Sexual Identity In John Colapinto's As Nature Made Him

In this paper I plan to showcase the nature of sexual identity, and to do this I will draw from examples in the book As Nature Made Him written by John Colapinto. This book offers two contrasting opinions, one that says it is nature that determines the sexual orientation of a person, and one that says it is how one is raised. As a well-researched book, it offers a great foundation for this paper, and the issues discussed within. To start out, we will begin with John Money’s belief on sexuality, notably that it comes from nurture, and not nature.

John Money’s belief on sexual identity was steadfast from the day the Reimer family had first heard him speak. He was staunchly a proponent of gender neutrality (Colapinto 22), the idea that it is nurture,

not nature that molds a person’s sexual identity. On top of this, he believed that anyone without a clearly defined gender would suffer detrimental psychological effects growing up and throughout life. His belief that a human is a “blank slate” when born is not without evidence though.
Between 1952 and 1958 Money and his colleagues Drs. Joan and John Hampson at Johns Hopkins Hospital studied 131 intersexual individuals. Their research concluded that in 95 percent of those “who had been diagnosed with identical genital ambiguities and chromosomal makeups but raised as the opposite sex from one another” fared equally as well as their “pair” (Colapinto 32). This gives strong proof that it is nurture and not nature that shapes a human being.
The story of David Reimer on the other hand, detailed in John Colapinto’s book, portrays a very different story. Skipping to when David had fully grown up, Colapinto talks about him taking great pride in telling his tragic story in order to change the current medical practice, from what it was when he grew up, to one that takes a less permanent approach in deciding the gender of children who are born with ambiguous genitalia, so that children can choose on their own what sex they belong to.
To understand this, one must know that David had been born a boy, but after a routine circumcision surgery was botched, he was left without most of his penis. His parents had heard John Money talk on TV, and after not being able to find a solution to their son’s problem, he seemed as though he had the answers that they had not been able to find from anyone else. The Reimer’s had heard him speak of gender neutrality, and after reaching out to him, he urged them to bring in their son as soon as possible for a consultation.
David Reimer or Bruce which was his birth name had never had the chance to choose his gender, it was assigned to him. Soon, as early as kindergarten, others outside the family could notice that Brenda was different. Her kindergarten teacher clearly remembers thinking “I don’t think she felt she was a little girl” (Colapinto 61) while Brenda was her student. This was backed up by the prominent displays of fighting and refusal to cooperate with other children, teachers and her parents. David remembers all the way back to kindergarten and beyond, and even though as a child he couldn’t come to the realization that he was a boy, he knew he was different and suffered because of it. David was clearly not a blank slate to be molded.
Dr. John Money has since passed away, but if he was alive today reading this, he would most certainly contest this paper so far. He stood up for his work when others would make an opposing view, and no doubt he would now as well. It is not likely that Money would concede that David Reimer’s was a failed case, but if he did, he may say it was because David’s reassignment was right near the end of Money’s supposed gender identity gate at which point a child would no longer have a moldable identity
The Reimer twins were not the only children he worked with though, and another examples of children he worked with are in the book. One notable person was Paula. She was noted to be a more successful example of gender reassignment, and before she was out of grade school she had made two TV appearances, with one of those being an interview. She was born with ambiguous genitals and was assigned as a boy, but her mother, worried of the appearance of her baby contacted Dr. Money and she soon took her son in to be surgically reassigned as a girl who would then be named Paula.
At the time that Colapinto interviewed Paula, she was age 27, and although a virgin, she says she has never felt anything sexual towards (her naturally born opposite sex) women. As her mother says, and Colapinto agrees, that she has lived her life as a woman and never looked back (Colapinto 229). Colapinto, who tends to contradict Money throughout his book more than support him, even describes Paula as quite the woman from her skill at applying makeup to her dress or her weekly trips to keep her nails maintained.
With how fervently John Money believed in gender neutrality, one would tend to think that it would be easy to find a prime candidate to become the iconic face of this issue. Paula was quite literally portrayed as the poster child for Dr. Money’s beliefs, and at only age seven she was put on TV as the first openly intersexual child at that age (Colapinto 228). The book is written so that the reader can assume Colapinto tried hard to find a prime example, but if Paula is it, there are cracks in the foundation.
First, the author points out a couple of quirks throughout his interview that one would not expect from a woman. When he first describes her, he talks about her voice, how she maintains it in an upper register, but mentions a couple of times during the reading that she drops to below even a low voiced woman’s pitch. A beautifully worded part of the book was when her mother who believes in Dr. Money almost as though he is a god, is talking about one part of his prophecy that had not come true, which was that she would eventually marry. “‘For me,’ she says, ‘closure will come when Paula gets married.’ Paula, watching as her mother speaks, takes a hard drag on her cigarette, then looks away.” (Colapinto 229)
As one reads that quote they can get the sense that Paula doesn’t really believe all that her mother is saying. How Colapinto describes her mannerisms and the context throughout the interview, the reader can get the sense that she is going through life more for her mother than herself, and this happens frequently throughout the story of the interview. It is highlighted by the fact that she took up the profession that her mother vocalized her wishes for her to take up, and became a nurse even though she had expressed “an aversion to all aspects of the medical profession” (Colapinto 230).
Throughout the book the author had mentioned how decisively John Money refuted his opponents’ points. He would be quick to reply to any papers that offered counter opinions to his beliefs. After reading the book, one can surmise that Money would accuse Colapinto of slander, and that Colapinto was trying to hurt his work. Allegedly Money had once hit another colleague in the field of sex research (Colapinto 48) because he said it was too early to make a conclusion on the Reimer case. This was supposedly Dr. Milton Diamond, who wanted to work with John money as he believed that their contrasting opinions would make for very complete work. Diamond says he does not remember a physical confrontation.
Money’s work was not always as complete as one could hope for such a respected researcher in the field. Colapinto on the other hand is very complete with his research, and does an excellent job at fielding both points of view throughout the book. Because of this, it leads the reader to assume that Colapinto is the more reliable of the researchers, and helps support his facts over Money’s. Especially when one considers that Money had always believed that Brenda believed herself to be a boy, although she constantly acted otherwise. A prime example is when Dr. Keith Sigmundson who, when Brenda was aged eleven:
…convened a group of the city’s senior psychiatrists, endocrinologists, and pediatricians to consult on the case, he showed them the video. “Everyone who saw Brenda that day identified that she looked like a boy,” (Colapinto 113)
The aforementioned quote is only one of many examples of contradicting information.

Another comes from when he said he had lost track of the Reimer family, even though he was still trading letters between Mrs. Reimer and himself. On could possibly come up with excuses, was he just forgetful of sending letters? It could have been his secretary writing without his knowledge, but if one reads the book, they will get tired of making excuses for Money’s constant contradictions.

With all that being said the reader of the book can at the very least assume it was nature and not nurture in David’s case that formed him into his sexual orientation. Other examples are provided of those who were successfully raised as the other sex, but these arguments are not always on solid ground to prove that it was nurture, as we saw with Paula. She appears to not be living for herself as David did throughout his life. It is my hope that I have shown through solid examples that the evidence contradicts John Money’s view that nurture trumps nature.

Although there are always exceptions, this book and paper should show that it should be the child’s decision on what their sexual orientation should be in a less permanent solution than what was given to David and Paula. Especially considering surgery does not need to be done for medical reasons, and in the aforementioned cases, it was only done for psychological ones that don’t always add

up.