Nature Vs Nurture Essay

Janet Reimer gave birth to identical twins, Bruce and Brian. During a circumcision, Bruce penis was badly severed and could not be repaired surgically. The penis was severed by an electric burning device. During the Reimers search for answers on what to do about the severed penis, the family heard of Dr. John Money. Dr. John Money was the only one that seemed as if he had the answers the family wanted to hear. He convinced the family that Bruce could be raised as a girl by having reconstructive surgery and keeping his true sexual identity a secret. He told them if they kept it a secret and nurtured him as a girl, then he will begin to believe he was a female. The family believed what Dr. John Money said and agreed to the reconstructive surgery. Dr. John Money also told the family they were never to tell anyone of the surgery. Janet Reimer raised Bruce as a girl named Brenda and kept his sexuality a secret. Throughout Bruce and Brian childhood, they would meet with Dr. John Money typically once a year. During visits, Dr. John Money would continue to convince Bruce he was a female and would take sexually explicit pictures of him.

Dr. Money argued it was possible for a person to change gender successfully through surgery, socialisation and hormone replacement. Unaware Dr. Money had never attempted this before, Bruce’s parents, Ron and Janet Reimer consented. On 3rd July 1967 Bruce was surgically castrated and renamed Brenda.

1. Assuming that the nurture theory is valid, David as Brenda will have female behavior and believe he is a girl. From a physical point of view he will not develop secondary characteristics. Based on how hormones work by removing his testicles they denied him of his secondary characteristics. After puberty he would not

The video is about a boy named Bruce Reimer who was born as a normal healthy male but that changed on August 22, 1965, when they went to get a circumcisions but it went wrong during the operation and during it, the penis was burned off during the circumcisions and it got removed accidently. After that he was sexually recast as a female after his penis was accidentally removed during a circumcision and they said it was the electrical equipment fault and none of the doctors who were doing it. Every since that day, Bruce Reimer began living as a male with no penis. After several months later, the mom finally met a doctor named Dr. Money on a television programme that give her some hope that he can turn Bruce into a daughter. After couple months later, Dr. Money told them to treat Bruce as a girl and don’t tell him that he was ever a boy or else the progress will fail. So the family calls him Brenda and treat him like a girl. This also helps Dr. Money because this will give him more practice so he can change more people’s sex.

Brandon must separate his biological sex from the gender that he wants to portray to society and himself. Judith Lorber states that “[f]or the individual, gender construction starts with assignment to a sex category on the basis of what the genitalia look like at birth” (Lorber 1). This is the case for every individual. When

Nevertheless, I think that both David Remier and Dominican Republic syndrome had overwhelmed on sex, the biological part. I have to say that sex does play a big role on one's identity, as it was something in our nature, which could influence on our body changes directly. Both of the cases mentioned in here were boys wrongly raised as girls, then they figured that they were more masculine than feminine until the transition points appeared. After they knew that they were boys, most of them would not accept female gender roles any more. For David Remier, I do not think it was solely the confusing gender role frustrated him and made him suicide, I think it was the way his parents and Dr. Money handled the situation. Certainly David had some levels of gender dysphoria, as in the video, his mother said that he was more masculine and being bullied in school. However, I feel like Dr.Money kept forcing him to do something that he did not want to do. Speaking of Dr. Money, he reminded me of Dr. Kinsey, since both of them faced some unethical issues when doing research. As far as the information I got for now, I think Dr. Money was worse than Dr. Kinsey on unethical issues. He let the little David to act certain ways just for the purpose that his hypothesis was correct. In the video, everyone can tell how disengaged little David was when talking to Dr. Money, and Dr. Money seemed not care

One day Janet and Ron’s saving grace came along, Dr. Money. Dr. Money had a theory that children are gender neutral and can be both a boy or girl depending how they are raised. Janet and Ron got ahold of Dr. Money and asked to apart of his experiment, they were going to raise Bruce as a female. Bruce was now Brenda, and being raised as if she was never a male. Brenda went through childhood never feeling right, she wasn't like any of the other girls. Brenda rejected her gender and Dr. Money went through drastic measures to make

However, Dr. Money came up with a sex change theory: to raise Bruce as a female. This experiment will truly define the theory of nature vs nurture. To make sure this experiment work, nurture will have to be greater than nature. Thus, Bruce’s name changed to Brenda. Humans learn how to behave from people around them as they grow; also, children are familiarized to certain roles

When Rebeca finally goes to see Dr. Silver it is blatantly obvious that he does not regularly preform surgeries like hers nor does he check up on the patient after the surgery. Despite his lack of experience in the field he tells Rebeca with conviction that “We couldn’t allow you to continue as a boy. We had to intervene quickly in order to avoid problems of identification with your newly assigned gender.” There was no medical need to Pedrito to become Rebeca. In Rebeca’s initial confrontation with Dr. Silver, he tells her she was born with both testicular and ovarian tissue, a “true hermaphrodite”, but because there was a “good possibility [she] could have children” they made her a girl.

Gender can be characterized as the state of being male or female. It is not characterized by what an individual feels they should be considered as. Throughout the movie it is shown that Bree is not comfortable with the gender she was born with. She says “nothing is going to stop me from checking into that hospital next week. I’m not going to be dragged back into Stanley's old life.” She tries so hard to separate herself from the truth of her being a male. It is shown that she wants to receive acceptance from society by listening to voice records on how to have a higher pitched voice, and trying to schedule her vaginoplasty. Social factors contributed to Gender Dysphoria include culture, race,

Nature vs. nurture has been discussed by philosophers in the past and by scientists more recently. Philosophers such as Plato argued that all knowledge was inherited from your parents and when you were told something you didn’t learn it you were just reminded of it. Aristotle however argued that all humans were born with a blank slate and built on it with influence from there environment. In the 1700’s the empiricists and the internalists took over the argument. They fought through letters explaining there point of views and denouncing the others. This leads to Pavlov coming up with the idea of behaviorism in the early 1900‘s. Behaviorism became the new wave of Psychology and influenced a lean towards the nurture side. It was not

This was a problem because they only judged the babies on their external genitalia, not their hormones or chromosomes. In more recent days there are clinics that specialize in the treatment for intersex babies. John money was in charge of this new wave, and believed that gender identity is changing for about 18 months after birth. He suggested that the surgeons should do the surgery that makes the most sense for each child, and then the parents should raise them to be the gender that the doctors surgically transformed them into. He thought his treatments were working until one of his patients became an author and told the story of his life. Since John/Joan lost his male parts at birth, Dr. money gave him female genitals and suggested he be raised as a girl. The problem was he wanted to be a man. John/Joan’s story sparked other people to speak up about their rejected sex assignments. Next, McCullough gave a speech at LWPES that argued all the forms of intersexuality should be seen as normal, and doctors should avoid irreversible assignments. The author Sterling believes that treatment should be ethical and medical principles with a more casual approach (Sterling,

The consequences of gender change can be disastrous for a human being. That’s what happened to Bruce Reimer. He was born a completely normal boy. But after a circumcision, he had his genitalia completely destroyed. His mother was desperate and didn’t know what to do until she met “John Money, who was a psychologist and sexologist well-known for his specialized research in sexual identity. Money was a professor of pediatrics and medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University, from 1951 until his death.” (Duffy, J. 1999) He was a psychologist not a surgeon. He convinced Bruce’s parents to change him into a girl through surgery. John Money, a sex researcher wanted to do an experiment and

Rawly (Richard) is a biologically ten-year-old boy that has a twin sister. He feels that he is a girl and his parents refer to his genitalia as a physical deformity and birth defect. Rawly was a product of in vitro fertilization and since an early age, he identifies as a girl and wanted all his sister pink stuff especially her clothing. He suffered all the time and at age 6 his mom let him be a girl. As a girl, she faced a lot of discrimination and bullying at school. Their parents plan is to give her a hormone replacement therapy to help her develop into puberty as a girl and to stop testosterone.

I think the Reimer’s thought that since their son was mutilated, they had no other options than to work with Dr. Money. The parents could have raised him as the boy that he was, but they thought changing him into a female would be the best option, which it wasn’t in the end.