As Nature Made Him

John Colapinto’s 1999 book As Nature Made Him is an expansion of his award-winning 1997 Rolling Stone article on the medical scandal surrounding David Reimer. David, raised as Brenda under the auspices of famous sexologist and child psychiatrist Dr. John Money, transitions back to a male gender identity during his teenage years. After Dr. Milton Diamond reveals the failure of Money’s theory of gender neutrality at birth, David’s story raises serious questions in the medical community.

Colapinto begins his narration with David’s parents, Ron and Janet, a young Canadian couple faced with the results of their twin sons’ botched circumcisions. When they see Money on television, the couple decides to work with him to raise their son Bruce, whose penis has burned and disintegrated, as a girl. Trusting Money’s famous “theory of psychosexual neutrality at birth,” the couple invests themselves in raising their daughter, Brenda, with a strong sense of female identity (33).

As he follows Brenda’s troubled development, including traumatizing trips to Money’s Johns Hopkins laboratory, Colapinto also tracks the dominance of Money’s ideas in the medical field. Though one doctor, Milton Diamond, questions the basis of Money’s theory, Money continues to gain fame.