It took three months for the news to arrive, but the porn actor billed as the world's only true hermaphrodite is dead. Chance Ryder was reported suffering severe depression and there may have been a drug overdose involved in his death.
By most accounts, Ryder saw the humor in his physiology but as often as not questioned it, in part because of how people questioned him. "Basically I fit in everywhere but I fit in nowhere," he said in an old interview. "I'm male and female, but yet I'm neither. I hate it."
Ryder had been a human sexuality counselor whose first adult feature was Bi and Beyond for Paul Norman. "I'm incredibly saddened," says AVN contributor and Fetish editor Ellen Thompson. "He was a sweet person, generous to a fault."
AVN vice president of editorial operations Gene Ross says he last saw Ryder alive at Bruce Seven's July 4th bash almost five years ago. Seven, the legendary adult filmmaker, died Jan. 15. In an interview with Thompson at around the time of that bash, Ryder delighted in his role of eliciting shock in people.
But believing his distinctive physiology would make him an adult star was one thing, while the reality proved somewhat different. He recalled such events as working with Jeanna Fine ("Our scene was shot after nearly fourteen hours of shooting that day, and ouch, was I sore!"), but he also recalled trouble with Norman over bouncing paychecks.
He subsequently landed a role in Greg Dark's Sex Freaks and had the lead role in Exxxtra Parts, for Pleasure Productions. "I'm 100 percent male, 100 percent female, and believe me, I have the insight to know what both sexes go through," he liked to say. "And yes, I do have a menstrual period every month, just in case you were all wondering. I've even had a miscarriage."
Ryder also indicated an interest in the comedy circuit, using himself as prime material, says Ross.
"People react to me in a variety of ways," Ryder told an interviewer once. "Mainly, they react in one of three ways. One, they can't be around me. They can't have nothing to do with me because they're totally intimidated. They become weird. Those are the homophobics, usually. I make them face themselves. I really make people face themselves. The homophobics can't hardly stand it. Straight men - they either wanna be like me, beat me, or fuck me. It comes down in that order."
He also told the interviewer gay men were very critical and judgmental. "They're like 'Why do you gotta tell people? Why do you gotta do this and that? You know. Why'd you come out of the closet?' Hello. No different now than it was then. Plus, like I was telling you, I wanna educate people and I can't do it in the closet."
But he suggested women were at best ambivalent toward him. "Women, it's the same thing," he said. "I run into women who because of their own doubts about their own sexuality, get scared around me. Homophobe. And then you have straight women, who are so turned on it pisses them off, because they don't know why. They just love to at me. Lesbians, like I was telling you, you know, they like me to pork them."
Still, Ryder struggled to maintain a position in the adult film world. He believed it wasn't because the porn public would reject him but the porn makers weren't always sure about how to handle him. "They're scared," he once said. "They never worked with anything like this, and therefore they ain't got enough foresight or intelligence to figure out how to. I scare them. And I'm telling them what to do, and they won't listen."
He once planned, or at least wanted, to write a book and arrange for a film about his life, followed by lecturing and touring - without ruling out another porn film. "You know, if I happen to do a fuck-flick later on down the line, at least it's my choice and because it's got an impact to it," he said. "You know? And that's something important to me. Whatever I do then, it's because it's my choice. Right now, it's just, you know, getting that first step in the door. I didn't think these people were that stupid. I didn't think it was going to be this hard."
Ryder once described himself as a physical and emotional combine of male and female, whose physiology included two ovaries and excess chromosomes as well as a penile appendage.
"Most hermaphrodites have one ovary and one testicle. That makes them legally in the eyes of the United States a hermaphrodite whereas I am a combination and doctors don't know why I am what I am."
The child of alcoholic parents, Ryder eventually married and came "this close" to being a Southern Baptist musical minister, until church elders discovered his physiological peculiarity a month before he and his wife would be baptized. "Needless to say that took me out of the church for a long time, actually, completely, I've never been able to get back with the churches.
Yet he held onto a spiritual faith if not a religious orientation. "I believe in sharing, and working with the positive note that if I turn it over to God it's going to go," he said. "If I try to take control of my reins, I'm a lousy driver. I just have to turn it over to God and trust in him and say, "Here, go for it, baby!"
