Christina's Thoughts -

1. Apocryphal Tales by Karel Čapek
2. The Earth After Us: What Legacy Will Humans Leave in the Rocks? by Jan Zalasiewicz
3. Life As We Do Not Know It: The NASA Search For (and Synthesis of) Alien Life by Peter Ward
4. Deaf President Now!: The 1988 Revolution at Gaullaudet University by John B. Christensen and Sharon N. Barnartt
5. Deaf in America: Voices From a Culture by Carol Padden and Tom Humphries
6. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
7. Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements by Austin Burt and Robert Trivers
8. The Ethical Slut by Dossie Easton and Catherin A. Liszt
9. She's Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan
10. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'engle
11. Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures by Carl Zimmer
12. As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl by John Colapinto

As Nature Made Him is about the famous "John/Joan" case. It began in 1967, when a botched circumcision caused an 8-month-old baby boy named Bruce Reimer to lose his penis. At the time, phalloplasties were still very crude, and they were unable to construct a useable penis. Seeking help for their son, his parents met Dr. John Money, who believed, as was commonly held at the time, that gender identity was purely learned, a result of early childhood experiences. He told them that they would be able to perform sex reassignment surgery on their infant son, turning him into a girl, and that, if they raised her as a girl, she would grow up to be a well-adjusted woman. Desperate for help, they agreed, and Bruce became Brenda. As it turned out, Bruce was part of a set of identical twins, with a twin brother named Brian.

Early reports claimed that the operation was a success and that Brenda had taken to a female identity very well. At most, there were admissions of "tomboyish" behavior, but it was claimed that she was happy as a girl.

The truth, however, was that she did not take to the female identity, and from an early age realized that something was wrong. She identified more with boys than with girls, despite her parents' best efforts to encourage femininity. The surgery performed in infancy was only the first phase, and a follow-up would be required later in life, during adolescence. In addition, beginning at 12, she was to be put on hormones to induce feminine puberty. She consistently refused to even discuss the surgery (which was explained to her as simply a need to correct a birth defect; at that point, she had no idea that she'd been born a girl) and initially tried to reject the hormones as well.

Eventually, at age 14, her parents told her the truth. She subsequently rejected a female identity, and began living as male, completely refusing the hormones (and later receiving a masectomy to remove the breasts that had begun to develop, and testosterone injections to remasculinze his body). He didn't like the name he'd been originally given, and chose to go with either Joe or David, letting his parents choose between the two.

The case disappeared from the publicity after that. David just wanted to live his life quietly without publicity, and Dr. Money didn't want to admit that the supposed greatest evidence for his belief in learned gender identity was, in fact, a complete refution of that belief. It wasn't until the 1990s that the story first came out, at the time, using the pseudonyms "Joan" and "John" for Brenda and David. A few years after that, David agreed to come out publically with full details about what he'd gone through, particularly after he'd learned that his case had been use to justify other attempts to feminize boys with damaged genitals, which had also failed to instill a female identity.

It's a fascinating, powerful book. Very sad story.