the CAH (Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia) organizations and groups not even acknowledging my sex is intersex and that I am an intersex man.  I do believe that this is all due to their prejudice and bias.  Serendipitously, CAH Awareness Month lands during June PRIDE…

[consultthemuses]

M's favourite FCs [25/?] 

Indya Moore: 

Pronouns: They/Them

known for their acting and modelling careers

could play 20-29  - [ actual age: 24 ]

Hida Viloria:

Pronouns: usually She/Her

known for her activism and writing careers

could play 46-56 - [ actual age: 51 ]

Quintessa Swindell:

Pronouns: They/Them

known for their activism career

could play 20-27- [ actual age: 22 ] 

Annie Elainey:

Pronouns: She/Her*

known for her YouTube and activism careers

could play 23-32 - [ actual age: 28 ]

Lachlan Watson:

Pronouns: They/Them

known for their acting career

could play 18-20 - [ actual age: 18 ]

Nathaniel Wayne: 

Pronouns: He/Him*

known for his YouTube, writing and directing careers

could play 32-38 - [ actual age: 37 ]

* Please correct me if this is wrong here!

[yourdailyqueer]

Hida Viloria

Gender: Intersex - Non binary (s/he & he/r)

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: May 1968  

Ethnicity: Latinx - Colombian, Venezuelan

Occupation: Writer, activist

[sfplhormelcenter]

Did you know that being intersex is as common as having red hair? 

In honor of tomorrow’s Intersex Awareness Day (October 26th), the Hormel Center would like to acknowledge the “I” in our LGBTQIA family with some background on what exactly intersex is as well as a few book and history center recommendations for materials related to these often misunderstood lived experiences. The term intersex is commonly misused to describe the presence of ovotestes when in actuality intersex describes the presence, absence, or a mixture of human sexual characteristics that do not fit current binary definitions of Female and Male. These varied designations based on reproductive organs, gonads, and chromosomes occur at a rate of 1 in every 2000 births and can be made at in utero, at birth, following a delayed or non-existent puberty, whenever reproductive issues present themselves, or even posthumously. 

If you would like to learn more about intersex justice and life with these conditions, please check out David Cameron Strachan Intersex A/V Materials 6th Floor - History Center   Call #: GLC 54 Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis 3rd Floor - Hormel Center   Call #: 306.7685 D2933c Born Both: An Intersex Life 3rd Floor - Page Desk Call #: 306.7685 V719b Intersex: A Perilous Difference 3rd Floor - Page Desk Call #: 616.694 H7369i Orchids: My Intersex Adventure https://sfpl.kanopy.com/video/orchids 

[helpersofindie]

hi! can you suggest gender fluid faceclaims? or fcs that can work for a gender fluid character, but preferably ones that are irl.

sivan alyra rose (22) – sivan uses she/her and they/them pronouns!

gigi goode (23) – gigi uses she/her pronouns

ashnikko (25) – ashnikko uses she/they pronouns!

mads paige (27) – mads uses he/she/they pronouns!

miley cyrus (28) – i’m unsure of miley’s pronouns so if you know, please reply to this or send us an ask!

aja (29) – aja uses she/her and they/them pronouns!

cara delevingne (29) – cara uses she/her pronouns!

violet chachki (29) – violet uses she/her and they/them pronouns!

dorian electra (29) – dorian uses they/them pronouns!

dominique provost-chalkley (31) – dominique uses they/them pronouns!

eliot sumner (31) – eliot to my knowledge hasn’t expressed what pronouns to use, so please let me know if you’re aware!

jason greene (33) – if anyone knows what pronouns jason uses, please let us know, right now i can only go off their wikipedia page which uses they/them pronouns.

nico tortorella (33) – nico uses they/them pronouns! 

jinkx monsoon (34) – jinkx uses they/she pronouns!

ruby rose (35) – ruby uses they/she pronouns!

vanessa lengies (36) – vanessa uses she/her pronouns! 

miss fame (36) – miss fame uses they/them pronouns!

jeffrey marsh (44) – jeffery uses they/them pronouns!

kelly mantle (45) – kelly has said “if i am presenting as male at that very moment and i look like a boy to you, then call me 'he.' if i’m presenting as female and i look like a girl to you, call me 'she.'” 

janae kroc (48) – janae uses she/her pronouns!

pandora boxx (49) – i am unaware of pandora boxx’s pronouns, please let me know if you are!

hilda viloria (53) – hida uses they/she pronouns!

eddie izzard (59) – eddie uses she/her pronouns!

jana hunter (unknown age) – jana uses he/him pronouns!

[thoughtfulfangirling]

2021

Let’s actually read this year! This is my yearly ‘talk to me about books’ post where I’ll update my reads throughout the year. Been doing it for several years now see here’s 2020′s. It’s sad. But the next years were less so! See 2022 here!

A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah Maas

This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone

Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire

No Visible Bruises: What We Don’t Know About Domestic Violence Can Kill Us by Rachel Louise Snyder

Her Royal Highness by Rachel Hawkins* 

The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett

Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir*

Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

Well, That Escalated Quickly: Memoirs and Mistakes of an Accidental Activist by Franchesca Ramsey

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas

Shattered by Lee Winter 

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Amelia & Emily Nagoski

In the Vanisher’s Palace by Aliette De Bodard

Not your Sidekick by C.B. Lee

Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir* 

Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs*

Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee

All the Light you Cannot See by Anthony Doerr

Fire by Kristin Cashore*

A Good Time to Be Born: How Sicence and Public Health Gave Children a Future by Perri Klass

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Anne Shaffer and Annie Barrows

The Golden Compass by Phillip Pullman*

Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey

Sooner or Later Everything Falls into the Sea: Stories by Sarah Pinsker

The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman*

A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J Maas

Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors by Sonali Dev

Machinehood by S.B. Divya

Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams

Body Respect: What Conventional Health Books Get Wrong, Leaves Out, and Just Plain Fail to Understand about Weight by Linda Bacon & Lucy Aphramor

The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman*

Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

In the Dream House: A Memoir by Carmen Maria Macado

Born Both: An Intersex Life by Hida Viloria

Fable by Adrienne Young

Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen by Jose Antonio Vargas

Dreadnought by April Daniels* 

Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body by Roxane Gay

Emperor Mage, The Immortals Book III by Tamora Pierce* 

Something to Talk About by Meryl Wilsner

And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by William Greider and Randy Shilts

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen*

Sovereign by April Daniels*

A Beautiful Poison by Lydia Kang*

The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk

Daughter of the Pirate King by Tricia Levenseller 

After the Revolution by Robert Evans

The Goldfinch: A Novel by Donna Tart

In the Woods by Tana French

Welcome to Night Vale: A Novel by Joseph Fink and Jeffery Cranor*

The World of Lore: Dreadful Places by Aaron Mahnke 

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson 

The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham Jones 

The Halloween Moon by Joseph Fink

The Coldest Girl in Cold Town by Holly Black

The Best of Edgar Allan Poe by Edgar Allen Poe

The Witches by Roald Dahl 

The House on the Cerulean Sea by TJ Klune

Whipping Girl: A Transexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Scarlet by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters* 

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens* 

*Re-read

[bookclub4m]

10 Biology Non-Fiction Books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

Science in Black and White: How Biology and Environment Shape Our Racial Divide by Alondra Oubré

The Spectrum of Sex: The Science of Male, Female and Intersex by Hida Viloria and Maria Nieto

Naming Nature: The Clash Between Instinct and Science by Carol Kaesuk Yoon

Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Monarchs and Milkweed: A Migrating Butterfly, a Poisonous Plant, and Their Remarkable Story of Coevolution by Anurag Agrawal

The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer by Siddhartha Mukherjee

I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life by Ed Yong

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments by Aimee Nezhukumatathil

[diversereadingchallenge]

Prompt 43 Rec List

Here are some recs for prompt 43 of the Diverse Reading Challenge 2020. The full prompt list is here. 

43. A book with an intersex protagonist

Pantomime - Laura Lam

A YA fantasy, it follows a intersex teenager. When she finds out her parents are planning to surgically alter her, she runs away to the circus. She also displays some magical abilities, and has a mysterious connection to magical glass relics from a distant age. 

If you like fantasy, or have ever wanted to join the circus, this is the book for you. 

Note: The following books I have not personally read but are all on my to read list

Double Exposure - Bridget Birdsall

A YA novel, it follows a intersex girl who after her dad’s death moves to a new city and tries out for the girl’s basketball team. But after she is exposed, she might be disqualified from the basketball team unless she can prove she is a girl.

Confessions of a Teenage Hermaphrodite - Lianne Simon

A novel, it follows an intersex girl, raised as a boy, through her coming of age. 

Annabel - Kathleen Winter

A historical fiction novel, it is set in the 1960′s, and follows an intersex boy, and his relationship with the three women who have guarded his secret. 

Born Both: An Intersex Life - Hida Viloria

A memoir, it tells of the author’s experiences growing up intersex, and finding a community. 

If you would like to join the Diverse Reading Challenge 2020, please follow the tumblr! Spread the word! Submit recs of diverse books you love!

[sapphic-sex-ed]

(intersex anon) thanks for your quick response! It was Hida Viloria's autobiography "Born Both". I was concerned that *me* wanting a specific genital configuration that could be categorized as intersex was a bad thing. Sorry for the confusion. I think you covered it in your answer but does this change anything?

I know somebody replied to the post asking for the book so they’ll be happy to have the name here.

I do still think what I wrote in that post is valid here: you cannot control what you feel and desires like that, and it’s comon enough for wlw to have feelings like they want to both penetrate and be penetrated. Straps are poopular for a reason.

However it is important that the people who live with that genital configuration have to deal with a lot of medical discrimination/opression, as well as similar fear that stealth trans people who haven’t had GCS have to deal with when it comes to talking to their potential sexual partners about genitals, on top of just that nagging feeling of “being different” that really sucks. 

It’s completely valid to feel like having that type of genital config would be neat/convenient, and that isn’t fetishizing in on itself. But just focusing on that withou taking the social context into it can be very fetishy and dehumanizing towards the reality of those people. 

Again, I am perisex and I’m saying this based on what intersex people have said, as well as my own knowledge of being another minority and my education in sociology and power dynamics. I could be totally off-base with what most intersex people feel and if that’s the case, message us and I’ll correct what I got wrong.

-mod liz

[pantransautie]

as a perisex person i don’t know much about intersex people; since i’m interested in learning more about them i bought a book that was written by an intersex person named hida viloria called born both an intersex life; i wonder what other intersex people’s thoughts are on this book’s portrayal of the intersex condition

[mxanunnakiraymarquez]

Thank you, Hida Viloria and PidgeonPagonis!