You ever look into your Johnnsy Hopkins homeboy, John Money?
Get comfortable, Raj, a,k.a.
@GOHOX69. Summon
@Urohawk, sweaty.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money
During his professional life, Money was respected as an expert on sexual behavior, especially known for
his views that gender was learned rather than innate. However, it was later revealed that his most famous case of
David Reimer, born Bruce Reimer, was fundamentally flawed.
[42] In 1966, a botched
circumcision left eight-month-old Reimer without a penis. Money persuaded the baby's parents that
sex reassignment surgery would be in Reimer's best interest. At the age of 22 months, Reimer underwent an
orchiectomy, in which his testicles were surgically removed. He was reassigned to be raised as female and his name changed from Bruce to Brenda. Money further recommended hormone treatment, to which the parents agreed. Money then recommended a surgical procedure to create an artificial vagina, which the parents refused. Money published a number of papers reporting the reassignment as successful. David Reimer was raised under the "
optimum gender rearing model" which was the
common model for sex and gender socialization/
medicalization for
intersex youth. The model was heavily criticized for being
sexist, and for assigning an arbitrary
gender binary.
[43]
According to
John Colapinto's biography of David Reimer, starting when Reimer and his twin Brian were six years old, Money showed the brothers pornography and forced the two to rehearse sexual acts. Money would order David to get down on all fours and Brian was forced to "come up behind [him] and place his crotch against [his] buttocks". Money also forced Reimer, in another sexual position, to have his "legs spread" with Brian on top. On "at least one occasion" Money took a photograph of the two children performing these acts.
[44]
When either child resisted Money, Money would get angry. Both Reimer and Brian recall that Money was mild-mannered around their parents, but ill-tempered when alone with them. Money also forced the two children to strip for "genital inspections"; when they resisted inspecting each other's genitals, Money got very aggressive. Reimer says, "He told me to take my clothes off, and I just did not do it. I just stood there. And he screamed, 'Now!' Louder than that. I thought he was going to give me a whupping. So I took my clothes off and stood there shaking."
[44]
Money's rationale for his treatment of the children was his belief that "childhood 'sexual rehearsal play'" "at thrusting movements and copulation" was important for a "healthy adult gender identity".
[10][11]
Both Reimer and Brian were traumatized by the "therapy",
[44][45] with Brian speaking about it "only with the greatest emotional turmoil", and David unwilling to speak about the details publicly.
[44] At 14 years old and in extreme psychological agony, David Reimer was finally told the truth by his parents. He chose to begin calling himself David, and he underwent surgical procedures to revert the female bodily modifications.
[46]
Despite the pain and turmoil of the brothers, for decades, Money reported on Reimer's progress as the "John/Joan case", describing apparently successful female gender development and using this case to support the feasibility of
sex reassignment and
surgical reconstruction even in non-
intersex cases.
[47]
By the time this deception was discovered, the idea of a purely socially constructed gender identity and infant
Intersex medical interventions had become the accepted medical and sociological standard.
[47]
David Reimer's case came to international attention in 1997 when he told his story to
Milton Diamond, an academic
sexologist, who persuaded Reimer to allow him to report the outcome in order to dissuade physicians from treating other infants similarly.
[48] Soon after, Reimer went public with his story, and
John Colapinto published a widely disseminated and influential account in
Rolling Stone magazine in December 1997.
[49] This was later expanded into
The New York Times bestselling biography
As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (2000),
[50] in which Colapinto described how—contrary to Money's reports—when living as Brenda, Reimer did not
identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers (who dubbed him "cavewoman"),
[51][52] and neither frilly dresses
[53][54] nor female hormones made him feel female.
[10]
In July 2002, Brian was found dead from an overdose of antidepressants. In May 2004, David committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a sawed-off shotgun at the age of 38. According to his mother, "he had recently become depressed after losing his job and separating from his wife."
[55]
Money argued that media response to Diamond's exposé was due to right-wing
media bias and "the antifeminist movement." He said his detractors believed "masculinity and femininity are built into the genes so women should get back to the mattress and the kitchen".
[56] However, intersex activists also criticized Money, stating that the unreported failure had led to the surgical reassignment of thousands of infants as a matter of policy.
[57] Privately, Money was mortified by the case, colleagues said, and as a rule did not discuss it.
[58]
Researcher Mary Anne Case wrote that Money made "fraudulently deceptive claims about the malleability of gender in certain patients who had involuntarily undergone sex reassignment surgery" and that this fueled the
anti-gender movement.
[59]