ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, March 15, 1997 TAG: 9703170022
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: CHICAGO
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
The study suggests that a sense of being male or female is innate, and immune to intervention.
Months after birth, his penis was accidentally burned off during an operation and he was raised as a girl, taking hormones and wearing dresses. Then, as an adolescent, he rebelled. Now, he's a married man in his 30s.
The case of the person dubbed Joan/John challenges the theory that someone's sexual identity can be manipulated, researchers said in a study published in the March issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine.
An earlier study of Joan became the textbook example of the theory that gender identity was the product of someone's upbringing.
That 1973 account by Johns Hopkins University sexologist Dr. John Money found that the boy adjusted well after being raised a girl. Money's study was used to back the idea that infants are more or less sexually neutral at birth.
The new study found that the child began to question his female identity around age 9, rejecting dolls and trying to urinate standing up. Classmates teased the child, who had masculine features.
At 14, the child's parents told him the story of the surgical accident, which occurred 8 months after his birth. He stopped hormone therapy, underwent a mastectomy and chose to live as a man.
Later, he had extensive surgery to attempt to restore his penis, which was destroyed accidentally during a cauterization to repair a fused foreskin.
At 25, he married a woman and adopted her children.
The study, by researchers Dr. Milton Diamond of Honolulu and Dr. H. Keith Sigmundson of Victoria, British Columbia, suggests that a sense of being male or female is innate, immune to the intervention of doctors, therapists and parents.
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