The death certificate listed suicide as the official cause of death. But
the real cause of his demise was a controversial gender experiment led
by one of the most influential sex researchers of the 20th century.
Bruce Reimer was born in 1965 to a blue-collar family in Winnipeg,
Canada. Eight months later, he was victimized by a botched circumcision,
and baby Bruce ended up without his sex organ.
The distraught family eventually contacted John Money, a charismatic
psychologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Dr. Money was a
leading advocate of the idea that sex-role identification is determined
by one's environment, not one's genetic make-up.
Money recommended sex re-assignment surgery, a dubious procedure that
had never been performed on a boy born with normal genitalia. Bruce
would be given a vagina, his name would be changed to Brenda, and he
would be raised as a girl. It would be as easy as that.
So one month before his second birthday, little Bruce was wheeled into
the operating room as a boy, and came out as a girl.
But back in Winnipeg, Brenda had other plans. When her mom put a dress
on her, little Brenda tried to tear it off. Later she informed her
startled parents she wanted to become a garbage man when she grew up.
Enrolled in school, she was more competitive than her female classmates.
When girls got into fights, they used their open hands. But Brenda used
her fists. Then Brenda's girlfriends discovered that she urinated
standing up.
Dr. Money was apprised of all this, and more.
But when Money released his book, Man and Woman, Boy and Girl in 1972,
he portrayed Brenda's sex-change operation as a resounding success. The
book reviewer at the liberal New York Times wrote approvingly: "if you
tell a boy he is a girl, and raise him as one, he will want to do
feminine things."
Feminists were elated. They needed to prove that women were just as
determined as men to ascend the corporate ladder. Women just needed to
overcome the oppressive conditioning of patriarchal society. And Money's
research was just the ticket.
Meanwhile things in Winnipeg went from bad to worse. When Brenda reached
puberty and her voice deepened, the folly of the charade could no longer
be denied. About to undergo her annual breast exam one day, Brenda
refused to disrobe. When asked by the doctor, "Do you want to be a girl
or not?," she defiantly answered "No!"
Brenda's parents knew the time had come to tell her the truth.
Brenda immediately reverted to her male identity. Choosing the name
David, he underwent penile reconstructive surgery. In 1990, David put
the past behind him when he and Jane Anne Fontane tied the knot.
During all these years, John Money was the toast of the town. He was
hailed as the world's leading expert on sex reassignment. Media
interviews, professional awards, and NIH grants - all were showered on
him. After all, he had proven that gender identity is a product of
nurture, not nature.
He just didn't bother to tell anyone that Brenda was no longer a she.
John Money's world began to collapse in 1997 when a journal article
finally revealed the truth of his ill-fated experiment. Money could only
sputter, "It's part of the anti-feminist movement."
Money's demise was sealed three years later by the book, As Nature Made
Him, which revealed the psychologist to be a charlatan, tireless
self-promoter, and intellectual fraud.
Two years ago, David's life began to unravel when his brother
unexpectedly died. Then he separated from his wife. After 38 years of
indignity and torment, David Reimer
took
his own life on May 4.
The feminist dogma that gender is socially constructed is still
widespread in our society. Boys receive constant messages that they
should start acting more like girls. The sad tale of David Reimer should
make us pause to reconsider our mass experiment in gender re-education.
