From: dmhills{at}attglobal.net (Don Hills)

In article , Randall
Parker  wrote:
>
>I came across an interesting study (that I should have posted here - look
>for it in Reuters Health from a few days ago I think) recently about
>males that are born without penises. Some of them get converted
>surgically into being females (I was very surprised and repulsed by
>this). In spite of the surgincal procedure the bulk of them go on to see
>themselves as male. The article gave examples of 5 year olds declaring
>they were boys in spite of all attempts to get them to think otherwise.

I think I know what sparked the Reuters article. In 1967, a Canadian baby
lost his penis due to a botched circumcision. Dr. John Money, a
psychologist whose work was widely influential from the 1950s until almost
the present day, recommended the boy be castrated and brought up as a girl.
He followed the case closely, especially because the boy was one of a pair
of identical twins and thus had an ideal "control" for
comparison. He subsequently published several papers on this and other
cases, and a book ("Man & Woman, Boy & Girl") in 1973.
According to Money the experiment was a complete success, with both
children growing up happy with their gender. Reality differed, though- at
age 15 the "girl" decided to reassign her own gender and became
David. David Reimer went public this year, in a book ("As Nature Made
Him") written by John Colapinto. Back in 1967 a researcher published a
paper contradicting Money's ideas, but it didn't stand much chance against
Money's reputation. Finally, in 1997 the researcher (Milton Diamond) and a
pyschologist (Keith Sigmundson) authored a paper that quoted the patient
(David Reimer). It took them until 1999 to find a medical journal that
would accept it for publication. There's been a lot of medical
prodfessionals experiencing "paradigm shift" as a result...

--
Don Hills    (dmhills at attglobaldotnet)     Wellington, New Zealand

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5