Award winning article from 1997 on David Reimer

[WTFSeriously]

Tweet from Helen Joyce links to article here

This was an award winning article when posted back in 1997 and is very long but well worth a read to understand the case of David Reimer and how he was basically abused by John Money along with his twin brother as part of his experiment to prove that gender identity could be imposed on an unknowing child simply by early surgical intervention and socialising the child until further surgery & hormone treatment would be necessary to stop natural puberty undoing all the work put into making the theory he had work.

It's a shocking & heartbreaking read, and although I had been aware of the controversy surrounding David Reimer's experiences at the hands of this abusive man, reading this article is well worth reading because most here will recognise some key issues ( not least the screaming matches that ensued by 'experts' after the follow up study "Archives of Adolescent and Pediatric Medicine. Authors Milton Diamond, a biologist at the University of Hawaii, and Keith Sigmundson, a psychiatrist from Victoria, British Columbia" was published in 1997.

Both brothers killed themselves, Brian, in 2002 following an overdose of anti depressants & then David shot himself in 2004 following the breakdown of his marriage. Reading the article, you realise how devastating that event would have been for someone who was effectively written off as being unloveable and incapable of having a family of his own (by a therapist treating him). He'd twice previously tried to kill himself when John Money was losing his grip on him and trying to force further sex reassignment surgery to 'complete' the transition he advocated for him.

"Fausto-Sterling also seems to be the source for the damaging misinformation that the prevalence of intersex might be as high as 1.7%."

Indeed. The first thing I thought when I saw that quoted was, "Where? Japan? Galway? Glasgow?"

"Statistics and Semantics: Is Intersex “as common as red heads”?"

mrkhvoice.com/index.php/2019/05/12/statistics-and-semantics-is-intersex-as-common-as-red-heads/

'Intersex' used to be children born with ambiguous genitalia, or whose development at puberty did not match their genitalia (eg males with complete androgen insensitivity).

Since Intersex has been renamed Differences/Disorders of Sexual Development, it now includes unambiguously male or female children with unusual genitalia, such as boys with mild hypospadias that may not affect their function and may not need treatment.

The number of children born with DSD must be greater than that of children born Intersex, as DSD includes Intersex.

DSD and Intersex are used interchangeably, but they do not mean the same thing.

(Just like gender and sex!)

gender is the child's choice to express and should be unhindered by unhelpful stereotypical beliefs and other people's needs to fit children into boxes

I thought the article was fascinating. But it was very much endorsing essentialist gender identity predetermined in the womb. Constant references to how ‘masculine’ John/Joan was and how he wanted to play with the ‘boy’ toys. So it actually plays into the discourse that there is this ‘essence’. Gender ideology has an essentialist strand and an extreme postmodern everything is constructed/performative strand. Though often what is ‘performed’ is very stereotypical.

I also thought I recognised the Anne Fausto-Sterling name.

Someone asked about how this story might have altered feminist discourses about how gender is constructed - but feminist constructivist theories predate this case. Wollstonecraft writes of the societal expectations on women to behave in Ceri ah ways, de Beauvoir does in the 40s etc. There are really only a very small group of feminists (usually radical end) who felt there were distinctive female qualities that were powerful and could be transformative of patriarchal power structures.

Thank you for your kindness @Goosefoot and @MoleSmokes. This thread is opening up so many interesting and interconnected issues.

I agree with what you wrote @MoleSmokes:
”There are mad-bastard, psychopaths and sadists in all walks of life. I do think rather more could be done though to keep them out of practicing in regulated professions like clinical psychology, psychiatry and all others where the client/patient is more vulnerable than the average ...
“The stark difference between "profession-facing" vs "patient-facing" personas makes it very hard for people who have been abused in any way by these people to be believed.”

Indeed. This issue of the vulnerability of patients/clients in such situations is a massive one. If we add this vulnerability to the power imbalance inherent in the relationship between the psychiatrist/psychologist and his or her patient, it becomes a lethal recipe for abuse and injustice.

Thanks for sharing the article. I'm slowly making my way through it.

"A childhood sexual experience, such as being the partner of a relative or of an older person, need not necessarily affect the child adversely," Money told Time.

🤮🤮🤮

What is it with a lot of these 'intellectuals' like Foucault, Money, so many of the Queer Theory proponents and their blatant advocacy of pedophilia?! Ugh...

You would think 'cancel culture' would be eager to bin Queer Theory in its entirety given the sort of characters that have promoted it over the years, but nope.... Strangely silent on this.....

They remind me a little of some of the romantic thinkers when they wrote about education. They have a theory of mind or a theory of education, but don't seem to have had much actual experience of children and what they are like. They seem to picture them as in many ways small adults.

Not the romantics, but the 20th century ones also seem to see human beings mainly as animals.

What is it with a lot of these 'intellectuals' like Foucault, Money, so many of the Queer Theory proponents and their blatant advocacy of pedophilia?! Ugh...

Its rooted in the transgression of boundaries/ societal norms which includes Safeguarding.

Derrick Jensen (from 1:50) demonstrates Queer Theorists links with pedophilia in form of Jeopardy Quiz.
Eugene, OR - March 4, 2018

Summarised on previous thread by carceralfeminist :

"Bullet points from the video here. Note, these are Derrick Jensen's claims:

-There is a long correlation between anarchism and paedophilia. (All the kids get upset!)

-Foucalt is commonly known as the godfather of queer theory. Foucalt argued for the eradication of age of consent laws (as in down to infant).

-The author of the founding document of Queer Theory is Gayle Rubin. 50% in that article is about defending paedophilia, specifically "boy lovers." Quote from the founding document: "like communists and homosexuals of the 1950s, boy lovers are so stigmatized it is difficult to find defenders of their civil liberties, let alone for their erotic orientation." She compared paedophilia to a preference for spicy food.......

• Author of Public Sex , Pat Califia wrote "any child old enough to decide whether or not she or he wats to eat spinach, play with trucks or wear shoes is old enough to decide whether or not she or he wants to run around naked in the sun, masturbate sit in somebody's lap or engage in sexual activity." Allegedly advocates that paedophiles should be more involved with children.

• Judith Butler, most famous queer theorist of today. Wrote that there are some forms of incest that are probably not traumatic.

-No queer theorist has spoken out strongly against paedophilia.

-Queer theory is a harmful philosophy, comes from post-modernism and is a response to lesbian feminism. (Interesting that it's now the 2nd wavers that are fighting it.)

-Queer is by definition against all that is normal. The problem is that it is based on a blanket attack everything, without making distinctions to preserve behaviours that are helpful. Even within a horribly oppressive structure, there are still norms worth keeping. Queer theory is too broad, based on getting rid of boundaries. But some norms should not be transgressed (i.e. paedophilia is never okay!!!!)"
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3355827-Queer-theory-and-what-it-means-in-extremis

Jane Clare Jones, 'QUEER THEORY, FOUCAULDIAN FEMINISM AND THE ERASURE OF RAPE'
janeclarejones.com/2018/08/30/queer-theory-foucauldian-feminism-and-the-erasure-of-rape/

Absolutely Gwynfluff I think I saw in the article someone quoted talking about the ‘male brain’ as a concept, without further exploration of that. The rationale in the article for the failure of Money’s experiment with these children, wasn’t being made from a GC position.

Anne F-S (I wasn’t aware of her background) was right though to be highlighting the need for adequate professional support for families (whether in the case of DSDs, as she was talking about in the quote) or even today, if we extrapolate that to families trying to help their children dealing with anxieties or distress about ‘gender identity’ while facing a health system geared towards unquestioning affirmation.

Though what ‘good’ support should look like, would of course be the crucial factor, I find it interesting and sad that over different decades and across these in some ways overlapping related issues, the informed, professional emotional support of affected families and children seems to have been lacking. Or worse, created a professional vacuum which has been filled by solely political theories of what good ‘treatment’ looks like.

We fought a war to stop the nazis experimenting on humans. Two decades after the end of the war, a physician in North America mutilated a child, and then a psychologist performed an experiment that severely damaged two children. He should have been struck off and never allowed to practise medicine again, but instead we are left with John Money's legacy. Rather than men and women being treated as equals, they are labelled according to a social construct of "gender", which is totally inappropriate in the twenty-first century. Psychologists, psychiatrists, and plastic surgeons make a great deal of money out of maintaining the myth of gender identity. They will not back down, and will fight hard to protect their livelihood.