John Money and Transgenderism - Daily Mail article

[SallyLockheart]

Haven’t seen a thread on this - daily mail have written about John Money and his experiment on the Reimer twins - why he did it and the tragic outcomes plus what motivated him to do it. Details the abuse he made those children suffer and his “special interests”. Many on this board know about John Money but it’s good to see it out there on a popular site - DM continues its campaigning!

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12232885/The-spiritual-father-trans-movement-Dr-John-Money-twisted-experiment.html

I’ve read about this before. Sickening.

What was happening in the 60s and 70s “intellectual” circles, they were full of nonces and grotesque sexual practices. 🤮

I have read the name here before, but only learned a bit more when I watched Matt Walsh’s What is a Woman.

This article is so desperately sad.
Lies, coercion, forcing children, abuse.

Am very glad the dm runs these articles. I hope it gives a lot of people food for thought.

Money was a perverted child abuser and did a sickening experiment.

But one thing I find interesting in relation to feminism is that he shared the belief that gender is entirely socially constructed and that boys only act like boys because we condition them to.
He truly believed you could reinforce a child to like 'girl things.'

His work was widely cited by feminists for decades as a successful example of gender stereotypes being just social conditioning. Until the truth was revealed.

Also the fact that we know it wasn't successful and that David always felt wrong despite not knowing his sex, would that not suggest there is something that could be described as a gender identity?

Those poor children.

David was stereotypically male - despite being "presented" as a girl. He was true to his sex. I don't think gender identity comes into it - and this is where the conflating of the words sex and gender are unhelpful

Lots of children fit into their stereotypes, largely, by the time they go through puberty but early years being are particularly fluid. Hence the emphasis in early years education to encourage children to play with any toys and be who ever they want in their creative play.

How society deals with gender non-conforming children is a different issue and gender identity ideology goes backwards in its attitude towards pigeon holing of children who play with the "wrong" toys

And how many more David and Brian’s will we see over the next few decades. It doesn’t bare thinking about.

@MalagaNights I think you can easily tell the difference in interests between MOST girls and boys. And that is fine the way I see it. Some will be natural propensity and some will be socialisation.
Then there will be some boys and girls who will be more interested in the activities that are usually associated with the opposite sex. And that is ALSO fine. Why shouldn’t it be? Alas, this is where people often become very angry, isn’t it? And I cannot understand why.

Just because a guy likes dolls, or knitting (which used to be a profession only for men in ye olden days) or anything considered ‘feminine’ -it does not negate the fact he’s male. And vice versa.

But to force people into stereotypes. I do not understand why that is necessary.

Sorry, not entirely clear thinking on my way out the door. Will try to make sense later. Lots of people articulate this way better!

How much of that feeling that something wasn’t right was the fact they were identical? Therefore the one who was told was a girl would be seeing themselves mirrored but as a boy. Fraternal twins normally look similar but not so identical. And kids compare their genitals, I doubt that his genitals looked like a girls really.

There would have been enough discordance in the story that any child would have picked up something was not quite right with their body.

I would put no credibility into the child’s ‘gender identity’. It just shows that children are very intuitive and he knew something was wrong.

Law & Order Special Victims had an episode based around this case

That explanation would suggest that in theory this could work and the issue was doing it with identical twins and the quality of the cosmetic surgery?

So if (in theory) a single child no twin, and really good cosmetic surgery for genitals, do you think you can socialise males to feel comfortable as girls.

I think for most people one of the central horrors of this story is the idea that gender is just socialised and the sex is irrelevant.

I suspect that even young our genes give cues. Hips, facial structures etc. And testosterone will produce different effects when doing activities. The studies are still showing that on average boys are faster than girls and they have different musculature.

So, I don’t believe that you really can do such an experiment unless that child is cruelly abused. That the child has been isolated from
everything and everyone and told lies about everything. And has had their genetics changed and any hormones modifications needed.

So I think it is a very complex issue and to test it properly would be horrific. Ultimately, I think children are incredibly intuitive and always comparing themselves to others and to information they are given.

I know that as a girl, I did many of the same things as my brother and he also played dolls with me at times. I wore ‘boys’ clothes more than I wore ‘girls’ clothes. I wanted to be a boy, but I knew I was not. I had people assume I was a boy. Had someone told me I was really a boy, I might have leapt at it. But I also knew I was a girl.

Also the fact that we know it wasn't successful and that David always felt wrong despite not knowing his sex, would that not suggest there is something that could be described as a gender identity?

Or it could be more like a sex identity. Perhaps there was a feeling that something was wrong because a part of his body had been amputated. This isn't the same as someone believing that their perfectly intact and normal body is the wrong sex.

Double page spread by the look of it:

twitter.com/wingsscotland/status/1673130248748105728?s=46&t=WHoOZ_3Kv5G6-FyQuvE0LQ

I think it's important to recognise that no-one close to this child really treated him like a girl. They all knew that he was actually a boy, and this will have significantly affected their behaviour around him, even if they did choose female clothing for him.

It's much like the way transwomen are treated. Every time you see transwomen being interviewed on TV they are given deferential treatment exactly like a man. They are allowed to talk over the women exactly like a man. They are interrupted less, exactly like a man.

Once you see it you can't unsee it, and because transwomen so rarely pass they will never actually be treated like a woman.

Another example you often see is the way that women, who have been socialised to be kind, will often overcompensate on social media and fawn over transwomen. I'm sure we've all seen well-meaning dishonesty such as "Girl, you are slaying it. I wish I could do my make up as well as you," etc.

And of course even a mediocre male person has been brought up to be extremely confident and they might actually think that the women who say this are jealous of their make up skills, when in fact the women are just trying to be kind. Look at how an unattractive, bandy-legged person like Drummond is convinced that Drummond is so desirable that Drummond possesses the magical ability to turn straight women into lesbians.

Iirc the Doctor got murdered by one of the twins. They got away with it because the detectives couldn't tell which. I wonder if the writer was indulging in a little wish fulfilment?

Or it could be more like a sex identity. Perhaps there was a feeling that something was wrong because a part of his body had been amputated. This isn't the same as someone believing that their perfectly intact and normal body is the wrong sex

What David describes is that he had a sense he wasn't like other girls, didn't have the same interests and felt wrong.
This is what is now described as gender identity.

Would the gender critical view be that if we eradicated gender and all stereotypes this type of procedure could be successful?
They'd just be your body and no sense of any my body doesn't fit any expectations because there aren't any.
(It would also require excellent cosmetic surgery)

I think more people interpret the failure of this experiment as indicating gender is more than just a social construct and you can't just socialise it away as they tried here.

Some posts here seem to suggest you could socialise it away if you could control the environment more fully.
Which is probably what Money would have said. It fits with his theory and explains the failure.

I know no one here is suggesting such experimentation repeated with more social control and better surgery but it is quite a scary theory which you could imagine in some dystopian situation being attempted.

I completely agree with every word. The deferential treatment to the male is so true.

As I said Money's work was celebrated and cited by GC feminists, as it proved their theory, until it was revealed it didn't.

Money's theory was a gender critical theory.

Even now people are arguing it's not the theory that was flawed it was the execution of the experiment.

It was unethical, but not theoretically wrong?

I don’t think any posts suggest it would produce a particular result if ‘fully controlled’. Only that to do the experiment properly that it would have to be fully controlled.

The point is it is ridiculous. Because what commonalities are there for girls and women outside of the range of reactions to having a female body and its processes?

Or do you want to take it then back to basic survival skills or something while having the magic to remove all physical sex markers and change hormones.

What is the point?

Are you trying to say hormones make a difference? Yes. They do have some difference to physicality? What of it?

WTF.

We're talking about an abused child here and some people's take is the experiment on him didn't work because he was treated too reverentially because he was a boy?
He killed himself because of the abuse.

But...if they'd actually treated him like a girl in this lesser way as you see it, it might have worked??
Can you follow your own logic here?

You believe the same thing as John Money.

There was a sense in the wider community, that lasted a long time, around this case that took it as proving that socialization was the only substantive difference between boys and girls. It was seen as proving the gender hypothesis, that gender consisted of things that are completely constructed, and it's only by significant social pressures (although apparently these can be very subtle) that boys and girls internalize these. Without those pressures we'd see no difference socially.

The discussion of gender identity does get fraught in part because we do have a sexual identity, or sense of unity with our body and our sexual desire etc. It's incorporated in our sense of who we are. And it is partly developed as we grow into adult bodies, and also in relation to the existence of the opposite sex. Biologically, we are a species with two sexes and our sense of who we are as sexually reproducing individuals is only understood biologically, and in terms of meaning, in a kind of tension.

Gender identity is not real because it's based on a false premise, it's the wrong question and the wrong answer.We are sexed beings, physiologically, we know ourselves as sexed beings intellectually and in terms of intellectual system building, we are also cultural beings and so that knowledge is reflected in culture.

Milton Diamond vindicated completely. I imagine at the time he felt huge pressure not to pursue the truth. Thank goodness he couldn’t be shut down.

The 'what of it' would tell us that controlled social experiments of this kind would be unlikely to work and that only evil people trying to prove a socialisation theory would ever try it.

Otherwise why wouldn't the door be open to trying it again but better?

Feminists supported and celebrated this experiment because it proved their theory.

If that doesn't even make you pause I'm not sure what will.

The 'so what' it probably would have worked if we could control the environment more successfully, and if the child hadn't been treated as deferentially as we treat boys is, pretty sickening.