Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.
Loading... As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (edition 2006)by John Colapinto (Author)
Work InformationAs Nature Made Him by John Colapinto
Loading...
Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Subtitle: The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl From the book jacket: In 1967, after a baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment. On the advice of a renowned expert in gender identity and sexual reassignment at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the boy was surgically altered to live as a girl. This landmark case, initially reported to be a complete success, seemed all the more remarkable since the child had been born an identical twin: his uninjured brother, raised as a boy, provided to the experiment the perfect matched control. My reactions This made me so angry! It’s been a week since I finished it and I thought I had calmed down, but just typing that synopsis from the book jacket stirred those embers in me. The unmitigated arrogance and superior attitude of Dr John Money made me want to hunt him down and do an experiment on HIM! (But he died in 2006…) In writing the book, Colapinto did an excellent job of researching the various players in this tragedy. He provides considerable background on the development of sexual/gender identity theory, including interviews with many researchers and reporting from numerous professional journals. He gained the trust of David Reimer, his parents and brother and had extensive interviews with them, as well as with childhood friends, teachers and physicians who treated the boys. I think the book is balanced and truthful. I applaud David Reimer for the way he manages to survive the horror that was his childhood. (Note: In 1967, after a twin baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment that would alter his gender. The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine—and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's—and one family's—amazing survival in the face of terrible odds. Stumbled upon this one day - blew my mind that doctors - and parents! - would do this to a child. [Am not getting into circumcision and other genital mutilations at this point - don't get me started) Recalled that I'd read it, recommended it to my daughter - at University - who was telling me of a documentary on intersexed individuals. BTW - I find it difficult to rate nonfiction. Biographies are *much* different from DIY!
As John Colapinto makes achingly clear in this riveting, cleanly written and brilliantly researched account of a world-famous case, Money's effort to prove the plasticity of human sexual identity by transforming Bruce into Brenda was a cataclysmic failure. Is abridged inAwardsDistinctions
In 1967, after a twin baby boy suffered a botched circumcision, his family agreed to a radical treatment that would alter his gender. The case would become one of the most famous in modern medicine--and a total failure. As Nature Made Him tells the extraordinary story of David Reimer, who, when finally informed of his medical history, made the decision to live as a male. A macabre tale of medical arrogance, it is first and foremost a human drama of one man's--and one family's--amazing survival in the face of terrible odds. No library descriptions found.
|
Current DiscussionsNonePopular covers
Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)305.9066Social sciences Social Sciences; Sociology and anthropology Groups of people People by occupation and miscellaneous social statuses Sexuality; Migrants Gay, lesbian, queer studiesLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. |
this was both the story of david's life, his childhood where everyone tried to force him to be a girl, and of the medical side of this story. of the perfect experiment because david was an identical twin, and his brother was not put through the operation, botched or otherwise. of this doctor that was so driven to prove that hormones don't matter in gender determination, that he was unable to accept any data (or any people) who didn't fit his scientific theory. this doctor was the father of sex and gender study and could have done so much for the field, and instead has a legacy of trauma and surgical intervention that ruined so many lives.
both david's story and the medical story are interesting. because the book tries to cover them both, though, neither are fully addressed in a way that is entirely satisfying for the reader. we don't really hear what it's like for david or his family. we see that his mom is depressed, that his dad is an alcoholic, that his twin brother was in trouble with the law and in school, that both kids were put through psychological abuse (and worse) at the hands of the doctors. but we don't hear what they were going through. what it was like to make the decision to reassign their baby's gender. to see him grow up, as a girl, and obviously unhappy in that role. to come to question their decision and their role in their child's unhappiness.
there are many holes, and lots of unanswered questions, because the author is trying to do so much. and he does it well, although there is a strange commitment to using female pronouns and a female name for the period of life that david lived as a girl, so a sentence could read: "david remembers an incident when she was seven." it felt a little disrespectful, although i know he wasn't trying to be. anyway, this is definitely interesting, and a terrible story of what the medical profession perpetuated on so many children for so long. ( )