I picked “As Nature Made Him” at a Garage sale organized by the Sister Library. The garage sale was organized in order to raise funds to open up a Feminist Library in the metro city of Mumbai. I have been aiming to get my hands on more LGBTQIA+ books off late. And thus, after reading the title my first instinct was it had something to do with a Transgender person.
Placed in Winipeg, a city in the Canadian province of Manitoba, is the birth-place of our protagonist; this book was published in the January of 2000, after being in work for a couple of years (the author before working on the book had actually worked on a NewYork Times piece on David Reimer’s Story). As I started reading the book, it turns out it doesn’t have much to do with Transgender really but allusively to Intersexuals and sex reassignment surgeries.
Born as an identical twin, Bruce Reimer was twelve minutes older to his brother Brian Reimer. At the age if eight months though due to an operational accident, Bruce lost his penis and thus ensued a lifelong anguish for the Reimer’s family. What followed for the next thirty years is what constitutes of this book.
When it comes to bringing changes in the society the two professions that largely make their impact on the general people’s thinking are Medical Professionals and Law makers. Thus, this true story gives us an insight into the grand level of impact medical researches make on our knowledge of human norms.
John Colapinto, a journalist by profession, and the author of As Nature Made Him, has done a splendid job of providing numerous point of views that play an essential role in giving us an all-round perspective on the story and its authenticity. He has provided us with both the positive and negative views from the specialists in the field of psychosexuality without the affliction of being repetitive. As the story is segregated and explained in three stages, John accurately jumps through using right pronouns at the right times.
The story of Bruce Reimer transitioning into David Reimer, is a story of anguish that while flashes light on the errors of medical researches, limitations faced in sex reassignment surgeries concomitantly accentuates the struggles of LGBTQIA+ community.
While all the studies and medical researches on Gender identity in the era of 1950’s precisely focused on the binary stereotypes of masculinity and femininity, it also points up on the long journey it has been in the field of Gender & Sexuality. The beginning of this journey mainly floated on the debating theory of Nature V.S. Nurture, which then dwelled on the binaries of gender roles. Today activists are working on explaining the fluidity and presence of masculinity and femininity in a person without limiting them to their assigned gender.
John Money, the most essential name in the life story of David Reimer and in the field of psychosexuality, his narrative also highlights to us, how a researcher’s own personality can play such a major role in its research work and its conclusions.
The story alongside puts a major highlight on the lives of intersexuals and the diversity that prevails in this section of minority.The conclusion to take away from the story of David Reimer is what Dr. Reiner states, “The most important sex organ is not the genitals, it’s the Brain.”
Thank You!