Now, imagine you were born a boy, and had an identical twin brother. At six months of age, your penis is accidentally burnt off during circumcision. Your parents love you, and think they are making the right decision when they ask a doctor to surgically make you into a girl. Growing up, you liked to play with guns, but dolls were thrust into your hands. You hated dresses, but mother told you to sit with your legs crossed, like a little lady. You beat up the boys who picked on your twin brother. You flunked the first grade; didn’t have a single friend until sixth grade.

 

Originally published eight years ago, As Nature Made Him is no less moving, striking, or relevant today. John Colapinto, a New York journalist whose articles have appeared in Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, and Rolling Stone, created a page-turning masterpiece that’s liable to keep you up past your bedtime. In a warm, unadorned style, Colapinto gets to the pure root of situations, by expertly investigating each individual’s past and motives. He knows there is no simple answer to anything. As the book progresses, it’s obvious whose side he’s on, yet at no point does he skimp on the research which could—at any moment—prove his side as flawed. 

 

This work craves a space on the shelf of every book collector who is curious about gender identity, transsexualism, and the nature vs. nurture debate. In fact, it would be a safe bet that readers with no existing interest in these topics might do well to begin here, with the tale of David Reimer, the boy who was raised as Brenda Reimer.

 

Colapinto’s account reads like science fiction and also, at times, like a comic book: there’s the villain (Dr. Money, the eccentric sex researcher), the hero (Dr. Mary McKenty, the compassionate psychiatrist), and the open-mouthed bystanders (the cowardly local doctors).

 

As Nature Made Him reveals the highly-revered Dr. Money as a twisted, insecure man desperately hungry for acclaim and validation. The book leaves us asking the question: is Money a lying scoundrel…or has Money actually lost his mind? 

 

The book’s ultimate purpose is a success: to debunk the rosy lies surrounding one of the most famous cases in modern medicine, a case that for thirty years had been the backbone for the universal acceptance that human beings are psychosexually malleable at birth, and that sex reassignment surgery should be performed on infants with ambiguous or injured genitalia.

The most gripping portion comes at the end, when the author interviews David—a man now married, with three stepchildren. David’s summation of his ordeal brings tears to the eyes and chills to the spine:

                        

                  You know, if I had lost my arms and my legs and wound up in a

                  wheelchair where you’re moving everything with a little rod in

                  your mouth—would that make me less of a person? It just seems

                  that they implied that you’re nothing if your penis is gone. The

                  second you lose that, you’re nothing, and they’ve got to do

                  surgery and hormones to turn you into something. Like you’re a

                  zero. It’s like your whole personality, everything about you is all

                  directed—all pinpointed—toward what’s between the legs. And

                  to me, that ignorant. I don’t have the kind of education that these

                  scientists and doctors and psychologists have, but to me it’s very

                  ignorant. 

 

Read this astounding book to reaffirm why it is imperative to trust yourself. See through the eyes of David Reimer, and understand truth as our most valuable possession. Be reminded of a universal journey, a journey that asks Who am I? 

 

As Nature Made Him can be purchased at the Meefers Store or Common Language BookBAR in Ann Arbor.