Judith Butler

Health Check: The Boy who was raised a girl

When anyone has a baby the first question bothone asks is: is it a boy or a girl?

Twins Bruce and Brian Reimer were born as ii perfectly normal boys, but after seven months, two were having difficulty urinating. Acting on advice, the p bents, Janet and Ron, took the boys to the hospital for circumcision.

The next sunup they received a devastating phone call that Bruce had been compound in an accident. Doctors had used a cauterizing needle instead of a blade, and the electrical equipment had malfunctioned and the surge in current had completely burned-over off Bruces Penis. Brians operation was cancelled, and the Reimers took their twins home.

high-flown experiment

Months passed, and they had no idea what to do until one evening they met a man who would change their lives, and the lives of their twins forever.

Dr John Money was a psychologist specialising in sex changes, he believed that it wasnt so some(prenominal) biology that determines whether we are male or female, but how we are raised.

Janet wrote to Dr Money, and within a few weeks shed taken Bruce to collect him in Baltimore.
For Dr Money the case go forthd the ideal experiment.



Here was a child he believed should be brought up as the frigid sex, who even brought his own control group with him - an identical twin. If it worked this would provide irrefutable evidence that nurture could over-ride biology - and Dr Money genuinely believed that Bruce had a better chance of living a prosperous life as a woman than as a man without a penis.
Lonely girl
And so, when Bruce was 17 months old, he became Brenda. For months after on 3rd July, the first surgical step was taken with castration.
Dr Money stressed that, if they wanted the sex change to work, the parents must(prenominal) never let Brenda or her twin brother go through that she had been born a boy. From now on they had a daughter, and every year they would go and visit Dr Money who was keeping train of the twins progress in...If you want to get a full essay, differentiate it on our website: Orderessay



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