Trans-America, Part 1: Origins – The David Reimer Tragedy

I was first exposed to the transgender ideology around 2019. It was a radio interview with Dr. Lisa Littman.  Her research focused on the “rapid onset of gender dysphoria” as experienced by the parents of the adolescents.  She developed 3 hypotheses to explain the trans phenomenon:

• Social media influences resulting in social and peer contagion
• Parental conflicts
• Maladaptive coping mechanisms

The desire to change one’s biology seemed a novel notion, but Littman’s motivational hypotheses are familiar and understandable in adolescents.

Every cell in our body has an XX or XY chromosome pair.  You can change your hair, wear the other gender’s clothing, makeup and jewelry, etc., but it’s still the same body in there. But one can’t change one’s body gender, right?  If the motivation were sexual attraction, there is no need these days to hide that or disguise yourself – homosexuality isn’t exactly frowned on these days.

However, this is not the idea behind today’s “transgenderism”.  Today’s focus is on prepubescents, and chemical and surgical changes to the body. Beyond this, it asserts that children have the maturity and the right to make the monumental decision to perform an irreversible, expensive, and painful gender transformation.  What’s worse is that it is not regarded as gender dysphoria, and parents and guardians are told they must affirm the child’s decision to change their gender.

Dr. John Money

The theory of transgenderism was conceived by Dr. John Money, a professor at Johns Hopkins University in the 1960s where he worked with hermaphrodites.  Money was a troubled person.  He was uncomfortable with his masculinity and genitalia due to an impression of masculinity formed from experience with his alcoholic, violent father.  His condition is, properly, diagnosed to as “gender dysphoria”.

In the 1960s and 1970s, feminism asserted that females and males were equal in every respect, and women ought to be permitted to do everything that men do.  This played out in a new title (Ms.), sexual adventurism, equal wage/salary demands, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, and expansion of women’s sports.  It moved on to having women become fighter pilots and infantrymen, and celebrations of ‘firsts’ across  industry C-Suites, and in elected office and political appointments.

There was a great deal of public discourse regarding “nature vs. nurture”.  The “spirit of the age” declared that the predominant factor was “nurture”, and, by extension, that everyone should be able to become anything. When John Money began reporting on his experiment which was to prove his contention that “a boy could be raised as a girl if you started early enough in the boy’s life”, the academic world was ready to believe that it could be done.

Bruce/Brenda/David Reimer’s Tragedy

John Colapinto’s acclaimed book As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl tells this story in detail.  Brian and Bruce Reimer were identical twins born to a Canadian family in 1965.  At 8 months of age, they were taken to be circumcised and malfunction burnt Bruce’s penis beyond recognition. The Reimers saw Dr. Money on TV explaining that “a boy who has normal chromosomes, XY chromosomes, who’s born with normal genitalia, could conceivably be raised as a girl”.  In hope of retrieving his potential, they arranged a consultation with Money in 1967.

This was the perfect circumstance to test Money’s theory – identical twins with identical genetic endowments, an identical prenatal environment, and both raised in the same environment.  He convinced the Reimers to have Bruce castrated (testicles and penis removed) and elementary female external genitalia constructed, and an estrogen injection regimen administered.  He was to be renamed Brenda, given a female hairstyle, clothing, toys, and introduced to everyone as a girl.

“The family would travel see John Money once a year. During those visits, Money would meet with the twins individually. The twins were very uncomfortable in John Money’s presence, because he was abusing them sexually by forcing them to undress, to get naked, and to act out different sexual positions…They were afraid to tell their parents.  The parents had no idea this was going on. Eventually, the twins refused to go anymore.”  The family stopped the visits to Money when the boys were about 10 years old.

During this time, Money reported in academic literature on the progress of his unique experiment.  He reported that “the twins were doing great, and Brenda was adjusting beautifully, that she never questioned anything about her identity, and that she was very feminine.  She fit in with the rest of the girls. She was doing well at school and at home.” Around the time that the twins refused to see him again, 1977, Money published a large report about how well Brenda was doing.  He received a great deal of attention from both professional and lay press. He had proven that his gender theory was correct.  He had proven that whether you’re male or female, all boils down to the environment that you’re raised in.

Money made these “scientific conclusions” regarding children who had not yet experienced puberty.  He wrote no more about his experiment with the twins, but Money received awards for the experiment, continuous funding from the NIH for 25 years, and his ideas were institutionalized and immediately adopted throughout the fields of medicine, mental health, psychiatry, education, sociology, child rearing, and feminism.

However, Money’s claims about Brenda were fabricated.  It was a hoax.

“In 1999, at age 34, Brenda came out and started to speak about what had really happened.  He had not adjusted to a female identity.  He was always very masculine and aggressive.  (Note: testosterone is not only generated by the testes, also in the adrenal glands in a male’s body). His mannerisms and walk were distinctly masculine. He didn’t want to wear dresses and ripped them off. He wanted rough and tumble play, wanted to pee standing up, and wanted to watch how his father shaved. ‘Brenda’ beat up kids for beating up his brother.”

After halting the visits to John Money, the boys entering puberty, and Brenda realizing that he was attracted to girls, the Reimers took the twins to a psychiatrist and psychologist.  urged them to tell the boys what had happened.  “At that moment, Brenda felt a huge sense of relief to know that he was not crazy. He took the name “David”, as he identified with David fighting Goliath.  They stopped (David’s) estrogen treatments, he had restorative medical and surgical treatments, and he was put on male hormone therapy.  David married a woman and became an adoptive father to three children.”

Sadly, there was not a happy ending for the Reimers.  Brian became a drug addict and overdosed.  David committed suicide in 2004.

Money’s theory of flexible genders was not proven after all.  It was, in fact, directly disproven. The methodology of his experiment was fundamentally flawed: one cannot ascertain success with so short a longitudinal observation – just 10 years of age – and with a sample size of one. His reports of Brenda’s adapting to “nurture” were outright lies.

Despite David Reimer’s testimony of how Money’s gender transformation experiment had utterly failed, the academic world, the medical world, and the general public, were off and running to put Money’s conclusions into practice on a massive scale.

But that’s a story for another time.

Documentary videos about John Money and the Reimers

“The Story of David Reimer: A Transgender Experiment” (YouTube – Horror Stories)

“David Remer’s Final Public Interview | Dr Money Documentary Ending Clip” (YouTube – Final Interview)

“The Origin of Transgender Surgery: John Money and David Reimer” (YouTube – Lila Rose)

“The Monster Behind Gender Theory, and the Atrocious Lie He Based It On” (YouTube – Jordan B Peterson)

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