John Money was a "trans" pioneer, popularising the term "gender identity", and founding the world’s first gender-identity clinic at John Hopkins University in Baltimore in 1966, in the belief that though we may be born with biologically determined sex characteristics, they do not determine whether we are male or female.
An opportunity for proving his theories came along with the case of David Reimer. From Wikipedia:
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. 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.
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, with David playing the bottom role as Brian "[pressed] his crotch against" David's buttocks. Money also forced the two children to strip for "genital inspections", and on one occasion took a photo. Colapinto speculates that Money's rationale for these treatments may have been his belief that "childhood 'sexual rehearsal play'" was important for a "healthy adult gender identity".
For several years, 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. Notes by a former student at Money's laboratory state that, during the yearly follow-up visits, Reimer's parents routinely lied to staff about the success of the procedure. When Money learned about this, he continued to misrepresent the results as a success for decades. By the time this was discovered, the idea of a purely socially constructed gender identity and infant Intersex medical interventions had become the accepted medical and sociological standard.
At 14 years old and in extreme psychological agony, 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.
David killed himself at the age of 38.
Lauren Smith writes about Dr Money in a long read at Spiked:
John Money’s experiment was misdirected and cruel. In attempting to demonstrate that biological sex has no bearing on whether one is female or male he only succeeded in proving the opposite. That gender is not fluid. That it cannot be shaped at will through medical interventions and hormone treatment.
There’s little doubt today that Money’s experiment was a callous failure. The lives of Reimer, his brother and his parents were sacrificed at the altar of an early form of gender ideology. Yet, even now, too many have failed to learn the lessons of this tragedy. Institutions, from schools to healthcare, still happily promote the ideas of gender identity and genderfluidity. Many politicians still treat trans ideology as if it is a ‘progressive’ cause that only uncaring bigots would oppose. And children are still being used by gender ideologues as fodder for trans experimentation.
Yes, the Tavistock gender-identity clinic in the UK may be due to close over safety fears. But the idea that one can ‘be born in the wrong body’, that one’s maleness or femaleness has no relationship to one’s biological sex, is still being regularly promoted to children from a worryingly young age. Moreover, trans activists want to make it even easier for people to change gender. And the younger they are, it seems, the better.
No doubt many who uncritically embrace the tenets of gender ideology are entirely ignorant of its intellectual origins. They probably have no idea that it was Dr John Money who trailblazed the idea of the ‘trans child’. And they clearly have little inkling of the devastating impact Money’s ideas had on a young family all those years ago.
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