Entertaining the Alien

28. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, John Colapinto*

It looks like all I'm doing lately is reading, huh? Well, I guess that isn't far from wrong. I first came across the story of David Reimer in a Rolling Stone article by Colapinto about the case of John/Joan, a well-known case among sex researchers. Born Bruce, one of a pair of identical twins, he lost his penis through a bungled circumcision, and was subsequently given a full sex change and raised as Brenda. For fourteen years Brenda tried to be a girl, before finally learning the truth of what had happened, and reverting back to her biological gender and taking the name David.

Equal parts biography and an overview of various theories about gender identity and how it develops, the book ends on a upbeat note. David, in his early thirties when the book was finished, was happily married and raising three stepchildren with his wife. Unfortunately, what made me pull the book out and reread it again was a small notice in Rolling Stone that David Reimer had recently committed suicide. In light of that, the book seems to stand as an indictment of the doctors and psychologists who used him as a test case, eager to use him (and his twin brother) to prove their theories, despite the cost to the Reimer family.