‘If I had
grown up as a boy without a penis?...You know if
I had lost my arms and legs and wound up in a
wheelchair…would that make me less of a
person? It just seems ...you’re nothing if
your penis is gone…They’ve got to do
surgery and hormones to turn you into
something…It’s like your whole
personality, everything about you, is all
directed - all pinpointed - toward what’s
between the legs.’
— David Reimer, As Nature Made
Him
John Colapinto’s biography of the Canadian
boy who was raised as a girl is a compelling
account of one man’s tenacity of spirit over
another’s deceit. David Reimer was born Bruce
Reimer, an identical twin. As the result of an
incompetent attempt at circumcision in 1966 Bruce
lost his penis, and with it, his whole
identity.
He was not a transsexual, but his story and the
subsequent research into gender identity are
important to transsexuals because David
Reimer’s experiences demonstrate that gender
is innate. No amount of socialisation or training
can change what a person is at their core.
Canadian medical specialists suggested that when
Bruce was older he could undergo phalloplasty. It
was experimental surgery and far from successful in
delivering a functional penis, but it would provide
him with some opportunity of normalcy. Bruce’s
distraught parents were under no illusion about how
hard life would be for a boy without a functioning
penis.
The family were finally put in contact with John
Money, a charming and persuasive psychologist based
at the reputable Johns Hopkins Hospital in
Baltimore. Money suggested their baby could be
successfully raised as a girl.
Dr Money, as he was known, had recently
developed a hypothesis that until about the age of
two a child was gender neutral. Therefore, if a
child’s ambiguous or damaged genitalia were
‘corrected’ and the child socialised
accordingly, then the child would naturally accept
that gender identity. The Reimer twins provided the
perfect control set. One twin would be raised a
boy, the other a girl.
Interestingly, John Money had already published
research into the effects of hormones on foetal
brains. He concluded that hormones did indeed have
an effect in determining a gender identity which
may be contrary to a person’s physical sex.
Findings that were diametrically opposed to the
theory he was about to test on Bruce Reimer.
In order to facilitate the success of the
transition, Bruce, now renamed ‘Brenda’
was not only ‘corrected’, but the truth
of ‘her’ birth was never to be revealed
to her.
When ‘she’ was 12 years old Brenda
would begin hormone therapy and undergo further
surgery to create a proper vagina and female
urinary tract.
There was a lot riding on the success of the
‘John/Joan’ experiment. If it could be
proven that gender was pliable then men had no
basis on which to discriminate against women in
employment, sport or any other aspect of life in
which men traditionally claimed so called
biological superiority. Feminist scholars quoted Dr
Money extensively. On the basis of John
Money’s findings hundreds of other
‘corrective’ surgeries were carried out
on children with ambiguous genitalia.
The experiment could not fail.
But fail it inevitably did. From the beginning
‘Brenda’ refused to conform to either her
parents’ hopes or society’s acceptable
standards for female behaviour. As is the fate of
most outcasts, school was not a time of learning
but one of terrible torment.
The annual trips to Baltimore to see Dr Money
were even more traumatising, for both twins. John
Money’s behaviour was at best unethical and at
worst child abuse. Neither child had any idea why
he asked repeated and explicit questions about sex
and genitalia, a subject Brenda refused to discuss.
As the children got older, Dr Money subjected
them to increasingly pornographic images until
eventually they were forced to play out sexual acts
with one another, supposedly under the guise of
preparing Brenda for her role as a woman.
‘Brenda’ may have been forced to take
hormones but she steadfastly refused to undergo
surgery. Finally, when she was 14 Ron and Janet
Reimer realised they had to tell their near
suicidal ‘daughter’ the truth.
Almost immediately ‘Brenda’ began
living as David, a name chosen to reflect the
mighty battle he had endured against his own
personal ‘Goliath’.
John Money’s reputation was made through
his exploitation of the Reimer family. Having
regained some control of his life, David Reimer
refused to have anything more to do with his
tormentor. Gradually, accounts of the experiment
disappeared from Money’s published findings.
He claimed to have lost track of the twins. If
anything went wrong, he insisted, it was the
parents’ fault, firstly for leaving it to too
late (‘Brenda’ was 18 months old when the
transition began), then for telling
‘Brenda’ the truth. He never acknowledged
the flaws in his methodology, the fact that he
abandoned scientific principles of research and
ethical practice by knowingly publishing only
information favourable to his hypothesis.
This book may primarily be David Reimer’s
story, but also sheds light on the trail of
destruction left behind by Money’s egocentric
research. His theory of gender politics is still
popular in some medical and feminist circles today.
Intersex children are still being subjected to
mutilating medical procedures and are often not
told the truth of their birth. Other boys,
unbelievably injured in identical circumstances to
David Reimer, have also undergone forced transition
as infants.
John Colapinto’s account of David
Reimer’s life ends on a reasonably positive
note. David finally married and had the family he
always wanted. But there is a terrible final
unpublished chapter to David Reimer’s story.
In May 2004, at the age of 38, two years after
his twin’s death from a drug overdose and two
days after his long suffering wife asked for a
trial separation, David killed himself.
Citation
— Collins, S. (2007). Book Review: As
Nature Made Him - the boy who was raised as a girl.
Torque, 7(3), September.
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