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 never encountered a poster who used the personal pronoun "I" as much as MalagaNights does. It's very odd.

What the fuck is that supposed to mean?

What a snidey weird post.

Who else wants to come and just say semething bitchy for the hell of it? Jump in, while the the water turns red.

What pointless unjustified nastiness.

To repeat: From my own experience (and I have followed feminist arguments for a long time), I do not remember ever reading a feminist using this experiment to argue that all observed behavioural differences between men and women are based on socialisation.

I have, however, read many anti-feminists (sex essentialists), at least, arguing that the experiment proved that gender roles and gender stereotypes are based on biology, i.e., that male people will always do things a certain way and that female people will always do things a certain way. These are the people who believe in male supremacy, in women's roles to stay at home and so on.

So I saw it used NOT as a feminist argument but as an anti-feminist argument: That 'gender' is hard-wired into sexed brains.

Recently I have seen it used by trans activists to argue that gender identity is immutable and built in from birth. Those interpret David as possessing an abstract male gender identity so he would have been 'cis' in their ideology who was forced to transition against his will.

Here, too, gender (in the sense of identity) is hard-wired, but may not be in the correctly sexed body (from their point of view).

So overall the feminists, in my experience, were the least likely to use this study to defend anything, while both male supremacists of the old type (far right) and the new type (TRAs) have used it to defend their own philosophies.

At least now I know you’re not arguing in good faith

Of course Malaga isn’t. Malaga mostly pops up on threads when she thinks she can play gotcha with women who present views that are alternative to her own conviction that gender roles are the result of biology and in some structural functionalist way are good, proper and create social stability. I believe she is looking for a nice trad wife for her properly raised (didn’t search, just remember this from a while back).

‘Properly raised patriarchal son’ that should read.

Oh I get it, a trad not a tra or feminist. Perhaps they justify this with the choices argument. Fair do's.

Ok, I've looked for references and not been able to find much, certainly nothing that's from a reputable source, BUT this piece does name names and quotes works: www.ewtn.com/catholicism/library/commentary-the-problem-of-gender-feminism-2673

It's arguing from a biological determinism pov and I absolutely don't agree with it, but it acts as a clue re: 60s & 70s feminists who in their own way were just as dogmatic.

More vicious unnecessary untruths.

This doesn't represent my views in any way.

I'm a woman and a mother, I'm frequently here agreeing and sometimes not, and I'm reading these vicious attacks and feeling sick.

What nasty vicious sick unnecessary bile you are spouting at me.

It's having a horrible impact on me and you're obviously enjoying it. Why?

Because I didn't provide a citation?
Please stop.

Please stop.

There are articles. They seem to unsurprisingly provide different views.

Some seem to mention Anne Oakley and Kate Millet as referencing Money and others saying feminism took up the concept of gender roles as cultural implicitly from Money and Stoller.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/852196

This is one there are others, it's a rabbit hole.

I'm really shaken by the personal way this thread has gone.

I'm a woman who speaks up for woman and children but who is sometimes critical of feminist theory. I thought that was accepted and tolerated here, I'm really not up withstanding the viciousness aimed at me here.

I hope you take my one measley citation as my offering to get the pack to back off, but I don't think I'll be back anyway, I'm really am shaken.

Hmm. John Hopkins university. the university that recently updated its definition of a lesbian

*Johns Hopkins’ glossary initially defined a lesbian as a woman “attracted to other women, or someone who identifies as part of the lesbian community”.

But shortly after publishing the resource, the university changed its terminology to: “A non-man attracted to non-men”.

It explained: “this updated definition includes non-binary people who may also identify with the label”.*

Obviously there are different academics within a university but it probably gives a very strong indication of level of capture of the university environment to a point of being anti-women

The balance of takes on the Money experiment does seem to show that feminists have been the least likely group to bring it up as supporting their views. Both traditionalists and TRAs seem to have used it more.

I clicked on the link to the John Money paper cited as ref. 1 in that paper:
The Concept of gender identity disorder in childhood and adolescence after 39 years

I could only see the abstract, but it contains a definition of gender and gender identity and a description of 'gender identity disorder'.

sex is what you are biologically; gender is what you become socially; gender identity is your own sense or conviction of maleness or femaleness; and gender role is the cultural stereotype of what is masculine and feminine... Gender coding in the brain is bipolar. In gender identity disorder, there is discordancy between the natal sex of one's external genitalia and the brain coding of one's gender as masculine or feminine.

So he seems here to be using 'gender identity' as genderists do - to describe an internal feeling. This puts him in the same camp as them, that this 'feeling' actually has some relevance other than being just personality. You claimed earlier that he took the view that gender identity was just the internalisation of stereotypes. This paper (from 2008) is much later than his 60s and 70s experiments, so perhaps he changed his mind about what gender identity was in the intervening period, from being the internalisation of stereotypes to more of a gender woo sort of 'feeling'.

But it is quite surprising to see him quoted at the start of that article as though the thoughts of a man who conducted abusive experiments on children were meaningful.

Citations for this claim please.

Although I'd agree that I'd suspect it's since the failure of experiment.

Feminists who are gc don't believe in gender and want to abolish gender stereotypes. They would not ever support money. You seem to not be able to grasp what gender critical means.

Money's experiment was about gender stereotypes. You don't seem to understand the differing ways the term gender has been used.

In fact it seems Money talked about gender roles, not gender identity or even just gender.

Some feminists have cited Money to support their view of gender stereotypes, you are wrong to claim none did.

I accept there won't be any modern day GC feminists citing him. His experiment failed so doesn't support their position and turns out he was a paedophile.

OK if you want to understand how psychologists use gender look up.Kohlberg, Bandura, diamond.

And as I said earlier for radical feminists perhaps Firestone or Purdy from a bio / social to the extreme. Sociology really.

Funny it often turns out the left free sexuality are associated with all sorts of freedom. No surprise. History shows us this!

I'm pretty certain Malaga is arguing in good faith. In that she is committed to her argument.

And although I don't agree with the significance she has placed on who did or didn't agree with Money at the time, in terms of the gender critical position now, I can understand the argument.

In fact it seems Money talked about gender roles, not gender identity or even just gender.

In the paper I posted a link to (cited in the paper you linked to) he talks about all of those things.

I accept there won't be any modern day GC feminists citing him.

The paper you linked to cites him. That is from 2021, so presumably the author is not a feminist. I've never heard of Ara Wilson, so I have no idea if this person is considered to be a feminist or identifies as a feminist.

But roles clearly do exist, the gc argument is that they are simply socially created and enforced.

And that includes a huge range of behavioural differernces between men and women in the aggregate that many other people would say are more related to biological differences.

That kind of behavioural constructionism was really big in certain parts of the academic world in the mid-century, and still is in some places, and really on the left generally. It accounts for a lot of the solutions that get proposed for things like anti-social behaviour.

I'm not sure why anyone would think otherwise, she's a long term engaged poster here.

Claiming someone isn't real because they disagree is fucking weird.

Second wave feminism included many people who thought gender was a social construct. In very much the same period that the research which claimed to show that gender was completely socially constructed was considered solid and was well known. Why wouldn't feminists use that as an example to support their POV, it's a totally believable idea, and it's unlikely anyone studying gender at that time was unaware of these experiments.

None of that means they somehow approved of them, that's really a separate question.

Isn't it another third corner?
Money thought he could cause poor David Reimer to feel like he was the other sex by forcing stereotypes on him, lying to him, abusing him and medicating him.

Genderism says that if you feel like you're the other sex you should adopt its stereotypes, lie to everyone, and be medicated.
Only gender critical feminism says no stereotypes should be forced, no-one should lie, and it is not possible to change sex.

What makes you believe that this "the gc argument"?

Is there a standard set of beliefs that you believe are held by all people who call themselves gender critical?

I thought that being gender critical just meant that you are critical of the concept of gender, and don't believe that gender stereotyping should be imposed on us.

I was not aware that being gender critical also included holding any particular views on the theory of how stereotypes came into being in the first place. This seems to me to be a completely separate issue.

The idea that all behavioural differences between the sexes are socially created seems to me to be an extreme view given the differences in our sexed bodies. Does anyone really believe that?