Wow, that's really sad about David Reimer. I hadn't heard that he committed suicide. The fact that both he and his twin brother killed themselves is telling, I think. I doubt it was financial problems or his gender issues that were the ultimate cause. Depression is highly heritable.

I doubt any doctor would do today what was done to Reimer. That was a long time ago. It's become very, very clear that sexual orientation and gender identity are hard-wired from birth. Probably due to hormone exposure in utero. And they may not be connected to one's genetic gender or apparent physical gender. In the old days, they used to make "sexually indeterminate" babies into whatever gender they looked closest to. Later, they did DNA tests, and XX babies would be made female, XY made male. Now, the trend is toward not doing anything. Instead, parents and doctors wait until the child is old enough to decide for itself which gender it wants to be.

While gender identity may be hard-wired from birth, gender roles are not. Every society has different roles for men and women, but there's nothing men always do, and women always do. Except get pregnant, of course. :-) In ancient Hawai`i, men were in charge of food. Not just hunting, fishing, and farming, but also cooking. Women were forbidden to cook. Missionaries were horrified at how "lazy" Hawaiian women were, sitting around while the men worked.

Also interesting are the so-called "Amazons" of the Russian steppes. The women were warriors, the men tended home and hearth. For years, Russian anthroplogists did not realize this. They just saw skeletons buried with weapons and armor, and assumed they were male. Closer examination revealed the truth: the warriors were women. And it was not a ceremonial thing. One skeleton of a girl about 14 years old showed several healed injuries consistence with battle wounds, and the kind of skeletal changes that come with riding a horse and wielding weapons from a young age. Her armor and weapons, buried with her, were clearly used. A nearby male skeleton was found buried with a baby in its arms. His grave goods contained no weapons; instead, he was buried with some cooking pots. This pattern persisted for hundreds of years; some speculate that these people were the Amazons of Greek myth.