The boy who was a girl who was a boy

This past week, David Reimer died. He actually took his own life. As a baby, his circumcision went horribly wrong, and the doctors recommended to his parents that they should raise him as a girl. This case received a lot of attention because David had a twin brother. This gave some psychologists the chance to study gender identity of a person born a boy but raised a girl, with a control sample in his twin brother. Early on, David felt uncomfortable as a girl and had difficulty when his body started developing along female lines under the influence of prescribed female hormones. Later on, he was told the truth and transitioned back to living as a man. He married and had stepchildren, but his life was still very difficult. His twin brother ended up killing himself a few years back, with David taking his life this past week. It goes to show that we know who we are at an early age, and even though we may be raised as one gender, our brain is the one that ultimately knows who we are.

On another morbid note, I watched the Nicholas Berg video this past week. I shouldn’t have. It was gruesome. This war is such a mess, and the way the administration is handling it is horrible. Many people, including myself, knew that going into Iraq was not worth the trouble, and that there would be nothing but death on both sides. The US has lost so much dignity in the eyes of the world’s nations with this latest prison scandal, and about the only way to salvage anything out of this is to elect anyone other than George Bush and his cronies. Who knows if that will happen or not, but for the world’s sake, I hope he is not back for another 4 years.