From: Damien Broderick (d.broderick@english.unimelb.edu.au)
Date: Wed Jun 07 2000 - 04:10:34 MDT
At 03:05 AM 7/06/00 -0700, Gina wrote:
>I hate to testify on the name of a mid-afternoon television [talk] show that
>I can not recall the name of (perhaps it was the Leeza show?), but in any
>case: This particular (born and later self proclaimed) man, that Damien
>mentions, did appear as a guest,
David Reimer. `Thiessen' (below) was a pseudonym. The resemblance with the
researcher's name (also below) proves that the world was designed by Chris
Carter.
Here's a piece I found in my travels (sorry for the residual codes):
The Independent newspaper.
South Africa.
Boys will be boys, even if they're girls
May 12 2000 at 11:49PM
Washington - Two studies published on Friday confirm that nature makes the
man, and that sex-reassignment surgery for boys born with deformed sex
organs is misguided and possibly cruel.
The studies of 25 genetically male children raised as girls because of
genital deformities showed all of them retained strong male
characteristics, despite hormone and other treatments.
Most reassigned themselves to be males when they got older, the
researchers at Johns Hopkins University said.
"These studies suggest that male gender identity is directly related to
normal male patterns of male hormone exposure in utero (in the womb)," Dr
William Reiner, a child and adolescent psychiatrist and urologist who
worked on both studies, said in a statement.
"These children demonstrate that normal male gender identity can develop
not only in the absence of the penis, but even after the removal of
testicles or castration at birth, and unequivocal rearing as female," he
added.
"Rather than the environment forming these children's gender identity,
their identity and gender role seem to have developed despite a total
environment telling them they were female."
The issue has been prominent lately with the publication of a book, As
Nature Made Him, by journalist John <B>Colapinto</B>, which chronicles the
case
of Bruce Thiessen.
Thiessen had his genitals mutilated during a botched circumcision and his
parents were convinced to raise him as a girl. The experiment failed, as
Thiessen rebelled against becoming "Brenda."
Reiner's team followed 27 genetically male children, with normal XY male
chromosomes, who had cloacal exstrophy, a rare defect in which the boy has
no penis but normal testicles.
Twenty-five of the children were castrated and raised as females.
In the first study, Reiner's team followed 14 children, 12 of whom were
raised as females.
They told a meeting of pediatricians in Boston that the 12 are strongly
"male-typical" in choosing friends, activities and play, and that
six of
them decided to become boys again between the ages of 5 and 12.
The two who were allowed to stay males were developmentally far more like
their normal male peers and psychologically better adjusted than those
raised as girls, Reiner said.
A second study of 12 children given sex-reassignment surgery showed that
eight had since decided to live as boys and that all the rest of the
parents expected their children to switch back to a male gender when they
learn they were born as boys.
"These studies indicate that with time and age, children may well know
what their gender is, regardless of any and all information and
child-rearing to the contrary," Reiner said.
"They seem to be quite capable of telling us who they are, and we can
observe how they act and function even before they can tell us."
- Reuters
[quoted without permission]
Damien
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