fun story relating to Socrates' waves of paradox...

When reading the Republic I was especially interested in Socrates’ three waves of paradox, specifically the idea that women are equal and eugenics. Socrates essentially said that when males and females are born, they are the exact same, there are no difference between the two, besides the obvious. He is stating that he could raise a boy as a girl and have him be a completely normal girl and vice versa. I am refuting this idea. I was interested in this because it relates to what I am learning about in my developmental psychology class. We were discussing the classic “nature vs. nurture” controversy and a story was brought up about a male who when he was in surgery to be circumcised, the doctors made a HUGE mistake and accidently chopped off his private parts completely. The doctor’s simply said that since he was a baby, they could reconstruct his genitals into that of a female and that the parents could raise the child as a girl and that he (or she?) would function and develop like any normal girl. Unfortunately for the boy, this was not the case. His parents raised him as a girl, grew his hair out and put him in dresses and gave him estrogen hormones. The boy wasn’t informed of his true history until he was 14 and finally voiced his struggles growing up. He knew something was wrong and told his parents that he was a boy, without them even admitting the truth to him. Needless to say he had quite a messed up childhood and ended up unfortunately killing himself after years of reconstruction surgeries, a wife and children. This ultimately relates and refutes Socrates idea that males and females are the same when born. I thought this was just an interesting story that is relative to this idea of Socrates’.