If ever there were an experiment, god forbid, that could demonstrate how we are born with inbred sexual identities and sexual predilections, this would be it. Abby Stein was born a boy into an ultra-orthodox Jewish community. Her fundamentalist sect of Judaism is so strict that all members are forbidden to access the internet and are barely taught the fundamentals English, learning Yiddish and Hebrew instead. Young boys are committed to a lifetime of Torah study. They attend Yeshivas (religious schools) 10 hours a day (or more) six days a week and learn no science or social studies and barely any of the other topics required by state curricula. They live the lives of their 18th century ancestors down to the clothes they wear, the language they speak, and the foods they eat, utterly and completely apart from mainstream America.
And yet from the days of her earliest memories, without any knowledge that homosexuality even existed, no less such a phenomenon as transgenderism, Abby knew without question that she was a girl. She was raised as a boy, had a penis, eventually grew a beard, and fathered a child, and yet she always knew she was a girl. Becoming Eve is an extremely well told story of escaping fundamentalist Judiasm and a male body and the accompanying losses that come with such a transition. It also confronts the notion headon that any amount of grooming of young people might persuade someone to change their gender (take that Ron DeSantis and your fellow Book Banners), nor any degree of counseling could reverse someone’s sexual identity. If you were faced with years of counseling to the contrary, would you change your gender?
