Identity Crisis

What biology has to say about being a girl or boy, as illustrated by a man's ordeal

By Michelle Ciriacruz

 

AS NATURE MADE HIM THE BOY WHO WAS RAISED AS A GIRL BY JOHN COLAPINTO 289 PAGES PERENNIAL EDITION, HARPER COLLINS PUBLISHERS, INC. 2001

It was like brainwashing and it was like torture, recounts David Reimer of his childhood being reared as a girl despite the fact that he was born a boy.

    It wasn't a case of parental maltreatment, although something totally contrary to his nature was imposed upon him.

    Until he was 15, he tried to fit in a mold set for him by those who supposedly knew better and those who had his best interests at heart-but who did not know better.

    It began the day he and his identical twin, at eight months old, were brought to a teaching hospital in Winnipeg, Canada for treatment of a urinary problem.

    They were diagnosed with phimosis, a condition that causes the prepuce of the penis to tighten up, making it difficult for the twins to urinate. Their pediatrician advised circumcision, which would remedy the problem.

    Supposedly, it was a routine procedure. But using an electrocautery device, the general practitioner botched the job-to disastrous results. David, who was still baby Bruce, lost his penis.

    Experts from all over were called in. The baby was also brought to Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. The team of doctors there just concurred with what others have concluded: plastic surgery to correct the damage in the baby's genitals would not allow Bruce to lead the normal life of a male.

    According to the experts, he would not have a normal sex life; a reconstructed penis would merely be a conduit for urine. He would not be able to sire children. As one of them put it, "he must live apart."

    Baby Bruce's parents were horrified at this bleak future predicted for their son. They feared him being different above all else. Into this common human frailty entered the extremely popular doctrines of medical psychologist John Money.

    He was the founder of Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. In this center, sex reassignments and transexual surgeries were performed frequently.

    He convinced Bruce's parents that gender identity is flexible, that it is subject chiefly to how a person is raised. So even if a baby is genetically male, but whose genitals are ambiguous or got damaged, as in the case of Bruce, he could be conditioned to be a female; and this baby, in appearance and outlook, would be a girl.

    "When you're desperate, you don't necessarily do all the right things," Bruce parents explained.

    As recounted in the book, As Nature Made Him, The Boy Who was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto, they were, together with their baby, in a way casualties of scientific warfare.

    For as popular as Money's doctrines are-especially in pediatric endocrinology, which defers to his research in its management of intersex infants-they were also not without rivals.

    It was largely in answer to a challenge posed by a doctrinal rival-whose research demonstrated that exposure to prenatal hormones would strongly affect a person's masculinity or femininity later, in direct opposition to Money's "environment and learning" stand-that he was quick to involve Bruce in a medical experiment that from the outset was a failure, but because of medical arrogance was described as a success by its author.

    Bruce and his twin presented a matched pair. Both began life as a boy, but only the undamaged twin would go on being a boy. Bruce, his testes surgically removed and provided with a rudimentary vagina, would be the definitive evidence that Money needed for his theory that even infants who are unequivocally male or female could be reared as the opposite gender.

    With the cooperation of Bruce's parents and other physicians connected with the case, Bruce became Brenda and, until he was 15, was Brenda.

    But he never truly was.

    Even if he could not really articulate the wrongness of the identity he was forced to assume, he knew that something was wrong-and his struggles to alternately rebel against this imposition and suppress his rebellious urges made growing up a torment.

    "What they did to you in the body is sometimes not near as bad as what they did to you in the Mind-with the psychological warfare in your head," he describes.

    He raged against wearing dresses and doing the stuff girls are wont to do. He would rather play with boys' toys and if other children would try to bully him or tease him, he would fight back with fists and kicks.

    His attraction to girls was also difficult to come to terms with. He was supposed to be a girl, wasn't he? So what did this attraction made of him?

    He performed poorly in school. He had few friends.

    He was depressed most of the time... So were his parents. His father drank and his mother was, at some points, suicidal.

    They were promised that the son they permitted to be so drastically changed would turn out fine. But this was not happening, as their son turned daughter had all sorts of mental and emotional problems that affected everyone in the family.

    The success of this sex reassignment case was only in the architect's paper, it seems.

    When they finally told the truth to their child, Bruce/Brenda immediately shook off all the behavioral programming placed upon him, and reverted to the sex he was born with-with relief.

    He renamed himself David, to symbolize his survival against all odds.

    And even as medical science was primarily responsible for the travails he went through, it also became his way back to regaining his manhood.

    But it could not turn back time, because his problems with self-esteem and relating with both men and women are linked inextricably with that moment he lost his sexual organ, and consequently, true sexual identity to a botched circumcision.

Hardwired or Software-ran

    One of the oldest debates in psychology is the nature versus nurture concept in determining individual human traits and abilities, including a person's sense of being either a male or female.

    In the 1960s and 1970s, the international community of medical professionals was strongly in favor of the nurturist stand, largely influenced by the efforts of Money, at the time, also one of the field's foremost sex researcher.

    He postulated and advanced the doctrine that human beings at the time of birth are psychosexual blank slates, thus they could be steered to which gender identity seemed best for the infants-even if this identity does not match what their genes say-through careful rearing techniques and hormonal treatments.

    This doctrine was applied extensively in intersex infants and babies whose genitalia had suffered extensive damage.

    "The psychological sex in these circumstances does not always agree with the genetic sex nor with whether the sex glands are male or female," he preached.

    However, the Brenda/Bruce/David case fiasco seemed to aver that the thousands of intersexed infants and genitally damaged babies that underwent surgical sex reassignments were subjects of a half-baked theory passing off as the authoritative word in this field.

    Although As Nature Made Him is mainly the story of David's journey to finding his true self, his story also somehow unveils the consequences of science dominated by human intrigues and human pride.

    Colapinto details the work done by other scientists who had little of Money's forceful influence. Their work would have shown that disregarding biology's role in the differentiation of the sexes is unwise, and overlooking it for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with the pure logic of science would have, ironically, very human and tragic results.

    Critics have described As Nature Made Him as a gripping story, clearly written. The first adjective especially applies, in the sense it was meant to, but also in the way we would feel as we attempt to answer the big question raised by the book.

    Is one's sense of being a man or woman hardwired into us from before birth, or is it programmed into us through the influences of environment and learning?

    David's story seemed to tell us that biology has primacy. In the majority of the other cases referred to in the book, its power also seemed transcendental.

    Common sense, something that was not prevalent in the course of David's growing up years, would dictate that answer.

    In interviews with scientists researching into this subject, it was proposed that hormonal or neurological factors might have influenced clearly biological but homosexual male or females on their sexual preferences.

    However, in this regard, certainty tapers off. If primacy of biology were to be advocated, its primacy should be consistent, yet it is not.

    And if we were to conclude that the principles that almost overpowered David's sense of himself were false, we might ourselves be wrong.

    The answer to the question is still in the process of unfolding, overturning previously pet convictions and creating new ones, perhaps also creating new success stories or unhappy ones.

    The certainty in this book is showing us that children are not pawns, not even in some large-scale biological and psychological issue; they are people to be listened to-and the only ones who could tell who they are, if we give them that chance.