Title: Inverse Cowgirl
Author: Alicia Roth Weigel
Genre: Memoir
Number of Pages: 227
Rating: B-
Recommended?: Yes
Inverse Cowgirl is a memoir written by a woman with Androgen Sensitivity Syndrome, an intersex condition she didn’t know she had until she was an adult. Alicia Roth Weigel was subjected to unnecessary surgery when she was a baby where her internal testes were removed, causing permanent damage. She’s an advocate for women and queer and intersex people who fights against kids with these types of conditions being operated on when they’re too young to consent.
This was a very short book that felt longer to me. It went too much into politics for my liking. I know gender identity and politics are deeply tied together but a lot of it was I went to this rally, I worked with that democratic candidate type stuff. It just personally wasn’t my thing, and there was a lot of it. I would have liked more about the author’s upbringing and different parts of her life outside her political campaigning.
I did think the book was well-written and informative; it was the first memoir I’ve read by an intersex person and it reminded me I wanted to read Nobody Needs to Know by Pidgeon Pagonis and XOXY by Kimberly Ziesalman, which are both mentioned by the author. I just didn’t connect with this book as much as I wanted to, and I think it was partially because the author seemed a bit full of herself and championed dubious things like a ‘spiritual experience’ where she got fucked up on drugs in a hut in the Amazon and combo voided her bowels/puked her guts out.
I’m not big into the new age stuff and I’m highly skeptical of someone who uses psychedelic substances that way and claims it changed their life. At the very least you should be in a situation you know is safe when you do it, and it just sounded like sketchy decision-making on her part. I did like each chapter being thematically linked to her tattoos and the significance of what each one meant to her. I thought that was an interesting idea and a good way of getting to know more about her.
Most of the book just left me feeling a bit cold and that’s purely a personal thing. I think people who are interested in intersex issues should read it and it has important things to say about how the U.S. medical system fails to protect and exploits intersex kids. It’s an important book, but also one I struggled to enjoy and had to push myself through at parts.
Sarah's Corner 