As Nature Made Him

Just before the Reimers’ disastrous visit to Baltimore, Dr. Ingimundson begins a leave of absence. In her place, Dr. Sheila Cantor takes over Brenda’s case. She immediately tells Janet and Ron “that Brenda’s sex reassignment was a dismal failure and that the child must be allowed to switch sex immediately to boyhood” (143). This alienates the Reimers and even Dr. Winter, who, though he agrees with Cantor in hindsight, finds her approach inappropriate.

Dr. Sigmundson removes Cantor from Brenda’s case, at her parents’ request, but it is hard to find more female psychiatrists to take on the case. Brenda, for her part, works “very hard to fit in as a girl,” her friend Esther remembers (144). If she can play the part of a girl, she reasons, she will not need to have surgery. Other girls take Brenda shopping; she works with her mother to fix up her walking style. At middle school dances, she hopes to enjoy herself, but she recognizes, while “circling the dance floor in the arms of a boy, it was painfully apparent” that the “right sensations” will not come (146).

Brenda’s doubts “had always been dismissed” (147). But, as a teenager, “it was clear to Brenda that she did not feel like everybody else in the room” (147).