Award winning article from 1997 on David Reimer

The male attitude was that without a penis you cannot be a man

I find this sentence rather unerving. It often crops up as a passing comment.

Its still widespread though isnt it & informs a lot of atitudes towards & of those male TS who have 'sex-change' surgery?

Euphemisms for penis including 'manhood' & 'his sex'

I think that for a lot of youngish men, having a penis seems pretty central to their maleness. Maybe women don't have an exactly an analogous experience. I think if you asked older men, you'd get a wider range of answers.

The male attitude was that without a penis you cannot be a man

I find this sentence rather unerving. It often crops up as a passing comment.

In such a statement we have young male adults who seem to believe a man without a penis is not a man?

Its chilling but maybe it is a just a collective show of dominance by young men, not really a true reflection of they actually think.

Women don't seem to think like this yet, their opinions on this are not considered valid.
I dont know why this is.

NYTimes obituary:

John William Money, 84, Sexual Identity Researcher, Dies
By Benedict Carey
July 11, 2006

John William Money, who helped found the field of sexual identity studies, died Friday in Towson, Md. He was 84.
“He was the first scientist to provide a language to describe the psychological dimensions of human sexual identity; no such language had existed before,” said Dr. Kenneth J. Zucker, psychologist in chief at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

Early in his career, Dr. Money coined the terms “gender identity,” to describe the internal experience of sexuality, and “gender role,” to refer to social expectations of male and female behavior. The two concepts still drive much research into sexual identity.

He was among the first scientists to study the psychological experience of sexual confusion and to grasp possible ways to relieve suffering. He was an early proponent of sex reassignment surgery for men and women who believed that their biologically given sex was at odds with their sexual identity." (continues)

He later went to Harvard for graduate work, and in 1951 arrived at Johns Hopkins, where he spent the rest of his career.

“The forces of antisex cry in moral outrage when confronted with the evidence of sexual disabilities, and blame the new freedom,” he wrote in a 1975 Op-Ed article in The New York Times titled “Recreational and Procreational Sex.” (continues)
www.nytimes.com/2006/07/11/us/11money.html

NY Times
Benefits of Transsexual Surgery Disputed As Leading Hospital Halts the Procedure
By Jane E. Brody
Oct. 2, 1979
AT a time when sex‐change operations are on the increase at major medical centers around the country, Johns Hopkins — the prestigious hospital that started it all — has stopped doing them, using as its justification a study that has been widely attacked by others in the field. The study called into question the benefits of these drastic operations.

The controversy has brought to the surface a growing concern about how to identify transsexuals and select those who are suitable for sex‐change surgery. It has also reopened the possibility that pyschotherapy might play a role in helping many of the thousands of self‐proclaimed transsexuals make a better life adjustment without surgery." (continues)

www.nytimes.com/1979/10/02/archives/benefits-of-transsexual-surgery-disputed-as-leading-hospital-halts.html

Anyone interested in where a major strand of gender identity ideology has come from needs to read the article linked to above (repeated here):

www.healthyplace.com/gender/inside-intersexuality/the-true-story-of-john-joan

Two things leap out. That much of the basis for "changing sex" is made up shit. If unchecked the damage this can do to a family, not just the targeted child.

David and Brian would have been a couple of years older than me. I remember learning about them at university, obviously not using these names. We were told that the person was not followed up after 18, because they were now an adult, and, as the reassignment was successful, there was no need for further intrusion into their life.

But we students, mostly in our early 20s, felt that so much had changed in our lives between 18 and now, both sexually and socially, that many of us were very different to how we had been at 18. It didn't make any sense to us that X's reassignment to the opposite sex could be claimed a success without finding out whether he could function as an adult woman.

And that's another thing - we didn't use feminine pronouns when discussing X. Neither staff nor students. We didn't mock. We were appalled at this horrific thing that had happened to him. We had nothing but compassion for him. But we all saw X as a male forced into living as a female.

That only struck me much later. Recently, in fact. Now that we are expected to lie.

What struck me at the time was how the students discussed this. The male students predominantly supported what had been done to David, the female students generally disagreed with it or were neutral. The male attitude was that without a penis you cannot be a man. He had to be changed because otherwise his life would be unbearable. The female attitude was that a woman was not a man without a penis. His privacy could have been protected and his mental health supported, and there would have been no reason for anyone else to know about his injury until reconstructive surgery was available and he was ready for it.

That's a very interesting article.

I wonder, without that case and it's profile, what would have been the effect on the development of feminist theory about maleness and femaleness?

As excited as I am to read Helen Joyce's I fear I may have to take regular breaks, I will read this OP but I will have to mentally prepare.

I've heard of the twins and Money before, it's such a harrowing and heartbreaking story.

I see Helen Joyce is researching deeply into this. Her book is going to be a blinder.