As Nature Made Him
As Nature Made Him: The Boy who was Raised as a Girl is written by John Colapinto and is published in paperback by Harper Perennial.
John Colapinto’s book, As Nature made Him: The Boy who was Raised as a Girl, is a fascinating glimpse into the life of David Reimer. David Reimer was born Bruce Reimer and soon became “Brenda,” as a result of a botched circumcision when he was only 8 months old. Colapinto provides the reader with a straightforward, quasi-novelistic report extracted from video taped programs featuring the family’s supervising psychiatrist Dr. John Money, and direct dialogue taken from the Psychohormonal Research Unit sessions, and taped transcripts provided to David Reimer’s local physician by Dr. Money. These sources illustrate the controlled attempt to change the sexual identity of an 18 month old boy.
My rating: stars
This emotional read forces the reader to viscerally scrap with his or her own thoughts regarding sexual identity, ethics (personal, religious, medical, scientific), and human being itself. While the book is pointedly composed around the specific idea of David Reimer’s own sexual identity, the larger questions towards which it ultimately points concerns all of human sexual identity. In other words, the overarching “nurture vs nature” debate becomes the central focus of the Reimer story. The failure of Dr. Money’s sexual reorientation of the 18 month old David Reimer – an effort which included dressing the boy in girls clothes, changing his name to Brenda, potty training him as a girl, giving him toys that girls typically play with, and parental induced brainwashing – logically points towards a seeming inability to alter one’s sexual identity via environmental, circumstantial, and/or experiential manipulation. They cast in this story (i.e., teachers, preachers, doctors, and parents) began telling David he was a girl when he was 18 months old, yet, he never “became” a girl. Later in life, as he reflects on this experience, he can unabashedly say, “I never felt like a girl.”
David Reimer committed suicide on May 4, 2004.
This book raises some very serious questions for individuals camping on either side of the “nurture vs nature” debate. Honestly, if the David Reimer story was the final piece of empirical data dropped onto the big research table it would tilt the scales towards … neither? The Reimer story does not offer anyone easy answers. In fact, it forces each of us to ask even bigger questions.
Consider these thoughts/questions:
On Nurture: The David Reimer story seemingly contradicts the charge built upon the idea that homosexual persons are simply reflecting those things that he/she learned during early childhood development, via some sort of programmed environment. Is this idea challenged at all by this story? After all, the sexual identity Reimer was born with was not seriously affected by the rigorous attempts at early sexual reorientation. In fact, Reimer’s natural sexuality became a contentious source of the young man’s most serious confusion as a result of the ultimate failure of the reorientation. He retained his heterosexual attraction for women, in spite of his being made to believe that he was one. David, in spite of Dr. Money’s best attempts to reorient his sexual identity, was never attracted to men, but instead believed himself to be a lesbian. Much confusion and guilt resulted from the pseudo environment and lifestyle created for him during the attempted reorientation, but he was never separated from the sexual identity he was born with, even when he believed that he was something else. Is nurture really capable of overpowering nature?
On Nature: Given all that this story suggests about the limits of nurture as a reorientation tool, what then should be said about homosexuality? If it is not a result of nurture, then is it nature? Individuals who would immediately proclaim homosexuality to be a learned behavior rather than a natural one will be forced to wrestle with this story. Reimer was a biological, heterosexual male who was methodically nurtured into believing he was a girl, and he believed that he was a girl, yet he went on feeling like a male. Nature trumped nurture, in this case. Is this always the case? This story doesn’t make the search for an answer to that question any easier, to say the least. If the biological sexual identity of an 18 month old remains intact after years upon years of clinical and emotional attempts at reorientation, then would it be reasonable to advance the idea that homosexuals must actually be born with their sexual identity intact?
There is a third possibility raised by this story: Could individuals actually somehow believe themselves to be the opposite of who they actually are naturally and then consequently struggle with a resultant clash of sexual identities, like Reimer? That’s an interesting question, to say the least. At any rate, call it nature or nurture or anything you wish, God has a bigger, better, brighter way for us all. The questions that don’t have easy answers simply point us towards that unchanging and universal truth. If only we’d be comfortable enough in our own humanity to actually find God there …
This book belongs on the shelf of every person to whom issues of sexual identity is or will be important.
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Isn’t there a higher standard yet, even above science and certainly this book? The Bible! Science claims that the earth couldn’t be made in 7 days, that Christ couldn’t have raised from the dead, and that water cannot be turned to wine. Well, if we are to believe the Bible at all, we must decide where our confidence in facts will lie.
… zzzzzzzzzzzzz. Seriously, did you even read the post? This sort of cliched predictability is not helpful at all, no matter what they told you. Seriously, spend some time thinking in quiet.
and what on earth you guys talking about ?
what is this book suppose to means anyway?
Are you seriously suggesting that people IGNORE scientific evidence and use a book that’s thousands of years old to determine what’s real and what isn’t? That’s INSANE! Maybe you should stop taking medicine and just pray? Or try proving the stories in the christian bible to be true? I think you’ll find that sticking to reason, science, and logic will lengthen your lifespan, make you more comfortable, and will make a lot more sense.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Read the post before you comment next time. Thanks.
David Reimer’s story, while just one narrative among many, is a Big Deal in the sense that it shows the futility (as has typically played out in similar situations) of nurture being able to override nature.
Money was a behavioralist (and not even an ethical one, he lied shamelessly to protect his own theories) who felt that children were blank slates to be written upon, but unfortunately for David things were not so simple; whatever sort of imprinting happens in utero, it can endure even the harshest of environmental pressures… and it goes in both directions.
Generally, David’s experience is the same experience of transsexuals, who have been programmed socially for (and physically appear to be) one gender but something inside inexplicably insists they are the other. Whatever happened, the brain is wired to reflect the other gender and is extremely resistant to change despite the same host of social forces brought to bear on someone like David Reimer.
The church often seems to focus too much on telling people who they have to be in areas they really don’t have any understanding of, instead of relying on God to teach them and encouraging them to seek Him and letting it sit in his hands. We’re attached to specific outcomes rather than to a healthy and healing process wherever that might take one. It makes more sense to encourage one’s brother and sister on the road rather than telling them which path one believes they must follow; in the end, it’s between the individual and God.
Amen, Jeniffer. And if you are the Jeniffer who sent me the note recently, thank you. :)
I can’t believe I missed this when you originally posted it, Shawn.
I’m quasi-familiar with the case because (wait for it) there was a Law & Order episode about it a few years ago. It’s okay … I’ll wait for you stop laughing your head off. :D
Only in the L&O episode the boy who was maimed was an identical twin. So one twin remained a boy and the parents and therapist attempted to turn the other into a girl. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about that episode and what it says about gender identification and nature v. nurture.
In addition, I think the whole thing raises some significant issues about the rights of parents v. the rights of children. Yes, David Reimer’s circumcision was botched terribly, but did that really give the parents the right to **change** (or attempt to change) his entire gender identity? There’s something inside me that says there’s something bordering on abusive about that … even while I know that it was done out of love and a desire for his best interests.
Gender identity, no matter what it is based upon (nature or nurture) is foundational to the rest of our self identification. Having someone else mess with that … well, that’s messing around in places that really only God belongs.