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

Rating:
Summary: A Question of Gender
Review: As Nature Made Him is a well written and readable book. It details the life of David Reimer who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision destroyed his penis. As "Brenda", David endured a sense of isolation and "wrongness" despite the attempts of his family and medical professions to assist his gender reassignment. The doctor responsible for this reassignment, Dr John Money, is firmly cast as the villain in this piece. The author describes a series of consultations in which Brenda is bullied, subjected to explicit sexual material, and made to simulate sexual acts. Brenda is further subjected to taunting at school, as well as witnessing the impact her reassignment has on her family. There is no denying the suffering that this child experienced. And yet, this book is not necessarily without its biases. It is written without any historical discussion of the "sexual liberation" debates of the time, and argues exclusively for nature as the sole arbiter of gender. One wonders if the same sympathetic arguments would have been used if David had been born with ambiguous genitalia, or if this was the story of a person without physical deformity wishing to change gender. Without wishing to deny David's personal experiences and strength in overcoming his own particular tragedy, I believe this book actually works to strengthen male/female binaries, rather than challenge societal concepts of gender.

Rating:
Summary: An Unbelievable Story...
Review: Colapinto's poignant relation of Bruce/Brenda/David's story is one that will stay with you for weeks. It's hard to believe that such a thing could happen, but it is even more unbelievable that David could rise above the cards he was dealt. The book moves quickly and does an excellent job of putting difficult genetic concepts in layperson's terms. I highly recommend this one!

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Summary: this book goes both ways, in traditional thining.
Review: When I first came upon this book, I my-self was and still am in search of questions and answers regarding my own gender identity. I am not blind to the fact of how the general public looks twords people who are different, when they do not meet the norm. of society! I have often stated through out my life the question to people, what is normal? In MY opinion, "NORMAL" is what is socially acceptable in the society that you live in!! This book was very hard to put down, if at all! I've read several reviews, and the book is taken in many different ways that it is relavent to one's own life. The book for me, was intriguing to me because the story was my own life in reverse, had this happend to me at birth, I would have been a happy adult today!! I can feel and know the "who am I and why" feelings that David had. I am happy for him and his family, he had the courage to be who he knows he is, regardless of genitellia or clothing he had to wear, or what others wanted him/her to be--I truly believe this book clearly shows that we are who we are before we are born!! Maybe not physically to the eye, but internally the brain is wired to one sex or the other, I am sorry for Davids pain, and glad that he ended a hell that I know so well. I highly recommend this book to the transgendered, as well as the general public, for the knowledge so many lack in "Gender Intentity Disorders" They are real, and not fabricated (by most!) Read it!!

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Summary: Truly disturbing, but uplifting
Review: I couldn't get this story out of my head. It was like reading science fiction. I can't believe Dr. Money hasn't been thrown in jail or totally discredited in the medical community. My heart hurts thinking about all that David Reimer has been through in his life.

Rating:
Summary: A Well-Done Book
Review: When I was recommended this book, I didn't really expect to like it. However, I found it to be an extremely well-written and thought-provoking book.

As Nature Made Him explores one of the central questions of developmental psychology- is nature or nurture more important in determining gender? More explicitly, is gender an inborn concept, or something that is socially constructed?

The questions are answered through looking at the life of a young man, David Reimer. Born a boy, he was severly injured during circumcision and his parents followed the advice fo the medical experts and chose to raise him as a girl. However, the girl always knew that she was different. When she finally learned the truth about her birth, he decided to "come out" and live as the boy she was born. His courage and struggles make him a very admirable person.

Overall, the book is a fascinating look at the medical establishment and is a thoughtful, quick read.

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Summary: MY HEART CRIED!
Review: This is one of the saddest, anger provoking, bringing to the surface such overwhelming sadness and joy book that I have ever, ever read.

This book which will truly make us realize how much our generation did not question a medical authority -- and the blind trust and faith so many placed in the hands of those whose ambition was not to cure a patient, but for simply for curiosity, research and status. It should be mandatory reading for every physician, surgeon, physiologist, psychiatrist and parent.

It is a heart-wrenching life story evoking a spectrum of emotions from one moment to the next, but always feelings of pride and admiration for David. What a wonderful human being.

I cried for joy however at the line he gave his wife when she asked (after he had met with the girl who befriended him as a girl in school many years previously) "What did you talk about"? she asked. His answer just made me burst with emotion as if I had just participated in a rebirth. Those simple words to his Wife just seem to make everything "all better" for David. Needless to say, I won't give his response for those who have not read the book. But, Gosh, I get teary just writing about it.

I bow to the author, Mr. John Colapinto who so poignantly set forth the facts of the tragedy and as impartially as he could submit himself to voice, no opinion but fact in relation to Dr. Money. What great strength David possesses and what a wonderful wife and family surrounds him. He deserves to be blessed.

Thank you Mr. Colapinto for the ability to put into words the life that belongs to David; and to David, I thank you for sharing your story, unabridged, with the world. You are a marvelous human being.

Rating:
Summary: An extraordinary...and disturbing book
Review: Colapinto's book is an incredible documentary; the true story of a young man who spent his entire childhood raised as a girl.

Bruce Reimer and his identical twin brother Brian, were born in Canada in August, 1965. Eight months later, Bruce was horribly mutilated during a botched circumcision, and the following option was recommended to his distraught parents: remove what little remained of the boy's genetalia, and raise him as a girl.

If all had gone as intended, Bruce's transformation into "Brenda" would have become a landmark case favoring "nurture over nature" --the ability to change one's PERCEPTION of gender based upon the manner in which they are raised. As it happens, this WAS a landmark case, most notably because the doctor responsible for recommending the sex-reassignment spent decades misrepresenting the facts surrounding "Brenda's" miserable childhood.

From the very beginning, "Brenda" resisted every attempt to try and convince her that she was a "she." She walked like a boy, talked like a boy, acted like a boy, and felt she WAS a boy--and no amount of counseling would change that. Her annual visits with Dr. John Money, the respected Johns Hopkins psychiatrist who recommended sex reassignment in the first place were torturous--as Dr. Money's methods were downright abusive to the extent that most people would consider his actions criminal.

Unfortunately, the horrific things that took place during Money's sessions with the twins went unreported, since young Brian and Brenda were under the impression that their parents HAD to know what was going on behind closed doors. After all, it was their parents that brought them to the doctor year after awful year. The medical community itself was duped by the "findings" of the research, which never acknowledged the complete lack of Brenda's transformation into a girl.

Money himself, convinced that he was correct all along, continued to push Brenda to have the surgery that would "complete" her transformation, but she wouldn't consider it under any circumstances.

At the age of 14, her parents finally revealed the truth to the twins. Brenda's reaction was one of relief--since everything she had felt during the previous 13 years suddenly made sense. Her decision to become a boy again was immediate, but her first question was heart-wrenching in its own way: "What," she asked, "was my name?"

This is just one of a multitude of emotions that are evoked by this incredible story.

Rating:
Summary: There IS A Difference!
Review: As noted by other reviewers, this book is hard to put down. Its compelling tale, well researched and sensitive to all principal characters in the drama, has a happy ending for the protagonist-but a hard-earned happy ending.

For the facts, read the other reviews. But note:

The sad subtext of the book is a commentary on our medical establishment: by dint of publicity, popularity, and the willingness to bow down and roll over to the Alpha male (that is, anyone who writes and speaks forcefully; who wins lots of grant money; who speaks at dozens of conventions and gets mainstream media coverage; who holds a position of power in a recognized institution; and who SEEMS like he knows what he's talking about), any theory which is clearly contradicted by blatant empirical evidence will be touted until Doomsday, or at least until the principal players die, simply because of good publicity.

In other words, most humans are too stupid to accept the obvious when the snake-oil salesman sounds so good.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating answer to "Nature vs. Nurture" debate...
Review: "As Nature Made Him" by John Colapinto is one of the most fascinating, thought provoking books I have ever read. In simple, compelling prose the reader is introduced to the Reimer family, & the horrible medical accident that befell one of their twin sons at 7 months of age. Step by step we are taken into the medical labyrinth that controlled nearly every aspect of their lives for the next 14 years, and which still reverberates to this day in their innermost thoughts. The tortured life of Brenda/David will bring tears of compassion to your eyes & anger at her main medical nemesis, Dr. John Money to your heart.

Beyond acquainting readers with David Reimer's journey, this book will open the general public's eyes to a problem that is not often discussed, but happens much more frequently than most would believe: the birth of "genitally ambivalous" children, or "intersex". These children (who occur as often as 10 per year in most metropolitan areas) may be born with deformed genitalia or with aspects of both male & female anatomy. As we learn in "As Nature Made Him" from the late 50's on it was the usual medical practice to operate on these children to remove any male aspects of the genitals, raise them as girls & hide any ambiguity from them. Despite best efforts on the parts of doctors, psychiatrists & parents, most of these children grow up angry, confused & convinced something is very wrong with them. Thanks to the work of Dr. Milton Diamond & others this hopefully will no longer be the case.

This book is a particularly strong argument for nature over nurture; I wish every person who believes homosexuals are simply "wrong-thinking" or victims of dysfunctional childhoods could read this so that they would understand current fads in therapy cannot change how the brain is wired to work. Nature in her wonderful variety has not made humans to simply be polar opposites but included many rainbow shades in between. The losers are not the "sexually ambiguous" but instead the close-minded & traditional. If you read "As Nature Made Him" you will certainly open your mind, if only to consider new ideas about gender.

Rating:
Summary: Remarkable portrait of a devastating medical practice
Review: This true story of a biological male who was raised as a girl after a botched circumcision shows both how desperate parents can become when a child doesn't conform to social norms and how one unstable doctor's opinion can negatively affect the medical profession. Most importantly, it shows that a person's sexual identity cannot be shaped based on environmental situations. This is a riveting portrait of a young man's struggle to find out his true gender--the gender that he always felt he should be--and to deal with how his family treated his situation.