Debbie - reviewed on 9/15/2005 + 136 more book reviews

Helpful Score: 3

David Reimer started life as a boy but due to a medical accident at the age of eight months (one very good reason NOT to circumsize boys!)he was surgically refashioned into a girl. He grew up feeling like there was something wrong with him since he felt like a boy trapped in a girl's body. In raising David female his parents followed the advice of a famous sex researcher, Dr. Money, who believed that gender was acquired through nurture, not nature. The child was finally told of his true sex when he reached 14 years of age and immediately abandoned any pretense of femaleness, from long hair to dresses to hormone replacement therapy. The story also details how destructive this tissue of lies became over the years to the parents, David's brother Brian, the other relatives, and even his school teachers and therapists. This story, unfortunately, is not an isolated incident. A certain number of babies are born each year with ambiguous genitalia and are subjected to this "sex reasignment" program. The author details how many researchers are coming to another view, that of letting the child determine its sex (leaving the child intact) until old enough to decide if any surgeries are necessary. Though the subject of homosexuality was not addressed in this book, it does leave one to question the long held belief that sexual orientation is a choice.

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