As Nature Made Him

In the fall, Brenda “was uncharacteristically excited about starting classes at a new school” (163). She has transferred to a vocational school, where she hopes to become an auto mechanic. After some hazing at the school, which is rougher than she expects, Brenda “took her sexual destiny into her own hands and simply stopped living as a female” (164). Her mental state is the worst it has ever been.

Though Janet and Ron are unhappy with her behavior, Brenda is at home in her Appliance Repair class. She is ready to live “life as an oddball” (165). Privately, she always urinated standing up; caught doing so at her new school, she “was barred from the girls’ bathroom” but beaten up when she tries to use the boys’ (166). Forced to use a back alley to urinate, she is one day confronted by a man with a camera, recording her.

The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) grew interested in researching Brenda’s case for a film on gender. The filmmaker, Edward Goldwyn, connects with Dr. Winter, who is reluctant to help out. Goldwyn even visits the Reimers under a false guise. He immediately recognizes that “the family little conformed to Money’s sunny portrait in Sexual Signatures” (168). He does not pursue the issue any further, but another television journalist, Peter Williams, travels with documentarist Martin Smith and a small crew to pursue the story. One member of that crew is the man who attempts to photograph Brenda in the alley.

By the time the crew arrives, Dr. Sigmundson remembers, “there were clear doubts” about whether Brenda’s sex reassignment surgery had ever been a good idea (169). He agrees to discuss the case with the documentarists if the Reimers’ identities stay private. Sigmundson is reluctant to give any decisive conclusions about the success of the surgery. Dr. Moggey is also interviewed, and she is willing to openly question the surgery.

Dr. McKenty refuses to speak with the documentarists, but Ron and Janet decide to—they want to share their stories as “a help to other parents” (170). During the interview, Janet breaks down, and Ron becomes silent. They pull Brenda into the room under a false pretense; the girl “stalked into the living room and said an awkward hello in her deep voice, then quickly disappeared” (170). The documentarists notice that “she seemed quite angry” (170).

When Dr. Money welcomes the documentarists, they inform him that they heard dissenting opinions about Brenda’s case. Quickly, they are pushed out of the previously convivial gathering. In a flurry, Dr. Money calls the Reimers that evening. The next day, he writes to the director of the BBC and threatens them if they do not respect the family’s privacy. But the BBC persists in its journalism and seeks “a scientist who could comment on the significance of their findings” (173). They eventually find Dr. Diamond. Diamond holds no personal disdain for Money, but he has continued to believe “that sex reassignment of a developmentally normal infant was impossible” (174).

Diamond speaks in the documentary, The First Question, which airs in 1980. Though it is expected “to stir controversy and comment,” the documentary produces few major public reactions (175). Diamond’s 1972 follow-up article is similarly ignored; it is “not what they wanted to hear” (176).

Brenda, meanwhile, is taunted at school and even threatened with a knife. She is pulled out of school, and McKenty finds a private, government-funded tutor for her. Brenda’s masculine behavior continues, and Janet “began to feel returning the mood of desolate hopelessness that had engulfed her” years earlier (177). Her psychiatrist sends her to a hospital for a month, but she relapses when she returns home. The house is in chaos.

In March, Brenda confronts Dr. Winter, the endocrinologist. He asks her: “Do you want to be a girl or not?’” (179). Brenda shouts, “No!’” in return. After the visit, he and Dr. McKenty decide that “it was time the teenager was told the truth about who she was and what had happened to her” (179).

One day, Ron, in tears, tells Brenda the story of her life. Brenda remains quiet, tearless, “fascinated with this unbelievable tale” (180). She is, among many emotions, “relieved” (180). She wants to know one thing: her name.

Immediately, Brenda decides to transition from girl to boy “without creating gossip” (181). She is humiliated when she has to dress up as a girl; she hopes, she tells McKenty, to have a mustache within two years. But she grows impatient and pushes to be a boy immediately. She chooses two names, Joe and David, and allows her parents to select which she will go by. Ron, and others close with the family, find it easier than they expect to naturally call David, David.

Just after he turns 15, David debuts as male with his extended family. Eventually, he begins testosterone injections, gets taller, and grows some facial hair. In 1980 he has a double mastectomy, which “left him in agony for weeks afterward” (183). He is filled with feelings of revenge and uses his savings to buy an old unlicensed gun. He visits the office of Dr. Jean-Marie Huot, the doctor who performed his botched circumcision, and threatens him with the gun. When the doctor begins to cry, David “felt sorry” (183). David flees the situation and throws the gun into a river. Dr. Huot refuses to speak of the encounter or the original surgery with Colapinto.

In 1981, David receives a “rudimentary penis” (184). There are complications: He is hospitalized regularly for blockages. He largely hides away at home for about two years, but around his eighteenth birthday, David “began to emerge from the house, hanging out at local fast-food joints, roller rinks, and bars with Brian and his friends” (185). The boys make up a story about how Brenda had gotten lost, which most friends know is likely untrue; everyone, including Brenda’s old friend Heather, has doubts about it.

At 18, David also receives money from St. Boniface Hospital’s court settlement with his parents. He buys a van, which he calls “The Shaggin’ Wagon” (187). He is handsome and dates girls, but he is anxious about the expectation that sexual encounters move beyond kissing. He drinks heavily in order to excuse his lack of intimacy. After one girlfriend checks between his legs while he sleeps, he has to confess to an accident; “within days, he says, everyone knew” (187).

The next day, David attempts suicide. Ron and Janet think about leaving him, as a release from the trouble of his life. Quickly, though, they decide to take him to the hospital. A week later, David attempts again, and Brian saves him. He withdraws even from Dr. McKenty and starts to speak into a tape recorder in a cabin in the woods, a recording that Colapinto reproduces in the text.

In 1986, two of David’s friends convince him to visit Hawaii with them. On the plane, David volunteers the truth of his past history to one of his friends, who privately already knew the truth, delivered by parents who figured it out. David comes out of his shell on the trip, and after he returns, he hears about a new and improved type of artificial penis that could allow for sensation.

In a long and involved surgery, David receives a new penis just before he turns 22. He is extremely happy about the new penis. Still, he is anxious about using it sexually and will wait another two years. David desires a wife and children and envies his brother, who married at 19.

Brian introduces David to Jane Fontane, an unflappable and affectionate woman who is short and heavyset (192). Jane is “unworldly to a fault,” but she is also a single mother of three (192). She is needy and has had hard luck in relationships with men. David falls for her increasingly, but he is worried about how to tell her about his surgery. By the time David has the courage to tell Jane, she is able to say that “she already knew, and she didn’t care about it” (194). In September 1990, the two are married.