Monday, August 27, 2007
book report: As Nature Made Him
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
by John Colapinto
This book was super interesting. I'd seen the TV story on the boy in question, but this book went into way more detail.
The gist of the story is that at 8 months old, baby boy Bruce was getting circumsized to treat an excessively tight foreskin, but there was an accident with the electrocautery machine and his penis was horribly burned and could not be saved. The baby's parents sought medical advice and ended up consulting with Dr. John Money at Johns Hopkins, who counseled the parents to have the baby's testicles removed and raise him as a girl. So they did. Money followed the case for years and cited it as proof that gender identity is mutable in early childhood, and that babies with damaged or ambiguous genitalia can be assigned to one sex or the other without difficulty.
Unfortunately, Money was full of baloney. Baby Bruce, renamed Brenda, never took to being a girl. "She" liked to play with boy toys, got in fights with boys, preferred masculine clothing, and always felt she didn't fit in with the girls. She even preferred to urinate standing up even though she had no penis. Brenda was treated by a parade of psychologists, and over time, they began to believe that Brenda needed to be told of the circumstances of her injury and reassignment. Her parents informed her at age 14, and she immediately declared her intention to live as a boy. She began her transformation as a teenager and took the name David, as in David and Goliath, because he had such a large obstacle to overcome.
This story was amazing to read, and really made me think about gender identity. Most significantly, it made me believe that intersexed babies should not be surgically reassigned until they are old enough to decide for themselves if they are a boy or a girl.
by John Colapinto
This book was super interesting. I'd seen the TV story on the boy in question, but this book went into way more detail.
The gist of the story is that at 8 months old, baby boy Bruce was getting circumsized to treat an excessively tight foreskin, but there was an accident with the electrocautery machine and his penis was horribly burned and could not be saved. The baby's parents sought medical advice and ended up consulting with Dr. John Money at Johns Hopkins, who counseled the parents to have the baby's testicles removed and raise him as a girl. So they did. Money followed the case for years and cited it as proof that gender identity is mutable in early childhood, and that babies with damaged or ambiguous genitalia can be assigned to one sex or the other without difficulty.
Unfortunately, Money was full of baloney. Baby Bruce, renamed Brenda, never took to being a girl. "She" liked to play with boy toys, got in fights with boys, preferred masculine clothing, and always felt she didn't fit in with the girls. She even preferred to urinate standing up even though she had no penis. Brenda was treated by a parade of psychologists, and over time, they began to believe that Brenda needed to be told of the circumstances of her injury and reassignment. Her parents informed her at age 14, and she immediately declared her intention to live as a boy. She began her transformation as a teenager and took the name David, as in David and Goliath, because he had such a large obstacle to overcome.
This story was amazing to read, and really made me think about gender identity. Most significantly, it made me believe that intersexed babies should not be surgically reassigned until they are old enough to decide for themselves if they are a boy or a girl.
Labels: book reports
