Health Check: The boy who was raised a girl

Submitted by anthony on Wed, 2010-11-24 16:03

Article here. Excerpt:

'Biologically it is sex hormones, physical appearance and the sex chromosomes - XX for a woman, XY for a man - which dictate whether someone is male or female.

But what happens if you bring up someone who was a boy as a girl?

There was a case just like this in the 1960s, a case which ended in tragedy.

Twins Bruce and Brian Reimer were born in Canada as two perfectly normal boys. But after seven months, both were having difficulty urinating.

Acting on advice, the parents, Janet and Ron, took the boys to the hospital for a circumcision.

The next morning, they received a devastating phone call - Bruce had been involved in an accident.

Doctors had used a cauterizing needle instead of a blade, and the electrical equipment had malfunctioned and the surge in current had completely burned off Bruce's penis.'

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Comments

God I hope people learn from mistakes like this. What a tragedy. Think of how confusing it must have been for this guy to be a biological male but raised as a female, and they waited 13 years to tell him!

I remember learning of this case in sociology class. It's the ol' nature vs nurture debate.

I can't believe there was no oversite on this "doctor". Where was child protective services?

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Submitted by Kris on Sat, 2010-11-27 00:30

A book titled "AS Nature Made Him - The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl" by John Colapinto was written about this abomination, published before the boy/girl's suicide. I recommend it.

It occurred when the popular thought was that there is no difference between boys and girls except for plumbing and hormones, both of which can be controlled by the good doctor. The doctor continued to use the case as an example of success long after it was clearly a disaster - cover-ups, the whole works.

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Submitted by Arty on Sun, 2010-11-28 19:34

I recently read about this in my sociology textbook as well. Of course, I heard about this years ago. Oprah had him as a guest one time. What's truly remarkable is how no one ever will condemn circumcision and the pointless risks that come with it, even after refering to Reimer's story. Heaven forbid Oprah or my sociology textbook, which never shut
up about women's issues, ever take the time to talk about a male issue.

Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!

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Submitted by xtrnl on Mon, 2010-11-29 00:29

XTRNL- welcome back. Where have you been, you have not posted here in like over a year.

This story has two relevances to men's rights.

First it repeats the "circumcision will solve everything" fallacy without any regard to risk. And then it fails to recognize or respect any cognitive differences between males and females.

In my post above I refer to "how confusing" it must have been for Mr. Reimer, but "confusing" is too soft of word. It must have been mentally torturous for him, no wonder he commited suicide.

This story supports my core beleif that you cannot fool nature.

PS- Being adopted the ol' nature vs. nurture debate is always of interest to me.

Every good trait I have my mom chalks up to their good parenting. Every bad trait I have she says is genetic and nothing they can do about it.

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Submitted by Kris on Mon, 2010-11-29 06:25

Thank you for the wonderful welcome. It's good to chat with you again, Kris. The reason why I haven't been here for so long is because I decided I needed a break from all of the depressing news. I guess you could call it willful ignorance.

I've also decided to go back to school to become a math and physics teacher, and thus I've been rather busy. However, in my day to day life, I see more and more misandry. That's what ultimately lead me back to this site. I tire of seeing the suffering of men continually trivialized and then hearing so much about women's issues and none about men's. It's nice to be around people who see the male gender's value and necessity to society.

I hope eventually society will see that men are naturally more apt at certain things, and the same for women. An evangelist put it best when he asked: "Which is more valuable? A hammer or a screwdriver? Neither. They are equally valuable, but they are better suited for different tasks." It isn't sexist in the least to acknowledge the tendencies of one gender to be good at certain things, and the same for the other. It's not sexism, it's simply statistics. Not that this has much to do with this topic. I'm just saying.

Evan AKA X-TRNL
Real Men Don't Take Abuse!

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Submitted by xtrnl on Mon, 2010-11-29 19:34