I was a psychology major in college who had often heard the nature vs. nurture debate. When I heard about As Nature Made Him I was very interested in this true life story. It is a heartbreaking life story of two identical twin boys who were taken to be circumcised when they were seven-months old. The first operation was botched and Bruce’s penis basically crumbled and fell off. Brian was left uncircumcised. The parents were not presented with many options and the doctors seemed to feel it would be best to do a gender reconstruction as a female as that process was more advanced then male reconstruction.
The babies parents go along with the process and attempt to raise Bruce as a girl. Throughout their years growing up the twins are subjected to testing and analysis with doctors and psychiatrists to see how effective the gender reassignment was. It was pretty clearly evident even from early on that it was not very successful.
Bruce/Brenda continued to be interested in more traditionally “boy” interests, toys and activities and did not seem to understand why his parents tried to continually push dresses and dolls upon him. Even as he was taking hormones and going through the process of becoming female he felt very much like a boy. At age fourteen he was finally told the truth about what happened when he was a baby and he decided immediately to do what he could to become a male. This, obviously, was a very painful and confusing process. In the end, Bruce/Brenda was successful in reclaiming his male identity. He changed his name to David and eventually got married.
This true story seemed to make an obvious case that nature is a very important part of gender and that it is established from a very early age. I admire that this man was willing to open up his life to a book such as this, especially after spending most of his younger years being studied as an “experiment” by several doctors.
No Comments on "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl by John Colapinto"