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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

John Money and Transgenderism - Daily Mail article

226 replies

SallyLockheart · 26/06/2023 05:22

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

The spiritual father of trans movement John Money and his experiment

The identical Reimer twins - Bruce and Brian - born in 1965, were subject to twisted experiments after a botched circumcision led to Bruce - renamed Brenda - having a vulva fashioned by John Money.

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

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ditalini · 26/06/2023 11:11

MalagaNights · 26/06/2023 10:28

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?

Surely the gender critical position would be that Brenda could wear and play with whatever Brenda wanted to?

It's not gender critical to believe Brenda would have to be Bruce in order to do all the things he wanted to do, nor that Bruce should be Brenda because he'd been medically mutilated.

As in most things, there's truth in the middle ground and I think that's where most of us who'd call ourselves GC lie. You don't have to change your body to reflect your interests. You don't have to change your interests to reflect your body.

The people whose interests are what's expected of their sex are ok. The people whose interests are not what's expected of their sex are also ok. No-one should be mutilating little girls and boys.

DemiColon · 26/06/2023 12:01

Helleofabore · 26/06/2023 10:34

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?

I think that is what the posts are suggesting is a possibility. And plenty of people posting here suggest that is the case on other threads all the time, so that hardly seems an unfair interpretation.

It is interesting that this experiment was used for so long as a proof for total social construction of gender. I remember reading this in textbooks as recently as the 1990s.

And it does seem to be exactly the point that a position critical of gender constructs makes - that without social construction unrelated to inherent sex differences, which are limited to only the most bare reproductive facts, there would be no gender as such.

It's often reduced to the "ladybrain" argument, that saying that there are biological or biologically rooted differences in male and female behaviour is making some kind of claims about brain structure that are not provable. The Gina Rippon position, or at least how people often seem to understand it, (perhaps she would not put it the same way.)

Which is a reductive argument, because of course differences are also about hormones and emergent behaviours related to reproductive role, and the differences of living in a different kind of body from metabolic differences to skeletal differences to hormonal differences. The brain is integrated with the body, not separate from it, housing the person like a computer in a box.

So the point is, that theory is misguided.

Practically, the conclusions about things like society and political policy that tend to come out of that theory are going to be ineffective or problematic. It would suggest for example that you can't likely engineer society to prevent the emergence of equity type differences between males and females.

DemiColon · 26/06/2023 12:06

ditalini · 26/06/2023 11:11

Surely the gender critical position would be that Brenda could wear and play with whatever Brenda wanted to?

It's not gender critical to believe Brenda would have to be Bruce in order to do all the things he wanted to do, nor that Bruce should be Brenda because he'd been medically mutilated.

As in most things, there's truth in the middle ground and I think that's where most of us who'd call ourselves GC lie. You don't have to change your body to reflect your interests. You don't have to change your interests to reflect your body.

The people whose interests are what's expected of their sex are ok. The people whose interests are not what's expected of their sex are also ok. No-one should be mutilating little girls and boys.

No, that's not the gender critical position.

Lots of people, including people like Matt Walsh, believe that boys should be able to play with dolls and girls can become mechanics. And he is supposed to be a big fat anti-feminist.

The gender critical position says that gendered differences (like maybe different interests in toys, but also lots of other things like interest in children) are completely socially created and have no other basis, and they are created to enforce patriarchal power, and could be extinguished if we dismantled those ideas and structures.

ResisterRex · 26/06/2023 12:14

I've rarely seen reference to Money outside of the specific area of transgenderism, and even there, it's like a hidden layer because what it shows is so complex, unethical and problematic that it seems there's a preference to hide it or gloss over it. I think you have to have read a lot to know about it. Similar to Kinsey, really.

Which feminists have celebrated it? And which GC ones? I always thought GC feminism was a relatively recently coined term, brought about by the rapid rise and push of gender ideology in public life and policy making. Is it not then? What have I been missing?

DontGetEvenGetEverything · 26/06/2023 12:22

@MalagaNights "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?"

You are saying you believe GC feminists think the door should be open to running an experiment that would involve castrating an infant boy?

MalagaNights · 26/06/2023 12:30

You are saying you believe GC feminists think the door should be open to running an experiment that would involve castrating an infant boy?

So you are saying....🤣🤣 Are you Cathy Newman?

I think I actually clearly stated I'm not saying that.

I'm saying this theory leaves the door open to testing this theory. Which is what Money was doing.

It would take a pretty evil megalomaniac to do it, which I don't think most GC feminists are, but if GC theory was right it could presumably work.

GC feminists even on this thread seem to disagree with his methodology not his theory.

ditalini · 26/06/2023 12:38

DemiColon · 26/06/2023 12:06

No, that's not the gender critical position.

Lots of people, including people like Matt Walsh, believe that boys should be able to play with dolls and girls can become mechanics. And he is supposed to be a big fat anti-feminist.

The gender critical position says that gendered differences (like maybe different interests in toys, but also lots of other things like interest in children) are completely socially created and have no other basis, and they are created to enforce patriarchal power, and could be extinguished if we dismantled those ideas and structures.

That doesn't contradict what I said in my post - if you're a boy and you like cars, that's ok. If you're a girl and you like cars, that's ok. If your a boy and you dream of being the primary caregiver for your children, that's ok. If you're a girl and you dream of being the primary caregiver for your children', that's ok.

Maybe in a world without patriarchy and gender there would be no way to predict individual interests based on sex. Certainly my dad's experience of being a parent to a newborn compared to my DH's experience of being a parent to a newborn were wildly different and that's only in 30 years. Interesting.

I think Matt Walsh has pretty strong feelings about what a "real man" is which contradicts the GC position although he shares some elements of his beliefs with it. A man can't not be "real" - being a man is just a statement about biological sex, no more or less.

turbonerd · 26/06/2023 13:06

We ARE our bodies. We are not souls that HAVE bodies.
We ARE our bodies. Our thoughts are made in the physicality of our brains. The physical make-up of our brains determine how well they work.

(Look at autism research and scannings of brains that reveal physical, albeit tiny, differences in the different parts of the brain which in turn causes various disabilities for the autistic person).

Our bodies are sexed. Female or male. We have different physical make-up and different hormones. And different roles, after millions of years of evolution.

What we also have is equal intelligence, which is possibly socialised differently according to our sex, but men are demonstrably equally intelligent to women. Despite being in the grip of strong, fairly primitive hormones - testosterone.

For poor David, the tragedy was the traumatic amputation of his penis, the castration and consequent surgery to which he could not consent. And then a wholesale lie around his being with added sexual abuse from Money.

Even if he was a baby/toddler when these traumas occured, these are events with massive consequences. Even before the life-lie he was told. His body was male. He started a male puberty, but was severely abused again when he was made to take cross-sex hormones. It is just ufathomably tragic.

I don’t believe my sex hampers my intelligence in any way. I know that it impacts me in my day to day life in various ways.

OldGardinia · 26/06/2023 13:19

Anyone who uses KiwiFarms has a good chance of knowing about John Money and his evils. And I don't use the word 'evil' lightly. You'll also learn about how Kinsey's work followed on from Money's. Kinsey's work was similarly flawed and similarly formed the basis for a lot of what was disseminated as truth about sexuality. Not least his figures on the prevalence of homosexuality and American's sexual habits.

Related to Money also, iirc, was the time that the German govt. deliberately housed foster children with paedophiles because they believed the children would get more love from paedophiles. I'd have to go on the Farms and dig out the thread for it but as with most stuff on there, they back it up with sources and evidence. I may look later for it if of interest here.

YetAnotherSpartacus · 26/06/2023 13:30

Our bodies are sexed. Female or male. We have different physical make-up and different hormones. And different roles, after millions of years of evolution.

As long as mine (female) is to be strong, ambitious and bring home the (vegetarian) bacon rather than being some man's cook, cleaner and cunt then that's all good.

DontGetEvenGetEverything · 26/06/2023 13:38

@MalagaNights I'm not following. What do you mean by the experiment "working"?

A girl is not a castrated boy, and a castrated boy is not a girl.

Why does GC feminism leave the door open to experiments that involve castrating infant boys and lying to them about their sex?

DontGetEvenGetEverything · 26/06/2023 13:55

It really does seem odd to me that there were people who thought Money's experiment made some kind of feminist point about gendered socialisation.
The idea that a girl child is really just a castrated boy child is about as patriarchal as it comes.

Zeugma · 26/06/2023 14:29

There’s a book about the Reimer case that’s well worth reading if you can find it - John Colapinto's 'As Nature Made him'. Money does not come over well, to put it mildly. An overweening bully who approved of paedophilia.

heathspeedwell · 26/06/2023 14:40

The point is that it's impossible to draw any conclusions about the nature/nurture debate from this 'experiment.'

It's abundantly clear that this child was not raised as a girl. Anyone who claims he was raised as a girl either hasn't read about what actually happened or they are promoting their own agenda.

Moonandstarzz · 26/06/2023 14:48

But isn't this exactly what's happening now? It is all is an experiment. Women who transition still have periods.. Men who transition can never have periods or ever have babies. No amount of surgery or hormones will ever make it possible to be the opposite sex.. It's all a scientific experiment with young children as the chief guinea pigs😢

Datun · 26/06/2023 14:52

I'm not sure I get the gender critical agreement aspect?

David Reimer was a boy, was treated like a boy (because he was one and everyone knew), didn't have any genitalia that suggested he wasn't a boy, and certainly knew he did not share the physical experiences of girls.

He was lied to, brainwashed and abused.

I can't see how the experiment proves anything other than that Money was an evil paedophile.

Signalbox · 26/06/2023 15:02

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?

I guess you have to be careful about drawing any conclusions from a case where a child was castrated, sexually abused and lied to by all the adults around him including his parents. I’m not sure such cases can tell us very much about anything.

Signalbox · 26/06/2023 15:03

I can't see how the experiment proves anything other than that Money was an evil paedophile.

This.

Moonandstarzz · 26/06/2023 15:05

@Datun @signalbox so true & it continues... Lots of pharmaceutical companies & private companies are making billions out of the trans ideology.

MalagaNights · 26/06/2023 15:06

Datun · 26/06/2023 14:52

I'm not sure I get the gender critical agreement aspect?

David Reimer was a boy, was treated like a boy (because he was one and everyone knew), didn't have any genitalia that suggested he wasn't a boy, and certainly knew he did not share the physical experiences of girls.

He was lied to, brainwashed and abused.

I can't see how the experiment proves anything other than that Money was an evil paedophile.

Money believed gender was a social construct and any child could socialised to the gender stereotypes being reinforced.
Feminists supported this view.

He instructed the parents on how to reinforce girl stereotypes.

For years this was shared as a huge success by everyone who viewed gender as a social construct. Until the truth came out.

Your critique is only that the methodology was flawed.

MalagaNights · 26/06/2023 15:15

I can't see how the experiment proves anything other than that Money was an evil paedophile

Well yes everyone agrees with that now. But why did his experiment have so much support at the time?
Because people agreed with his theory.

It was cited and reported as a success until the boys were nearly adults. By mainstream academics, psychologists and feminists who supported the theory.

It's easy with the hindsight we now know, to criticise him, but really there should be some deeper critique of why so many supported this and wanted it to work in the first place.

We're all critiquing the theory that's leading to harm of children with GI.

There should be equal critique of the theory that led to this abuse. Beyond, it didn't work because the methodology was flawed.

MostlyHuman · 26/06/2023 15:22

Datun · 26/06/2023 14:52

I'm not sure I get the gender critical agreement aspect?

David Reimer was a boy, was treated like a boy (because he was one and everyone knew), didn't have any genitalia that suggested he wasn't a boy, and certainly knew he did not share the physical experiences of girls.

He was lied to, brainwashed and abused.

I can't see how the experiment proves anything other than that Money was an evil paedophile.

This!

Malaga Feminists supported this view.
Okay, name them. Which feminists. You make it sound like it was group think for feminist back then. Where and who and what exact points were they supporting. Name it all with proper supporting links or it's BS. Also I'm afraid if you say a couple feminists or a random news source said it, that does not support your comment either.

DontGetEvenGetEverything · 26/06/2023 15:31

@MalagaNights David Reimer was born male, he was a boy throughout the whole hideous experiment, he died a young man, ending his own life (no doubt because of what Money put him through).
It wasn't flawed methodology that prevented Money from turning this boy child into a girl. There is NO set of experimental conditions, no matter how perfect, that could ever turn a boy child into a girl.
That is the GC position.

MalagaNights · 26/06/2023 15:37

The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast | 347. Parental Trauma in a World of Gender Insanity | Miriam Grossman MD on Podbean, check it out! https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-ydrd6-1790130d

It's discussed within this podcast.

I don't understand why anyone thinks (some) feminist support of this was surprising? They weren't the only ones lot's of psychologists were excited by it too. (And I'm not going to write you a paper citing them either, however much you demand I do.)

Money's experiment was based on the theory that gender stereotypes and roles are social constructs.

Who else thought that?
Lots of academics at the time did.

This allowed him to attempt an experiment with the premise of creating a 'girl' presentation through reinforcement.

Even the critique on this thread is mostly: the reinforcement wasn't consistent or was undermined, suggesting people still agree with his premise.

People on the thread are only critiquing the fact that the theory was not properly tested.

https://www.podbean.com/ea/dir-ydrd6-1790130d

Datun · 26/06/2023 15:39

MalagaNights · 26/06/2023 15:06

Money believed gender was a social construct and any child could socialised to the gender stereotypes being reinforced.
Feminists supported this view.

He instructed the parents on how to reinforce girl stereotypes.

For years this was shared as a huge success by everyone who viewed gender as a social construct. Until the truth came out.

Your critique is only that the methodology was flawed.

I don't care who supported it.

The boy didn't have a vagina, he didn't menstruate, he didn't have breasts.

He was a boy. Good God, Money made them stare at each other's genitals. A burnt off
penis during a botched operation does not look anything like a vagina.

He instructed the parents on how to reinforce girl stereotypes.

So what? His parents knew he was a boy. A poor, mutilated boy, who would always have a carbon copy of himself to remind him of what he could have been.

Tell him he should play with dolls, really wasn't 'socialising this child as a girl'.

The only way to experiment on a boy child, to raise them as a girl, and see if they notice, is to change their entire dna from top to bottom.

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