140 Chapter 5SIDEBAR 5.2:Raising a Boy as a Girl—Nature Versus Nurture
Twin boys, Brian and Bruce Reimer, were born to a couple in Canada in 1965. When Bruce was
circumcised at 8 months, the penis was accidentally destroyed. Distraught, the parents turned
to Dr. John Money, a noteworthy sex researcher from Johns Hopkins whom they saw on tele-
vision. Dr. Money had said that you could change a child into a boy or a girl with surgery and
hormones, and the child’s genetics did not matter. The Reimers visited Dr. Money in 1967.
Dr. Money suggested that the Reimers castrate Bruce and raise him as a girl. The parents followed
Dr. Money’s advice. They changed Bruce’s name to Brenda, dressed him in girls’ clothes, and
gave him girl toys. Dr. Money published numerous articles about this study, citing it as a spec-
tacular example of how a child’s sex could be changed. The scientific reports claimed the entire
family had adjusted easily to the situation. These results trickled down to the lay community,
as evidenced by aTimemagazine report: “This dramatic case... provides strong support...that
conventional patterns of masculine and feminine behavior can be altered. It also casts doubt on
the theory that major sex differences, psychological as well as anatomical, are immutably set by
the genes at conception” ( Time, January 8, 1973, p. 34).
However, a later report published by Diamond and Sigmundson (1997) in theArchives
of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicineand a biography of Bruce/Brenda written by John Colap-
into (2000) suggested differently. Brenda rejected feminine toys, feminine clothing, and femi-
nine interests right from the start. She had no friends, was socially isolated, and was constantly
teased and bullied by peers. She perceived herself as a freak and believed early on she was a boy.
When she expressed these concerns to Dr. Money during the family’s annual visits to Johns Hop-
kins, they were ignored. During adolescence, Brenda was given hormones to develop breasts.
She strongly objected to taking the hormones and often refused. By age 14, she had decided to
become a boy and adopt the lifestyle of a boy. Finally, Mr. Reimer broke down and confessed to
Brenda what had happened. In the biography, the teenager recalls feelings of anger and disbelief
but mostly relief at his dad’s revelation. Brenda started taking male hormones, had surgery to
remove the breasts, and became David. At age 25, he married.
A short time later, David revealed the full story of his life to John Colapinto who wrote his
biography,As Nature Made Him(Colapinto, 2000). Unfortunately, the past could not be erased
for David. Facing the death of his twin two years earlier, marital difficulties, clinical depression,
and unemployment, he took his own life on May 5, 2004. The author of his biography, John
Colapinto, said that he was shocked but not surprised by the suicide and lamented that “the real
mystery was how he managed to stay alive for 38 years, given the physical and mental torments
he suffered in childhood that haunted him the rest of his life” (Colapinto, 2004).was related to sexual orientation and little evi-
dence that it was related to other psychosexual
characteristics (Titus-Ernstoff et al., 2003).
A complicating factor in all of these stud-
ies is that prenatal exposure to hormones is
not an all or none process. Within each of the
conditions described earlier, there are different
levels of exposure. The largest effects seem toappear at maximum levels of exposure. There
also may be critical periods for exposure,
and these critical periods may differ across
domains of cognition and behavior (Hines
et al., 2003). The evidence presented here sug-
gests that the effects of prenatal hormones on
gender-role behavior are stronger among girls
than boys. It may be that gender-role behaviorM05_HELG0185_04_SE_C05.indd 140 6/21/11 8:03 AM