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

You are confusing what Money meant by gender identity, which is your socially imposed roles and behaviours, which is what feminists on here state all the time: that gender identity really just means stereotypes.

With, what gender ideology now means by gender identity which is an innate feeling.

Which Money and feminists disagree with.

MalagaNights

I'm still struggling with what you're trying to say. David was not female, and could not have thought of himself as female, given he didn't have any female genitalia and was sexually abused for the genitalia he did have.

From what I gather, he rebelled against the socially imposed roles that Money was trying to get him to perform. Which doesn't prove anything.

So as an experiment it was useless.

But some feminists at the time were led to believe that it could be some kind of conclusive proof about socially constructed gender roles?

Were they aware of exactly what was going on, how it was being conducted, etc?

So...it was only bad because the academics didn't know about the sexual abuse and the poor cosmetic surgery?? The rest, what they did know was ok??

Datun I have huge admiration for you, but on this you are really disturbingly close to ignoring what justified child abuse because it challenges your ideology, and I don't think you can even see it.

Academics who wanted to prove gender is a social construct really wanted it to succeed, which is how he got away with it.

People will justify bad things. Not just TRAs. People. All of us, unless you are prepared to face the scrutiny yourself.

There certainly are strains of feminism that believe that differences in behaviour are overwhelmingly due to socialisation rather than inherent differences in distribution. They come up on this very board sometimes. Though I think most people accept that there are marked different distributions and you can't just assign everything to socialisation and declare if children were brought up differently all gender roles would vanish, 50% female CEOs, etc. (though I've never seen anyone campaigning for 50% binmen).

But I hadn't considered the way @MalagaNights has been defining it that these views were rightly titled "Gender Critical". I had always taken GC to simply mean critical of the trans movement and any ideas that gender was purely a made up thing. But literally as I type these words I now see where @MalagaNights is coming from. So is the idea that people believe gender is simply a made-up thing the same position as thinking it's just a made up thing and therefore everything is about socialisation?

I don't think so but it's just clicked why someone thinks they are. Is this what other's think here too or did everyone else see it the same way I did as saying there are inherent differences in distribution of traits between the sexes?

So as an experiment it was useless.
I agree.

Were they aware of exactly what was going on, how it was being conducted, etc?
What level of knowledge would justify support?

I say none. What do you say?

I agree the fact they were identical twins was no doubt a flaw in the study.

I didn't say it was a flaw in the 'study'. My point was the opposite of that, that the fact that they were identical twins was an important component. If Money was trying to prove a nurture/nature point, which is what he seems to have been doing, what better candidates for that than two identical twin baby boys, one of whom had had his genitalia mutilated?

If he was trying to prove that all the differences in behaviour were due to nurture, then the existence of a 'control' in this experiment in the form of an identical boy brought up as a boy to compare with the boy brought up as a girl would lend validation to his 'work'.

The other identical twin study I linked to was going on at the same time, so the outcome of this would have been unknown at the time (if he even knew it was happening - unlikely since even the adoptive parents were kept in the dark).

I am gender critical. I do not believe gender exists. I criticise genderists who believe it does, and try to force people into stereotypical gendered roles.

I believe sex exists and cannot be changed, and that people can wear and do and be what they want, (with the usual caveats re consent) regardless of their sex.

Datun I have huge admiration for you, but on this you are really disturbingly close to ignoring what justified child abuse because it challenges your ideology, and I don't think you can even see it.

No, I cant! And I'm really trying! 😀

So...it was only bad because the academics didn't know about the sexual abuse and the poor cosmetic surgery?? The rest, what they did know was ok??

But I don't know what they knew! I don't think social experiments, per se, are bad? But I do think the abuse of children to perform those experiments is.

if there were some feminists who were quite happy to overlook sexual abuse, for the sake of their theory, then yes that's bad. They don't sound very feminist to me. And I don't know what that's got to do with gender critical feminism today?

I think the reason @OldGardinia that people don't see it is because what Money was defining as gender identity is not what gender ideogists define it as now. And we're so used to that.

This came about because his experiment to prove it's a social construct failed. And the idea of an innate gender identity took hold.

It was a gift to gender ideology development but because it failed to prove gender is a social construct as he, and many academics at the time, really wanted to prove.

Which is how he got away with it.

The twin component can be argued for and against methodologically, but I agree I'm sure Money thought it was an incredible opportunity at the time given how prevalent twin studies were in the field.

But again we're arguing methodology.

I don't really care whether it was twins or not, whether this strengthened or weakened the study, the study was abuse either way.

I agree with you. I think there have been people with very hard-line views on what society might look like without patriarchy / sex-hierarchy (cf a fair amount of speculative utopian feminist women's fiction, e.g. Marge Piercy).

I don't agree that this a prerequisite of being "gender critical".

I reject the idea of gender as a "thing" as I don't believe it's possible to identify a preference or behaviour that applies to all women or all men, and I don't believe that not displaying a preference or behaviour considered indicative of man gender or woman gender makes you be in the "wrong body".

I don't believe that all women are caring and maternal. I suspect in a more equal world without the judgements that fall on mothers, more women would abdicate the caring role to a partner. That doesn't mean that I think it would be a 50/50 split necessarily.

I can see why some feminists shy away from anything that it suggestive of "biological determinism" - it's like the chink in the wall that lets in the flood. "Oh, you believe X? Therefore A-Z must be true". It's been a long hard struggle away from lady brain, hysteria and the like.

All I know is that even if a certain behaviour is more prevalent in one sex, knowing an individual's sex tells us nothing with certainty about their preferences and behaviours.

I just want everyone to be able to live a happy life, whether that's with a shaved head or sparkles, in pink or blue, as a bodyguard or a nursery nurse, without being discriminated against because of what's in their pants. I think that's a pretty mainstream GC position.

I don't know who knew about the sexual abuse.
But we do know that abuse is overlooked within an ingroup, so I think how he got away with that is important.

But everyone did know they'd castrated a boy and were bringing him up as a girl.

You seem to be arguing that's ok as long as they didn't know about the sexual abuse??

I say, just those well publicised facts should have been enough to tell everyone it was wrong. But they weren't because they wanted it to prove their theory which would have made it ok.

Do you see it yet?

Given that it's unprovable, my personal stance is I don't really know.

I do know that everyone is different, and therefore it's not something that can be concluded conclusively.

i believe there are probably inherent differences as a result of biology to do with 'maternal instincts', etc. But, as ever, they are often used to disadvantage women.

My point is there are quite enough clearly socialised roles that can be dismantled, before you get down to the nitty-gritty of what is specifically inherent and what isn't, especially as it will vary from person to person.

It's not that I don't think it's important. It's because I'm not an academic or theorist.

And yes, I'm sure there are feminists who absolutely believe that there are no inherent 'social roles' and that men and women are interchangeable, apart from their actual body parts.

Which might well be true! My point being, I don't think there's any way of telling.

Loss of the penis through a circumcision "accident" is sadly not unknown (although obviously rare). The parents of these boys were routinely told to bring them up as girls. As were the parents of children with DSDs where there was abnormal penile development until shockingly recently. As probably were parents whose infant sons lost their penis through other methods.

Boy without penis = girl didn't start with Money, so that part of it wouldn't necessarily have been all that shocking at the time.

Yes, I think I've been missing your point all along.

You believe that he should've just retained his burnt penis and testicles and be raised as a boy.

And that even considering it an experiment is abusive.

I completely agree.

I'd also like to add that I'm assuming the parents thought they were helping their son. And that Money was quite persuasive in making them believe he could easily be raised as a girl.

This experiment wasn't wrong because:

Of the sexual abuse
He was a twin
His genital surgery was poor

It was wrong because they castrated a boy and tried to bring him up as a girl.

And it wasn't done in the name of gender Ideology it was done in the name of gender critical theory (as they are now defined).

The fact feminists on here won't even say: bloody hell that's a salutatory lesson that we can all lose our way if we put ideology above children, is really sad and dangerous.

Thank fuck for that 😁

So : if we agree this now, why were so many people willing to go along with it at the time?

Because it fitted their ideology that gender is a social construct. They wanted the experiment to work to prove their theory.

Sound familiar?

I think everyone reasonable agrees that human (and animal) experiments to support an ideology of any stripe are wrong.

I agree that Money's experiment was wrong, and would have been wrong even if David Reimer had said he was happy in adult life.

It's probably because we don't think we will lose our way like that!

Because it might have been done in order to prove that sex roles are constructed - spearheaded by John Money, and supported by 'feminists' who wanted to prove the same, but certainly not in the way that I understand gender critical feminism today.

Safeguarding is inextricably woven in to GC campaigning.

Plus I bet John Money did not believe his theory to the extent that he applied it to himself.

Oh yes, they were devastated years later.
David went on Oprah with his mother it was heartbreaking, and he never blamed her.

Money was totally convincing in his belief that gendered behaviours could be totally socially shaped. He wasn't the only one who believed that, lots of academics did, and some still do.

Whether that is true or not the experiment isn't justified, but it's the theory that was used to justify it.

Safeguarding is inextricably woven in to GC campaigning.

Never just assume this.

That's the first rule of safeguarding.

Always be open to scrutiny.

Look at and learn from the past mistakes even those made by 'your side'. Especially those, because you're most blind to those.

By you, I mean us, obvs 😊

Not really...

We've been talking at cross purposes, because, to be honest, I don't think you're making yourself too clear.

If you'd said in the beginning, that you believe the experiment was wrong, and any feminists that agreed with it were putting ideology ahead of safeguarding, I would've understood immediately.

Indeed, I think most women are surprised that any feminists did agree with it. I know I am.

Which should tell you that what those feminists think and what gender critical women on here think, is different.

In terms of your penultimate paragraph, I do think gender as used today, is a social construct.

Well I've been trying to be clear, because I think it's important, I still don't think you've understood which I'll take responsibility for, because I don't think I'm capable of expressing what I think is the issue here anymore clearly.

Which I'm disappointed about because I think it's important.

I think most of us have had a "are we the baddies?" moment (there was a whole thread about this). And yes, it's always important to keep considering your motivations and not blindly assume you're right and good.