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I was a nurture gal, myself (still am in most issues), but one night I saw a short TV program that changed my whole belief system, pertaining the gender issue.

Some of you may have heard about David Reimer. For those of you who haven't, David was born Bruce Reimer, one of two identical twins. Urination complications, at an early stage, lead to a botched circumcision. The disparate parents, fearing the repercussions on Bruce's future, turned to Dr. John Money at the Baltimore Johns Hopkins Medical Center. Money, a psychologist that was a leader in the theory that gender is a behavioral skill and not a biological attribute. Bruce Reimer was sexually reassigned; he under went reconstructive surgery and was given a vagina, he was raised by his parents as Brenda (psychologically assisted by Dr. Money) and when he reached puberty he was given female hormones.

The good doctor made big waves with his research, in favor of nurture, completely ignoring the very conspicuous signs of distress in Brenda. Years later, Brenda's parents and twin brother would attest to her on-going suicidal depression, her inability to assimilate with her peers, and her lack of desire to acquire female identity traits.
When Brenda reached the age of 14, the parents decided to stop Money's treatment and tell Brenda the truth. Within a period of three months, Brenda adopted a male persona and changed her name to David. David underwent more surgical procedure, to reconstruct the penis, married a woman and became stepfather to her three children. The story of Reimer, however, ends tragically, as he ended up committing suicide.

This specific story only opened the TV program that would forever change my out-look on gender. The second half of the show was dedicated to what happened after Reimer's story was reviled. For many years scientists thought Moneys experiment was a success. No one knew that his connection to the Reimer family was terminated, when Reimer reached his teen years. But when the story was finally made public (at 1997 by Reimer himself), studies were fueled to determine what went wrong. In other words, what were the biological traits Reimer had, that ,made Money's treatment fail?

Well, I'm no scientist, but that's the beauty of educational popular television, they put it terms so you can understand as fully as possible. As I understand it, the research started with two mice brains; male and female. Each brain was sliced into thin disk and then examined under a microscope.

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