There have been few medical instances that have had as much weight and controversy as David Reimer’s. He was born in Canada in 1965 and became the subject of a groundbreaking experiment to show that a person’s upbringing, not their biology, could completely change their gender identity.
After a terrible accident while he was a baby, doctors told his parents to raise him as a girl, even though he was born a boy.
At a time when the nature vs nurture argument was big in psychology and medicine, his story was used as proof that gender might change.
For years, his story was used as proof of a wrong theory of gender neutrality. But then the truth came out, showing not only how much he had suffered but also how dangerous it is to put theory and ambition above human dignity.
Infancy and a Botched Circumcision
David Reimer was born on August 22, 1965, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was the first of two identical twin boys. Janet and Ron, his parents, named him Bruce. His brother, on the other hand, was named Brian.
The twins looked healthy when they were born, but when they were six months old, physicians found that they had phimosis, a disorder that damages the foreskin and can make it hard to urinate.
When the boys were seven months old, they were told to get circumcised. Dr. Jean-Marie Huot, who did the procedure, tried electrocauterization instead of the usual surgical method. This treatment uses an electric current.
The outcome was terrible: Bruce’s penis was charred beyond repair. His brother Brian didn’t have to go through the same thing because his ailment got well on its own without surgery.
The Reimers were heartbroken. The family was looking for answers because local doctors didn’t provide many useful remedies and they didn’t want to raise their son without working male genitalia.
Janet and Ron saw Dr. John Money, a psychologist at Johns Hopkins University, talk about intersex kids who had been changed into girls on TV in 1967.
Money’s confident assurances that gender identity may change in babies gave the parents who were grieving hope. They thought they had found a way for Bruce to have a “normal” existence.
A Life Reassigned
John Money was already famous for pushing his “theory of gender neutrality.” He said that gender wasn’t set at birth but was mostly formed by how people were raised and where they lived.
Money saw what he thought was a wonderful chance in Bruce’s case: an identical twin brother who could be a control subject and show how nurture might be more important than biology.
Money convinced the Reimers to let their child change genders. When Bruce was 22 months old, he had surgery to remove his testicles and make basic female genitalia.
His parents started calling him “Brenda.” Brenda would be a tiny girl to the outside world, but her twin brother Brian would grow up as a boy.
John Money closely monitored the case from then on, and it was called the “John/Joan case” in medical literature.
He said that the reassignment was a success and that Brenda was a healthy, happy girl who liked to play with dolls and acted like a normal girl.
Brenda was really unhappy, though. She didn’t want to wear dresses from a young age, liked hobbies that were typically male, and didn’t like the part she was being pushed to play.
John Colapinto wrote a biography of Reimer in 2001 and said that the sessions with Money included what Money called “childhood sexual rehearsal play.”
Money claimed that reproductive activity was the basis of gender, asserting that “play at thrusting movements and copulation” was a critical component of gender development in all primates.
Brian says that the twins were compelled to perform out sexual actions starting at age six. David played the female role, and Money made David kneel down on all fours while Brian had to “come up behind [him] and place his crotch against [his] buttocks.”
Money also made David “spread his legs” with Brian on top of him in another sexual position. Money took a picture of the two kids doing these things “at least once.”
Money would become mad if either child didn’t want to do these things. David and Brian both remember that Money was nice to their parents but nasty when he was alone with them.
Money became quite angry when they refused to look at one other’s genitals.
Both David and Brian were traumatised, with Brian saying it was “only with the greatest emotional turmoil” that he could talk about it, and David not wanting to talk about the circumstances in public.
Struggles in Adolescence
The holes in Money’s argument got bigger as Brenda got older. Classmates at school saw that she was odd.
People made fun of her, ignored her, and called her “cavewoman” a lot. Dresses and hormone treatments that were supposed to make her look more feminine didn’t work.
Brenda didn’t accept the identity that was forced on her; instead, she became more reclusive and upset. The stress had gotten so bad by the time she was a teenager that it was too much to handle.
Brenda told her parents when she was 13 that she couldn’t stand living as a girl anymore. She said she would kill herself if she had to keep getting care from John Money. Her parents spoke the truth because they were desperate for a way out.
Brenda was told about the accident, the operations, and the new job on March 14, 1980, when she was 14 years old. The revelation was shocking, but it also set me free.
She finally figured out why she had never been comfortable with the identity that had been forced on her. Brenda chose to take back her masculine identity and chose the name David, which meant a new beginning.
Then came medical care. David started testosterone medication, had a double mastectomy, and then had phalloplasty procedures to build back male genitalia. For the first time since he was a baby, he was able to be the person he knew he was.
Adulthood and Speaking Out
David wanted stability in the years that followed. He did a lot of different occupations, including working in a slaughterhouse. Later, he found work in trades and labour.
In 1990, he married Jane Fontane and took in her three kids, which was the family life he had always wanted.
He liked camping, fishing, and collecting antiques. These modest things helped him feel grounded after a life full of problems.
But David’s story couldn’t stay private. In the 1990s, academic sexologist Milton Diamond urged him to relate his experience publicly in the goal of averting similar situations. People still used John Money’s reports as proof that reassignment could work till then.
David’s situation became public in 1997, and three years later, writer John Colapinto wrote the biography As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.
The book showed how much David was suffering and proved that Money’s assertions were false. It became a best-seller and led to a lot of discussion on morality in medicine and psychology.
Because David was willing to speak out, physicians stopped doing similar trials on babies.
A Tragic End
David had personal problems even though he was brave and tried to get his life back on track. He had wounds from his history that would not heal easily.
David was heartbroken when his twin brother Brian died from an overdose of mental medication in 2002. He went to Brian’s cemetery every day, his heart breaking.
David had to deal with additional problems on top of grieving his brother. He lost his job, had money problems, and his marriage fell apart. Over time, these problems became harder to deal with.
Reimer murdered himself with a shotgun in his hometown of Winnipeg on May 4, 2004. He was 38 years old.
For the first 30 years after Money’s first report that the reassignment had worked, Money’s perspective of the malleability of gender became the most common opinion in the field. This made practitioners feel better about making the right option in certain cases to sexually reassign newborns.
Diamond’s study and Colapinto’s later book about Reimer changed a lot of medical procedures, reputations, and even how we think about the biology of gender today.
(Photo credit: In Memory of David Reimer on Facebook / Wikimedia Commons).
No Comments