''As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl'' is a biography of

David Reimer David Reimer (born Bruce Peter Reimer; 22 August 1965 – 4 May 2004) was a Canadian man raised as a girl following medical advice and intervention after his penis was severely injured during a botched circumcision in infancy. The psychologis ...

, written by

John Colapinto John Colapinto (born in 1958) is a Canadian journalist, author and novelist and a staff writer at ''The New Yorker''. In 2000, he wrote the ''New York Times'' bestseller '' As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl'', which exposed t ...

and published February 20, 2000, by

Harper Perennial Harper Perennial is a paperback imprint of the publishing house HarperCollins Publishers. Overview Harper Perennial has divisions located in New York, London, Toronto, and Sydney. The imprint is descended from the Perennial Library imprint foun ...

. Reimer was a Canadian man born male but raised as a girl after his penis was severely injured during a botched

circumcision Circumcision is a procedure that removes the foreskin from the human penis. In the most common form of the operation, the foreskin is extended with forceps, then a circumcision device may be placed, after which the foreskin is excised. T ...

in infancy and

John Money John William Money (8 July 1921 – 7 July 2006) was a New Zealand American psychologist, sexologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University known for his research on human sexual behavior and gender. Money advanced the use of more accur ...

advised his parents to follow the

optimum gender rearing model Various criteria have been offered for the definition of intersex, including ambiguous genitalia, atypical genitalia, and differential sexual development. Ambiguous genitalia occurs in roughly 0.05% of all births, usually caused by masculiniza ...

. Money published his research regarding Reimer as the "Joan/John case", comparing him to his twin brother. Reimer's identity became public with the publication of his biography. Half of the author's earnings from the book were forwarded to Reimer.

Reception

In 2001, ''As Nature Made Him'' was a finalist for the

Lambda Literary Award for Nonfiction Lambda (; uppercase , lowercase ; , ''lám(b)da'') is the eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet, representing the voiced alveolar lateral approximant . In the system of Greek numerals, lambda has a value of 30. Lambda is derived from the Phoeni ...

. The book was also a ''New York Times'' best seller.

References

{{reflist 2000 non-fiction books American non-fiction books Books by John Colapinto English-language non-fiction books