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Death of David Reimer: You must have heard many stories of tragedy and ego, but I claim that the story we are going to tell you today includes the tragedy of David’s life and the ‘scientific ego’ of John Money like you have never heard before. After the Supreme Court’s decision on same sex marriage in India, it becomes more important to know this story. David Reimer who worked as a laborer in a slaughterhouse. What happened was that she committed suicide on May 4, 2004, and Dr. John Money, a sexologist, was held responsible for her death. Let us know this story today.
David Reimer was born in 1965. His twin brother was also born along with him. Eight months after birth, when their mother noticed that both of them were having trouble urinating, they took them to the doctor. A doctor suggested diagnosing both of them with phimosis. Phimosis or phimosis is a disease in which the upper skin of the penis (foreskin) becomes very tight and when pulled down, it is not able to move backwards. Men who are not circumcised are more likely to contract this disease. This was a routine operation. However, this was not successful and David Reimer started having many problems with his penis.
The procedure caused significant damage to Reimer’s penis and required another surgery to reconstruct it. At that time the surgical procedure was not as advanced as it is today. David Reimer’s parents were worried, they did not understand what to do and from here begins the tragedy of Reimer’s life…
Dr. John Money, a sexologist from Johns Hopkins University, enters Reimer’s life. They convince Reimer’s parents to allow their son to be raised solely as a girl. In fact, sexologist Dr. John Money was the proponent of the theory that children are born psychologically neutral and can be assigned to any gender in the first year of their life.
Dr. John Money urged Reimer’s father to allow Reimer to undergo surgery as soon as possible to remove his testicles and create a vagina. Behind this, Dr. John Money reiterated his theory in which he believed that after two years of birth, a child passes the ‘gender identity gate’ and the gender he has at that time remains the same throughout his life. . He accepts it.
Dr. John Money urged Reimer’s father that it was important to have this operation before the gender identity gate timeline ended. He also suggested that, when Reimer was 11 or 12 years old, he could be given female hormones. Repeatedly urged by John Money, Reimer’s parents agreed to allow clinical castration (removal of the testicles) and creation of female genitalia for the 22-month-old Reimer, against the advice of other doctors. With this decision of his parents, the troubles of Reimer’s life also started.
brought up like a girl
Following John Money’s instructions, Reimer’s parents raised him as if he was born a girl. Now her name was changed to Brenda, she started wearing girls’ clothes and was given dolls etc. to play with. No one outside the family knew about so much that had happened to Reimer. Even her twin brother was led to believe that Reimer was a little girl and that he had a sister.
In the book The True Story of John, it was written that after David Reimer was changed to Brenda Reimer, the child initially protested against being classified as a girl. The first time he was made to wear a girl’s dress, he tried to tear it. He did not like to urinate while sitting, he preferred to do so while standing. She faced terrible problems in school, where other children immediately recognized her as a person who did not fit into normal sexual categories. When she was 10 years old, she announced that she wanted to grow up and marry a woman, not a man.
Asking to take off clothes and inspect each other’s genitals
The author has written that Reimer and his brother Brian often had to meet John Money for ‘counselling’. During this time, Mani used to investigate the sexual development of the twins. From the age of about six, she was interrogated by Money about her sexual desires and preferences. During this process they were shown nude photographs of other children and adults having sex.
The author claims that John used to ask both the children to take off their clothes and inspect each other’s genitals. Sometimes, Mani would take photographs of the entire process. The most perverted incident would be when Money would often ask the young twins to pretend to have sex. When the twins refused to do as he asked, he would allegedly become angry and yell at them.
In 1972, when David Reimer was seven years old, Money published his first findings on the matter. It was portrayed as a resounding success. The name of the book was – ‘Man and Woman, Boy and Girl’… In 1973, the New York Times Book Review described Man and Woman, Boy and Girl as ‘the most important volume in the social sciences.
However, while the world was seeing Dr. Money’s work as a success, David Reimer was not happy as a girl. As Reimer grew up and approached puberty, his separation from his boy body became more unbearable.
Meanwhile, her parents and other elders, along with Dr. Money, forced her to take estrogen (a special hormone produced in a woman’s body, due to which she becomes sexually attractive and ready for pregnancy). Started putting pressure on. He went to the rooftop of the clinic and said that if he was made to meet Dr. Mani again, he would commit suicide. After this Money and Reimer never met.
father told the truth
After Dr. Money left his life, Reimer became a little free. At the age of 14 she completely stopped living as a girl. In March 1980, Reimer’s father took him out for ice cream, and told him he was a boy, not a girl.
By his 16th birthday, Reimer had changed his name from Brenda to David. He was taking male hormones and had had his breasts surgically removed. He also underwent an operation to create dysfunctional male genitalia. However, by now his mental condition had deteriorated considerably. Even knowing the truth about his gender did not ease Reimer’s pain. Before turning 21, he tried to kill himself twice.
The situation improved a little after marriage but…
Reimer’s situation became slightly better when he married in 1990. However, after some time the story of Dr. Money’s experiment on Reimer became public. In fact, another sexologist named Milton Diamond and rival of Dr. Money made this matter public.
He, along with others, took detailed notes on Money’s experiment and published his article in 1997, compiling interviews with Reimer, his wife, and his mother. There was a lot of uproar within the scientific community after Milton Diamond’s information.
Reimer came too late to acknowledge that Money’s hypothesis was wrong. Reamer had already suffered a lot of damage. When his wife asked for divorce from him in 2002, he became more upset and in 2004 he committed suicide and ended his life. He was 38 years old at that time.
What does Dr. Money’s theory say?
In Dr. Money’s theory, he claimed that a child will adopt the gender identity with which he or she is raised, rather than the gender with which he or she is born. Dr Money claimed that David Reimer’s parents raised him as a girl and he became like a girl. This supports his theory.
Money defined and coined the term “gender role” and later expanded it to gender identification/role.
For most of his career, his fans saw him as a courageous pioneer fighting puritanical reactionaries. He promoted himself as a defender of sexual liberation. He continued to work for the rights of homosexuals and other sexual minorities and to break social taboos.
However, when the truth about the Reimer case came to light, sexologists suddenly seemed even more repressive than the conservatives they hated.
