Nature or Nurture?

Rating: ☆☆☆☆

Title: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl

Author: John Colapinto

Genre: Biography / Medical

Read: 19th July 2005



Comments: A tragic story of medical science and psychology gone terribly wrong. Born a normal healthy boy, Bruce Reimer lost his penis in a botched circumcision, prompting his parents' (and some very shady doctors') decision to raise him as a girl. As he grew older it became clear that Bruce (now known as Brenda) was anything but a girl, and being forced to play with dolls and wear dresses was torture. Add to that therapy sessions with Dr. John Money (who had some outrageous ideas about childhood gender and sexual development and a methodology that almost seemed to border on abuse) and Brenda's childhood and pre-teen years were pure hell. The story of the book ends on an upbeat note with Bruce finally learning the truth about his gender, and reclaiming it to live as David, but researching further I discovered that after the book was published David committed suicide following the death of his twin bother and separation from his wife. Truly a tragic story in every respect.

Quote: "But you know, if I had had a normal life, and none of this had ever happened to me, I’d probably be one of those chauvanisitic kind of guys, where the guy goes to work,breaks his back, comes home,and sucks down a beer and watches sports. And if I saw someone like ME on TV, I’d sit there saying ‘Oh God, that’s sick’. That’s how I would be, so knowing that pereson is ME, you can realize how sick I feel looking back on all this. You wish to God you could switch places with anybody..”

As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl