"As Nature Made Him"

Paper Summary:

This paper positively reviews this non-fictional account of a boy raised as a girl after his parents were advised to do so by a medical doctor. The paper summarizes the life story of the child as reported in the book and talks about the book's successful treatment of issues regarding scientific arrogance within the medical treatment, sexuality, and gender identity.

From the Paper:

"We tend to think about sexuality as being about biology (as, of course, in some rather obvious ways it is) and not go beyond the physical mechanics of sex when we are thinking about what it means to be a sexual being. But sexuality is perhaps as much about cultural mores and habits as it is about genetics, as John Colapinto's As Nature Made Him : The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl (HarperCollins, 2000) examines. The book is a well written, thoughtful analysis of how individuals come to see themselves as possessed of sexual identities, and the process through which each individual learns to negotiate his or her identity as an amalgam of personal and social desires. The book is at its heart an impassioned story of how sexuality and sexual identity are at the very core of who each person comes to be as an adult, and how sexuality must be understood to be a fundamental and pervasive aspect of our sense of ourselves, not just what it is we do in bed."

More papers on "As Nature Made Him":

• Analytical Essay # 26399 : "Human Sexuality in "As Nature Made Him"
• Term Paper # 93003 : "The Nature of God in the Old Testament"
• Term Paper # 99463 : "Amiri Baraka's "An Agony. As Now"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: