As Nature Made Him Read Online Free PDF

person?”
    “Yes,” Dr. Money said, mildly. “If you want to state it that way, it’s true.”
    “Not only to castrate that person,” Davis continued, his voice taking on the rising tone of a prosecutor, “but to inject hormones into the person and virtually change the person— not into a female, but into a male with female parts. Aren’t you arrogating to yourselves certain decisions that not only psychiatrists don’t want to have, but perhaps God doesn’t want to have?”
    “Well,” Dr. Money said, the flicker of a smile underlining the martini-dry sarcasm in his tone, “would you like to argue on God’s side?”
    “No,” Davis said. “I would like to know whether you believe God doesn’t belong in this.”
    “Well,” Money replied, returning to his tone of unflappable calm, a tone ever so slightly shaded by patient condescension, “I’m not sure that’s really a particularly relevant question—although I’m aware that many would. May I,” he continued, “give you the answer of the group of ministers in Baltimore who were interrogated by the press at the time of the announcement in the papers there? The thirteen of them agreed that in terms of the magnitude of the problem—especially in terms of its magnitude in the lives of the people concerned—that this was ethically justifiable as an attempt to help them. There was one person who withheld an answer until a later date, and that was a representative of the Roman church.”
    “Why isn’t the work being done here in Canada?” Davis demanded to know. And he repeated his earlier query: “And why are so many psychiatrists here so opposed to it?”
    “Oh,” Money said, almost languidly, “I would think for the same reason that there tends to be a traditionalism in most places. I don’t need to tell you that in many branches of medicine, science—or even housekeeping or farming—there is a tendency to hang on to the past, to cling to the past.”
    “And you’re the pioneer?” Davis asked.
    “Well,” Dr. Money said, “perhaps in a small way.”
    At this point the camera cut from Dr. Money and his questioner to a blond woman who walked out onto the set. Dressed in a narrow skirt, high heels, and a matching close-fitting jacket, she took a seat in the chair across from the two men. A close-up shot revealed that her round, pretty face was expertly made up, in the style of the mid-1960s, with heavy eyeliner, mascara, and foundation, her mouth thickly painted with lipstick.
    “This is Mrs. Diane Baransky,” the show’s announcer said. “Until four years ago, her name was Richard.”
    Ron and Janet gaped at the TV screen. It was their first glimpse, ever, of a transexual. It was one thing to hear Dr. Money talk about sex change in the abstract; it was another to see it with your own eyes. Ron and Janet could hardly believe it. If they hadn’t been told that Mrs. Baransky was born a man, they would never have guessed it. Even knowing it, it was hard to believe. She looked like an attractive, even sexy woman. The way she moved, walked, sat—even her voice, despite an ever so slight huskiness, had the timbre of a woman’s as she said hello to her host and fellow guest.
    After a few preliminary questions from Davis, Dr. Money spoke up, deftly seizing the reins of the interview.
    “Diane,” he said, “I think people would be extremely interested if you could give us a short sketch of the difference that it makes to have had this procedure—to compare the old life with the new.”
    “Well, there is a tremendous difference,” Mrs. Baransky said. “It’s a way of finding yourself. You actually fit into society, you’re more accepted in a more normal society.” She explained that the discrepancy between her anatomic self as a male and her inward sense of herself as a female had been a trial to her growing up. “As a teenager—or being young—when you’re different from anybody else, it’s very hard.” Becoming a woman, Mrs.