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

@OldCrone

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?

A few writers, perhaps, in the 1970s? I doubt there were many, if any, academic feminists who believed that, but it's important to place that early debate into context:

At that time there were many loud voices which stated that all sex differences in observed behaviour are biologically based and immutable. This is blatantly untrue, given that sex roles vary by cultures even today (just compare Iceland to, say, Saudi Arabia), and given that they have changed over time, at least in the West.

So pointing out the possible role of what then used to be called 'nurture' was important and tended to be stressed. This was (and still is) because the other side has always argued that all observed gender differences are immutable and whatever exists is simply the best arrangement women could ever hope for.

To interrogate that, it has been important to point out the many blunt and subtle ways gender roles are policed and rigorously maintained.

Even today, the opposite view tends to be more common, i.e., the beliefs about women's proper places and roles. I find that more interesting to dissect.

Even today, the opposite view tends to be more common, i.e., the beliefs about women's proper places and roles. I find that more interesting to dissect.

I think that most feminist theory was agnostic about the nature v. nurture debate wrt the extent of the impact of 'nature'. But feminism isn't a monolith. Some strands of cultural and radical feminism (mainly in the US) argued that women were inherently more peaceful/nurturing than men and in fact that this made us better suited for leadership roles. And as above, most of us were sick and fucking tired of being told we could not do 'x' or 'y' because it was not in our nature as women. We were also sick and tired (as we still are) of being told that we are out of line if we are ambitious or say 'no' to men whereas men's entitlement and aggression are often overlooked. Socialisation into socially-constructed roles does not stop at the school gate on leaving day.

Apologies @MalagaNights for saying you weren’t arguing in good faith. I was frustrated but shouldn’t have made it personal. Thanks for the link. I think it’ll take me a while to read (and understand) it though as the language is quite hard going.

Also, for girls and women like me (not traditionally feminine in my disposition or interests) it is really frustrating to be told that women are naturally nurturing, or not career-oriented, or should be people-pleasers or whatever when this does not describe us and when we have gone through life being told we are 'weird'. Women who want to be conservative trad wives can go for it but as I said in a previous post don't assume that I want this or that many, many other women want it and don't shape the world around this assumption.

for saying you weren’t arguing in good faith

Malaga's mischaracterisation of feminism was highly offensive.

@MalagaNights I hope I'm not being obtuse but I still don't understand what it is that you think GC feminists and Money agree on when it comes to gender roles?
I get that you are concerned that we're being blind to the connection because noone likes to admit that their beliefs can lead to really bad outcomes, so that's why I say I don't want to be obtuse about this.
You've said a few times that you think GC feminists would use the David Reimer case as evidence for their beliefs about gender rôles if the experiment had "worked" - maybe if you could explain what you think the experiment working would have looked like it could help me understand?
From what I understand - and this is really distressing stuff, just a heads up, Money hoped to prove that you could discipline a male child in ways usually reserved for female children, and that child would grow up to believe that he was female. Part of that discipline involved sexual abuse because this is how Money believed females learned to be sexually submissive.
My belief, which I would describe as GC and feminist, is that no child should be disciplined to conform their behaviour to ideas about what is only appropriate for their sex.
I'll try to explain my understanding of the GC position from another angle. My parents raised me to fill the role appropriate to women in our religious community - in their words, I was to be a helpmeet for my (future) husband. All sorts of disciplining, shaping, conforming my behaviour, my very sense of self, to this outcome. It didn't work, any more than it worked when Money hoped to shape David Reimer into a docile, submissive person he himself, and everyone around him would believe, was a woman.

I think what you might be saying is that my GC feminism might tempt me to want to see experiments done in which girl children have male stereotypes imposed on them, or male children have female stereotypes imposed on them. Because then, if those girls grew up to be "manly" and those boys grew up to be "womanly" it would prove ... I'm not quite sure what.
I already know from my own life that attempts to raise a child to fulfill a certain gendered role as an adult don't always work. And I've seen with my own eyes that very often people who do conform to the roles they were raised to fill are suffering because of it.

All sorts of disciplining, shaping, conforming my behaviour, my very sense of self, to this outcome. It didn't work, any more than it worked when Money hoped to shape David Reimer into a docile, submissive person he himself, and everyone around him would believe, was a woman.

Yes, back in the day when second-wave feminists critiqued such socialisation and made the case for raising children without sex-role stereotypes we were accused of 'social engineering' but in fact, sex-role stereotypes are social engineering and are a major weapon of patriarchy.

I don’t agree with Malaga but personally I prefer to stick to arguing the point rather than remark on a person’s motivation. I still do not quite understand what the point is in this case.

I’ll have a go at explaining what I think Malaga was saying

Firstly I will start by saying that I went to a selective all girls school in the late 1970s. My I understanding of feminism at that time would have been derived from the Guardian’s women’s page and discussions at school. It did not involve reading any feminist texts and therefore I won’t be able to ascribe any of this to particular writers.

My other caveat is that this will be fri
a UK viewpoint. So given all that, the message we were given as young teens was women had been held back from any financial power and told their proper sphere was in the home. Anyone with a half a brain was driven suicidal with depression from the mundanity of child rearing and housework. We lucky girls were the first generation to be freed from this and we owed it to womankind to make the most of those opportunities.
So study science but never art. Defer child rearing until your 30s.
I was aware of the Money case so it must have been talked about widely at the time. Money presented it as a success of course and the interpretation but on it by what I will refer to as ‘popular feminism’ was that it showed that as children boys and girls were intellectually indistinguishable. Socialisation alone was the root of feminine traits. Therefore there was no reason why women should not be engineers, bankers, have a mortgage in their own name etc etc.

Well, yeah, actually I think gc views are kind of extreme when you get down to it, not many people actually believe that, they tend to be more moderate. But there was no shortage of fairly extreme feminist views in the 60s and 70s. Social constructivism was very big among academics and activists.

Even today, look at any thread about childcare, there are always people arguing that there is zero innate difference between women and men when it comes to interest in or suitability for childcare, or even that the hormonal differences aren't really relevant. Because they want to say that in order to have a non-sexist society, we need to completely balance the tendency for men and women to choose work vs childcare roles. And that's in the area that is probably more directly affected by biology than pretty much anything else we do.

That viewpoint grew out of the period when JM's research was seen as solid.

But there are two elements to the question of what this would mean, which it seems like people are really conflating, and they seem to be accusing Malaga of saying what I think it's pretty clear she isn't.

One is the "scientific" question, which is about things like nature or nurture, or what is socially constructed or not. Things that we can say are, theoretically, objectively true or not. They may be difficult to get at - we obviously have not solved the nature/nurture question. But whatever we think is the answer, how people function is a real thing.

There's also the question of what we should do about these things, which is a social moral issue, not a scientific one.

The gc view is that differerntiated behaviours and self-image as feminine or masculine is not innate to individuals. It is a set of stereotypes. Which JM's research seemed to confirm. It was hugely influential in the widespread adoption in society of the concept that there are not meaningful mental or innate psychological differences between men and women.

None of this means that people necessarily approved of his research methods (though mostly they were kept pretty in the dark.) Nor does it mean that they thought that he was right to think it was a good idea to impose socialization on anyone.

Most people seemed at the time to think that to some extent it was just inevitable that socialization would happen, though we could perhaps moderate it, but others felt this showed it was possible to just eliminate gendered socialization from society altogether if we wanted to. Which was very much what many feminists wanted to do.

And what Money claimed to show is precisely this - that sex roles are completely socially engineered.

The whole thing was seen as an unprecedented opportunity to control for genetics but change the social reinforcements. Twin studies were really popular and generated a ton of interest at that time because people were very interested on genetic influence.

It wasn't until much much later that people knew about the sexual abuse and general weirdness. Money did not put any of that in his papers. What he said was that all the socialization was just in the everyday home life, and that it was completely successful, and had produced a happy, well adjusted child. Textbooks were still repeating this into the 1990s.

Very well explained Demicolon. That’s my understanding of how the research was interpreted at the time.

@DemiColon

You seem to have a very specific idea about what 'the gc view' is, and it's not one I recognise. Where did you get this definition of what constitutes 'the gc view', and why do you believe that this is what all people who call themselves gender critical believe?

I have already said that I don't agree with your definition of what gender critical means. To me a brief description of its meaning is being critical of gender stereotypes being imposed on people (of both sexes) and not believing that people 'have' a gender (since 'gender' is something that is imposed on people by way of stereotyping). Other people here may have a different definition again.

You seem to think it is something else entirely. I'm not sure we can have a coherent discussion when you are using 'gender critical' to mean something completely different from what (I think) most other people here mean by this term.

It actually took me a long time to accept that there were differences between man and women that were probably based in biology. And note the probably that I had to insert in there as it still doesn’t sit comfortably with me.

It seems to me that Old Crone is asking would a GC feminist have supported Moneys work? Which is impossible to answer at GC feminism didn’t exist then. We can only observe what feminists in the 1960s and 70s thought of his work. I think that is the root of the confusion.

To a large extent it's what women on here say they mean by gender critical.

"Gender" as used by feminists means socially created ideas that are artificially attached to maleness and femaleness. That's very basic 2nd wave feminism.

And feminism has, especially on the more leftist side, tended to take a very broad view of what is imposed, rather than biological in origin. Really to the point, as YetAnotherSpartacus has shown, of thinking there are pretty much NO generalizations that can be made about men and women as a class.

Not just that these shouldn't be imposed, but that they are not real emergent phenomena.

This is why social inequities (say workforce distribution) are interpreted as being evidence of imposed stereotypes rather than emergent differences.

So you see the discussion for example of the fact that very egalitarian countries tend to have a greater split in the workforce between male and female dominated professions. We've had that plenty of times on this board. And the gc position is always dominated by the claim that this is somehow due to gender stereotyping that is just very subtle.

The other interpretation that you will see people make is that this may be due to real differences in male and female interests that manifest at the population level - so when people have a lot of freedom to choose their work based on their interests, you see this division emerge more strongly than in places where choices tend to reward male dominated sectors more.

Which is a common POV in the wider population, but gc feminists typically will say that it is a conservative, non-feminist way of thinking, because it posits sex based (by which I mean biologically rooted) differences in behaviour/thinking/choices on a population level. The corollary of that is that the feminist position rejects these kind of emergent sex-based differences.

It's not just about imposing the stereotype, it's about thinking that the stereotype is in no way an accurate description of male and female at a population level.

No, that's not what I'm saying. It was just that DemiColon seems to have her own interpretation of what 'gc' means, and it seems to be completely different from the way most people use the term here.

This thread seems to have gone off on a really odd derail focussing on what may or may not have been in the minds of some people in the 60s and 70s who may or may not have been feminists. I have no interest in that discussion but I do object to another poster saying 'This is what gc feminists believe and therefore if you are a gc feminist you must also believe this.' Especially when what gc feminists are supposed to believe according to this poster bears little resemblance to my understanding of what gc feminists believe.

Reading this post it seems that we possibly agree more than was apparent from your previous posts, although I'm still not sure about the accuracy of your generalisation about what 'gc feminists typically will say'.

If we look at one statistic which shows a huge difference between the sexes, I don't think you'd find a lot of disagreement that this difference is innate. About 90% of violent crime is committed by men. This is the UK statistic, but I think you'll find a similar pattern everywhere in the world. It seems unlikely that this is a learned behaviour, so it seems to be an innate predisposition in males to be more violent (at a population level) than females.

But what this doesn't mean is that all men are violent (most are not violent criminals). It doesn't mean that no women are violent (they make up about 10% of the violent criminal population, so obviously some women are violent). But if you wanted to extract a stereotype from this you could say that men are violent and women are not.

Any attribute could be divided up in this way - being caring and nurturing, being competitive, being artistic, being adventurous... But it would be wrong to say that because, for example, 90% of the most caring and nurturing people are female, that all female people are like that or no male people are. That's stereotyping. It is possible to recognise differences at a population level while also recognising that these are diverse populations with both men and women being represented in all categories. And it doesn't really matter whether the attribute has been learned via socialisation or if it is innate. People shouldn't be forced into stereotypical boxes.

A woman who doesn't feel in the least bit nurturing and caring shouldn't be told that there is something wrong with her for not complying with the stereotype. Similarly for a male who is nurturing and caring.

Being against stereotypes being forced on people says nothing about why those stereotypes exist or whether there are innate differences between the sexes at a population level. That is a different question entirely and has nothing to do with the rejection of stereotyping which is at the heart of being critical of the concept of 'gender'.

If we look at one statistic which shows a huge difference between the sexes, I don't think you'd find a lot of disagreement that this difference is innate. About 90% of violent crime is committed by men. This is the UK statistic, but I think you'll find a similar pattern everywhere in the world. It seems unlikely that this is a learned behaviour, so it seems to be an innate predisposition in males to be more violent (at a population level) than females.

But what this doesn't mean is that all men are violent (most are not violent criminals). It doesn't mean that no women are violent (they make up about 10% of the violent criminal population, so obviously some women are violent). But if you wanted to extract a stereotype from this you could say that men are violent and women are not.

But there are cultural variations and we don't know what would happen in a culture where violence (esp. against women) was frowned upon and properly punished and where the 'boys will be boys excuse' is not tolerated. Maybe (probably) sex-related differences would still exist but those arguing from nature would contend that there is scope to mitigate some aspects, extremes and manifestations of men's violence and that this is a good thing.

Exactly the point oldcrone 🙌

I've listened to the podcast that Malaga linked up thread in which JP and Dr Miriam Grossman discuss John Money's ideas around gender and gender identity.

I can't imagine how Malaga listened to this podcast and concluded that the gender critical view of gender in any way aligns with John Money's view. I have never seen anyone on Mumsnet espouse JM's view of gender.

Dr MG said that JM used the term "gender identity"; that gender is completely separate from biology and that it is a person's identity as male or female. His theory is that "male" and "female" is something that is socially constructed and foisted on a baby by society and that it is unrelated to biology. He said that males and females had biological distinctions but they are limited to menstruating, gestating and lactating and that was it. Aside from those three things everything else in terms of personality and preferences for activities or cognitive abilities, emotional styles, perceptions etc. are all socially constructed within the first 2.5 to 3 years of life and then after 3 years of age it's fixed. He opened the first clinic for people with DSDs (Dr MG calls hermaphrodites) so that they could be treated surgically for sex reassignment (castration). His view was that a boy can be raised as a girl and a girl can be raised as a girl if it is done early enough. Early enough means before the age of 2 or 3. This would involve giving a little boy a girls name and putting him in girls dresses and give him dolls and raise him as a girl. Plus the child should never ever know about what was done to him.

I would describe myself as loosely gender critical in that I believe that biological sex is real, that it is immutable and that it matters. I also believe that women should not be constrained by gendered expectations that society places on us on the basis of our sex.

I do not agree that distinctions between the sexes are limited to menstruation, lactation and gestation. I do not believe in gender identity in any form whether or not innate or something that has been implanted into a child at a young age by society. I do not believe that raising girls means putting them in frilly dresses and giving them dolls and teaching them to cook. I don't believe it's a good idea to lie to children about being male or female.

There are perhaps some overlaps with JM and some feminists who view all gendered behaviours (outside of pregnancy etc.) as a social construction and a result of social conditioning. I can remember disagreeing with someone on this at some point in the past but I don't know how mainstream this view was / is because I haven't read a great deal about the history of feminism.

I wonder if a lot of the confusion in this thread is because people are using different definitions of gender. The word is now so confusing and so complex it seems hard to have a conversation without getting in a muddle.

Louise Perry and Helen Joyce touch on the idea that trans activism has has a transformative effect on feminist thinking because it’s forced feminists into recognising how important biology actually is. And that feminist refusal to accept this may have helped pave the way for Trans Ideology. I know this idea is a bit controversial but it kind of makes some sense to me.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yzOFNtnYKlA

Perhaps it wasn't clear, but I didn't mean to imply that none of this difference between the sexes was due to social factors, just that there appears to be a significant biological component. I think this is likely because males in many other species are also more aggressive than females.

The point I was trying to make is that as far as stereotyping is concerned it doesn't really matter whether the difference is innate or due to social factors. What is important is that if it is not a universal trait, which is only due to biology, suggesting that everyone of one sex should behave in a certain way is stereotyping. It's the stereotyping which is the problem, and whether this stems from innate or learned differences between the sexes is irrelevant.

That is really clear now, Old Crone, and I agree totally.

I also don’t think we can know which traits are biological and which are nurtured. I also recognise what Helen Joyce and Louise Perry are saying and I’m actually quite wary of the ‘biological turn’ in modern feminism - But that’s a different topic.

I’m pleased that feminists have not bought into the whole pink and blue brains rubbish though.