The boy who was raised as a girl

In 1965 twin boys Brian and Bruce were born to a Canadian. Unfortunately, a circumcision procedure at the age of two resulted in a tragic accident, causing Bruce to lose his male organ.

The couple felt devastated but had some hope after consulting Dr John Money, a psychologist from Johns Hopkins Hospital who was a pioneer in sex change at that time.

Dr Money believed that gender identity is shaped by social upbringing and not genetic or hormonal. Dr Money recommended a sex operation and hormonal treatment, so Bruce was brought up as a girl called Brend.

The family kept the big secret from the twins and Dr Money conducted regular sessions to train Bruce – who is now Brenda - to play with girls’ toys and dress like girls and later join a girls’ school.

He continued to observe the twins and record their behaviours. In his paper, he wrote about Brenda “The girl had many tomboy traits, such as abundant physical energy, a high level of activity, stubbornness, and being often the dominant one in a girl's group”.

However, Brenda suffered from severe psychological and emotional difficulties reaching the point of contemplating suicide.

It was at this critical juncture that the parents decided to reveal the truth – Brenda had been born a boy. Within weeks of this revelation, Brenda chose to revert to her original identity and undergo hormonal therapy and a sex change operation to become a boy named David. He even married a woman but could not have children himself.

When he reached the age of thirties, he became more depressed, lost his job, and was separated from his wife.

In May 2004 he committed suicide. This case challenges the social learning theory of gender development which argues that if children receive positive reinforcement, they are motivated to continue a particular behaviour but if they receive punishment or other indicators of disapproval, they tend to stop that behaviour.

When applied to gender development, children are praised when they look and do what is expected of their gender culturally and they get punished if they do the opposite.

However, this theory alone cannot explain how one identifies as a male or female because genetic factors and sex hormones play significant roles.

This is very important when one tries to understand sex change operations which have become more popular in Western countries and gaining popularity in other cultures.

Advocates of these operations focus mainly on the social influence of gender roles which can be misleading to many people causing them to rush into adopting surgical measures without assessing the psychological elements.

While reading more about this subject you often learn about people who regret the sex change and continue to experience negative emotions along with being rejected by their friends and family or not getting the emotional peace they were hoping for.

In my opinion, people experiencing gender dysphoria, i.e. not accepting the body they are in should seek a medical opinion from a trustworthy doctor before making any major decisions that could make their lives more miserable.