Dr. Money And The Boy With No Penis
What determines our gender identity? Is it written into our genetic code at the moment of conception, or can it be instilled during infancy? Does gender neutrality really exist?
This is the tragic story of a boy whose penis was burned beyond surgical repair during a circumcision attempt, and a psychologist specializing in the biology of gender who set out to prove that gender identity is nurtured rather than innate.
When Bruce Reimer was 8 months old, he and his twin brother were diagnosed with phimosis. The were both referred for circumcision. Unfortunately for Bruce, the electric equipment doctors were using for his surgery malfunctioned. The distraught parents took their son to Dr. John Money, a pioneer in the field of sexual development at the time. At Dr. Money’s recommendation, Bruce started sex reassignment, and he became Brenda. It was unsuccessful. Despite the many hormone treatments and surgeries he went through, and the “John/Joan case” papers Dr. Money’s published claiming otherwise, Brenda never identified as female. In later interviews, he would say he never felt female and was even teased in school. By the time he reached 13, Brenda was threatening his parents with suicide if they ever made him see Dr. Money again.
At age 14, Brenda decided to assume a male gender identity and he became David Reimer. In 1997, in a move which would cause Dr. Money’s studies to come under intense criticism from the scientific community, he decided to go public with his story.
In 2002, David’s twin brother, Brian, died from an overdose on drugs used to treat his schizophrenia- apparently Dr. Money’s therapy sessions with both boys had left him psychologically scarred as well. Two years later, David Reimer himself committed suicide.
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what a shocking and disturbing story!
R.I.P David and Brian
I want to wish their family,mother and dad,and friends all the strenth they need to overcome this horrible and needless loss!
Tamara from the Netherlands
UNBELIEVABLE!!
how sad!!
I feel very sad for David and Brian. Their lives were destroyed by one man’s ambition, Dr. Money.
Ricardo from Mexico.
I think that after the accident there were only two things to do:
1) Wait for him to grow up, DON’T castrate him and THEN do a reconstructive genitalia surgery… Then everything would have turned out just fine.
2) If I was his father and I would knew this would happen, I would probably end it right there.
Just how much suffering and pain a faulty electrical equipment has caused, it is just unbelievable.
What a very sad tale. Dr. Money is nothing less than a monster who attempted to control nature at the expense of destroying several lives. He refused to give up on his theories even when proven wrong and still attempted to make a profit off of his experimental subjects who he obviously forgot were human beings. The fact that his colleagues are willing to defend him do nothing yet show an example of professional loyalty lacking in any kind of ethics. The excuse that “they” did not know any better back in the 1970s is a weak defense that any with a brain would not accept. Nature cannot be controlled, nor can it be changed by mere humans.
My heart goes out to the family who was harmed and devastated by Dr. Money’s experiment. May their story be told as often as it takes for something like this to never happen again. I sincerely hope that Dr. Money is paying, (in some way), for the horror he caused as he is truly a disgusting specimen of a human being.
At the same time, the CIA was paying a guy named Dr. Robert Heath at Tulane University to perform electroshock therapies on gay men’s brains in the assumption that it would make them heterosexual. It didn’t.
This is how most medical knowledge gets to be real knowledge – through the errors of past generations. Everything we know cannot work is so because someone else in the past commited a mistake or, at worst, someone died.
Sad as it may sound, being aware of this basic fact of life should inspire some respect for the knowledge gained this way, to hold responsibility for what we know.
My true condolences to the family of the twins. Though they may not know it yet, they are a very real part of medical history.
As to the Dr. in charge of those experiments, I do not believe someone could want his research to be a failure. Though he is personally responsible, he cannot be blamable in a time when Scientific knowlege knew no better. As hard as it may seem, it is through his mistake that we know his theory is not valid. He is also part of history.
Nice to see that all those “NAZI SCIENTISTS TAKEN DURING OPERATION PAPERCLIP” were put to good use, some even continued their twisted experiments on baby twins, with the blessing of the public, how gullible have folk become, I am not surprised child abuse is rife, put a white coat on some man with a degree and he is given free reign to do as he pleases.
Money and his ilk were the product of feminist indoctrination, particularly the ideology that gender is fluid and ‘socially constructed.’ These agenda-driven maniacs, as we should all know by now, have permeated academics & still to this very day propagate this vile nonsense in many courses such as gender studies, women’s studies, & they even infiltrate other courses with their drivel. Sadly, this dishonest pseudo-academic bilge is accepted and funded even at the college level & whole departments have been created to support it.
I had a professor who tried to teach that gender is fluid & socially constructed in a biology-based psychology course about the endocrine system & human behavior. I also got thrown out for protesting with evidence to the contrary. the teacher later showed the class a film about lady-boys in Thailand! When she asked the class what they thought about it, the class remained silent, too afraid to be honest & more concerned with their grades to take a stand. I spoke my mind & was called a homophone, a bigot & a misogynist in not so many words. This is the culture we live in today.
‘Dr.’ Money, on top of everything else, was a pedophile, and had his subject do things to each other for his titillation. There is no doubt in my mind that this filthy scoundrel molested them as well. Yet to this day, people seem to be afraid to stand up to these shyster, charlatans, & depraved scoundrels. Why? Because the NOW & other such organizations will stamp their feet and march on the streets & threaten the politicians as their constituencies. So we do nothing and the harm & lies continue.
Just look around you & take in the reality of society today, in very large part thanks to second, third, & now fourth-wave feminism. The future looks bleak. When politics & agenda0driven ideology take precedence over academics, science, evidence, logic and reason, we are all in trouble. Big trouble.
don’t throw all the feminists in the same basket, if the feminists has something to do with it anyways. john money wasn’t a feminist or an advanced man. he had a god’s complex and he couldn’t or did not want to see the evidence, the true before his eyes, … this happens in all knowledge fields, in politics, in families, … and the discussion about our sexuality has no ended. it is certain that we have between us a diversity, preferences and desires though these cannot be imposed. (…)
Ok feminism is not bad. Calling them “lady boys” is bigoted. ‘Nuff said.
Feminism allows for women to actually follow their dreams beyond HAVING to be a baby making factory. Feminism gave women the choice to decide if they wanted a career instead of having to pop out babies.
Dr. Money was not a feminist he was a radical psychologist in a period when people knew very little about gender studies, biological or psychological. Gender is a complicated thing. There are societal constructs such as women are incapable of fending for themselves, or that women like shopping.; then there is men like sports and men hate shopping. There are transvestites who are heterosexual, intersex individuals, “butch” straight women, feminine gay men, and everything in between. This period was one of discovery, and unfortunately Dr.Money’s “experiment” went horribly wrong. He thought he could teach David how to be a girl when his mind was masculine, heterosexual, and male oriented. He was working within the scope of sexuality and gender being learned…and he was wrong resulting in two men losing their normal childhood, and two parents feeling guilt for the rest of their days.
Studies have sown amniotic fluid often affects how people develop, whether they have certain characteristics, and interests. btw
“Lady boys” is indeed the proper term for this group of trans* women in Thailand – it’s not a pejorative!
WHAT???
MEN took over medicine thousands of years ago (wrested from the capable hands of women), a MALE doctor burned the poor baby’s genitals, a MALE doctor tormented, bullied and molested these 2 little children, and you dare to say it’s the fault of WOMEN?
I cannot publish the opinion I have for you, but be assured, it is lower than low.
You don’t understand how the system works, no-body is saying its the fault of a woman, the argument is against feminism, thought up by men and woman of an oppressive system to keep us devided, that way we keep our eyes off what “they” are doing.
they called you a homophone? of what?
Ha!
Interesting premise, considering that in 1964 there was little ‘feminist indoctrination’ because the movement had few feminist theorists at that time. Money was working on solving the ancient conundrum of nurture -v- nature, not proving some feminist idea. That he failed is due to the flaw in his theory.
the fact that gender is socially constructed is now accepted as medical, psychological, biological and social fact, so your professor was not trying to indoctrinate you, merely educate you.
Did you watch this documentary?, because you say the complete opposite of what was actually achieved. then again that’s feminism to a tee, hand pick certain statistics or blatantly lie. “The fact that gender is socially constructed is now accepted as medical, psychological and biological and social fact. this statement alone shows that you have been indoctrinated by the lies. You seem to truly believe what you are saying, that makes you as bad as this pedo psychopath, “Money”.
There’s something not right with the thinking behind all of this, from a fundamental level. The thinking that all that makes a man a man is whether he has a penis or not, is both shallow and above all naïve, there has definitely been an attempt to “downgrade” the working class man (I leave the rich out of this, as most rich men, and rich women, appear to have 20 odd year old “very compliant, barbie doll looking females on their arms”, but we are not supposed to question that, PC only effects the lower classes…FACT). Lessons in schools are geared more towards the females, devide and conquer, works every-time.
YES…this has been going on WAY TOO LONG…!! It’s the breakdown of society…the chipping away of any normative standards.
This is one of the saddest and most disturbing stories I have heard about but I would say a couple things:
1) Dr. Money shouldn’t be demonized too much. Sure he is guilty of confirmation bias, and there should have been more oversight, but you must understand nature v nurture is a timeless question in psychology and there was reason to believe Money’s theory held. In his own mind he would have believed that what he was doing would give the greatest chance for the highest possible life quality for David. His methods were questionable, but really the biggest problem with Dr. Money was that he was so sure about something he was actually wrong about, and the result was incalculable harm. This is a natural human error and not due to some intentional evil, and that’s usually how the most awful things happen in the world. The worst things are almost invariably done by well intentioned people.
2) 60,000 dollars for destroying someone’s penis is woefully inadequate compensation.
3) The parents have probably suffered almost as much as David did.
4) When his wife needed separation, he read between the lines and new she was leaving, and he also knew he’d never be able to find anyone else because of the hand he had been dealt.
5) Even the way David killed himself was indicative of a male.
6) Losing your penis in infancy would have a much more dramatic effect on your life than losing it in early adulthood.
7) By not telling David his true biological identity, much more harm was caused to his psyche.
8) On the fill in the blank sheet David’s response is “the future IS bad,” not “the future LOOKS bad,” as the narrator says. They probably made the change without giving it much thought to reflect proper English and make the narration flow better, but the truth is there is a difference in meaning between those two sentences. Saying the future looks bad is a prediction about your expectations, which can be changed. Saying the future is bad is stating a fact. If David used the word “is” instead of the word “looks” then he is saying (and I tend to agree) that no matter what nothing can be done to change the future.
It is all very, very sad indeed.
Maybe you should reassess your own mindset, having watched the documentary( I take it you did) you still feel the need to defend a pedophile?
Doctor John Money was a documented pedophile. In fact his own documents state that he had the twins engage in sex play in his office, and he snapped polaroids. David (Brenda, nee Bruce) and Brian Reimer later spoke of it, albeit reluctantly and with great discomfort. That this pervert was not only allowed to live free, but to be quoted in nearly every psychology and sociology text book for over 40 years, shows how easy it is for an entire academic community to become completely morally bankrupt. He ruined lives to satisfy his own confused sexual predilections, and for that alone he should be demonized.
oh for heavens sake, NO he was not a documented pedophile. that is just a conclusion drawn by someone exposed to way too much of the sex panics of the 80s & 90s & 00s &, unfortunately, now too. i hate to tell you this but the naked photography you think he engaged in pedophilically is a common technique used in all sorts of healthcare situations, from sexology through cosmetic surgery. more.
the truth of john money was not that he was trying to exploit anyone but that, instead, he was a radical sexologist–one of the earliest to treat anyone not heteronormative as a person instead of an illness–& was doing the best he could to mend this case’s unfixable horrors. i wonder, i really do, what people think they wouldve done differently in the late 60s.
the fact that Dr. Money showed these images to a child of 7 years old is not disturbing to you?????? the fact that none of this was documented in the transcripts yet there are two witnesses who speak otherwise, does not prove this guy was an improfessional, warped, sadistic, diabolical, disgusting excuse for a human does not raise any flags to you as a pedophile????? Wow…….
Money was blinded by the thought that he would make medical/psychological history. Here was the ‘ultimate’ chance to dissect the nature-v-nurture debate and the Reimers were exploited for Money’s own ambition. Society was so conflicted about homosexuality that these ‘tests’ using sexual questions and some pictures were frequently applied in order to determine a child’s tendencies toward gayness in order to intervene, and unfortunately not unusual. The colossal ignorance of this experiment lies in the assumption that without a penis, a child couldn’t be a man and therefore must be relegated to being a woman, defined, of course, as merely a man without a penis.
Do a little research before you speak in a condescending way toward others-he was an ADVOCATE of pedophilia. He said as long as both partners-the child and the adult-were willing, then it was fine. He called it affectionate pedophilia.
As for your last paragraph-how can you say he was treating this child as a person?? That is laughable. Given what we know, that is about the LAST thing he did. He treated David as his meal ticket, he saw dollar signs and fame in that poor child, never a person. He continued to publish-even for years after David stopped going to see him-that this was a success when it was VERY clear it was not. He was not making the best of a bad situation. That would be not exploiting this child and reporting the truth, even if it meant he would have very little notoriety.
That fact that anyone would defend this monster given all that we know makes me sick to my stomach.
Brilliantly said, I am with you, I despair at the folk coming on here and defending this monster, disgusting.
The fact of the matter is… it happened in 1965! The fact that people are arguing about it shows that it was a radical idea AT THE TIME. Because of his “work” we now understand more about nature vs. nurture. Looking back at Stanley Milgram’s shock experiment and the outcome of that is ridiculous, it left people emotionally scarred and is the reason we have a code of ethics NOW.
I’m not saying that what he did was right or wrong, but what he did contributed to our knowledge in psychology even if it was at the expense of a family’s life. everything we do as people has consequences, but hindsight is always 20/20.
What do we understand? That a male is attracted to the female, and vise versa, because of Nature? We know it, since the beginning of times. What are you implying is, that it’s a legitimate experiment to cut a hunting dog’s 4 legs, order him to fetch the shot pray, -and as he doesn’t move come to the undisputed conclusion that a dog without legs is deaf.
What do he contributed? That a male is attracted to the female, and vise
versa, because of Nature? We know it, since the beginning of times. What
are you implying is, that it’s a legitimate experiment to cut a hunting
dog’s 4 legs, order him to fetch the shot pray, -and as he doesn’t move,
come to the undisputed conclusion that a dog without legs is deaf.
Keep deluding yourself, and jimmy saville was just a childrens entertainer?, of course this so called doctor was a pedophile, that much is obvious. As for the surgery, Why not wait till the boy got a bit older ,then do reconstructive surgery?, Oh no, that was never gonna happen here because it was an experiment to satisfy another “scientist/doctor’s” pathetic ego, these people have no regard for human life at all. Taking pictures of children naked, then hiding the pictures so not even the parents could see. This “thing” was just another psycho with a degree.
You are a complete idiot.
Money believed that affectional paedophilia was about love and not sex.
If I were to see the case of a boy aged ten or eleven who’s intensely erotically attracted toward a man in his twenties or thirties, if the relationship is totally mutual, and the bonding is genuinely totally mutual … then I would not call it pathological in any way.[15][16]
Anyone who supports this twisted man has to have been violated by someone. I’m sorry for you and your victims.
He made them perform sex acts before him, and was he not a pedophile?
I am beginning to think that the “only” way you can get ahead in this sick system, is to be a that way inclined, sick to death of hearing about weirdo’s abusing their position of power, and nothing ever gets done.
This is so very sad and tragic.
I am very impressed by David’s inner strength, when even as a child he is being bullied by adults. What an amazing spirit.
Why does the documentary focus only on Dr Money? What about the criminal who botched the circumcision? THERE is the real culprit – the murderer of two healthy little boys.
The circumcisions were medically necessary, (or at least, honestly thought to be necessary) not aesthetic like in other cases. Doctors make mistakes, we don’t consider them criminals based on that alone.
Convenient mistake was it not?, most doctors couldn’t give a damn about patients, it took 5 doctors just to work out that I was getting side effects from some medication I was taking, and that was only after I looked it up on the web first and mentioned it, they are crap, mostly in it for the money and to push dangerous, unnecessary drugs onto patients, in order to profit from the pharmaceutical companies, if you are a doctor yourself? you will already no this.
the circumcision process they used was cauterization. it was botched but they had no way to know this would happen. consider the time. they had new equipment and made mistakes. yes, it was tragic but to put blame on him for more than what he did is not right. dr. money chose to do what he did and david’s parents also chose to do more after the fact. lay blame in the correct places and not reach for straws.
The doctors had no way to know their equipment would fail, but there is a better procedure out there. Foreskins can be CUT off, not BURNED off. We’ve been doing it for about 4000 years and, to the best of my knowledge, it NEVER resulted in amputation of the penis (other surgical complications can occur, but very rarely).
They need to stop circumcision altogether. It’s pointless and barbaric. Nothing short of mutilation. I don’t care how long it’s been going on. It’s only Jews, Muslims and Americans. Go figure……..
As a surgical RN of 30 years, I can say definitely that the Dr. performing the circumcision–on a tiny newborn, for God sakes, clearly did not have adequate training or experience with cautery to be using it as he/she did. They used to strap those little babes down to a “circ-board” & with NO anesthetic whatsoever, cut on those tiny penises. The newborn would writhe & scream, turning crimson. I remember saying as a young Nurse, “This seems terribly cruel”, to which the Obstetrician-(not a urologist or surgeon) replied “He’ll never remember it”. I then said “He knows it right now.” There is NO excuse for using equipment that the Dr. is not adequately trained to use. It is the Dr’s responsibility to “First Do NO Harm”, but, the ego most often ran the show.
The Dr. should have been sued and definitely would have been if that had been a grown man’s penis.
Why did he insist that the experiment was a success when he knew very well that it wasn’t? So you won’t be famous for proving a theory that nurture trumps nature; you can still be famous for proving that nature indeed does matter to some extent. I don´t understand why it was so vital to him that nature be seen as unimportant. What does he gain from that?
because then he’d have to say that he was wrong. My understanding of Money is that he had a huge ego and was quite a bastard to argue with. He had held on to his argument for too long – convinced he was right – to back down, or pull away from the facts and continued in a haze of ‘scientific bias’. In the end, he said he wouldn’t pull out of his belief, and if proven wrong it didn’t matter because (in his words) “I’ll be dead by then”.
Whether this experience is implausible remains unreplicable, meaning that it may not be the same for other patients. In my opinion, having a boy without a penis is even more terrible than being made a girl against one’s wish. If we let this case make undermine our effort, it is terrible.
“Having a boy without a penis is more terrible than being made a girl against ones wish”, This shows the kind of warped psychotic deluded thinking that some weirdo’s obviously have. These kinds of so called scientists are as bad as the scum Nazi’s who did experiments on baby twins, and sicko’s like you defend them, you are a coward and probably have little to no regard for human life. Its also sad that there was some other weirdo out there to thumb your twisted comment up.
Well thank you! I was really beginning to think, no one was left alive who had a brain, or an ounce of courage, or single drop of concern for children.
The only problem is, we’re pretty much considered lunatic for having those qualifiers in our character makeup?
If you’re not of the opinion that life has no meaning if you aren’t having five or more orgasms a day, starting the moment your baby sized 1 month old hand accidentally brisks by your genitals, then, your not only, not normal, but you have “no right” in participating in the “progress” of society!
Here’s a brief example of one reality of thousands, I’ve researched . . Truncated and wrapped in sarcastic TRUTH, It goes sort of like this: you know, some (always ugly) feminist, who earned “psyche and religious” certificates at Harvard and elsewhere, by exchanging sexual favors with other perverts, (professors) and (somewhere in the mix, got pregnant, either by a willing male homosexual – who had a temporary relapse – or by an otherwise nice guy who was deceived and later dumped when his sperm was no longer needed,) – whew, an ugly lesbian mother LIKE THAT, who also carries a covert but passionate hate for children, at one time or another, got a picture of her son accidentally brushing his penis, which of course, meant she discovered her 1 month old son is CLEARLY! – homosexual – or, perhaps, needs to have his male biological systems stopped so he can be reversed after his mental mama the ugly but well educated lesbian finishes brainwashing him for 14 years or so, and actually convinces him he was born in a mistake of a body. The child, now 19 or so, most likely on psyche meds. hormones, and a plethora of HIV meds, occasionally needing a fist full of other antibiotics to thwart new, untreatable tuberculosis etc.,- has all sorts of suicidal desires, spends 14 hours a day telling everyone “it gets better” on “its” blog, and democrats steer every one to his site and tell us, “‘it’ is a product of their successes!” Meanwhile, each and every working person, has pennies from each pay check, stripped from their checks, to pay for each one of these successes, society, as a whole is crumbling all around us, and we ask these people, to keep making things better for us. Hmmmm, I just can’t figure out why the heck things are the way they are? With all these fabulous “gay” people controlling every thing, and dictating all our laws, we should be exploding in miraculous economic and social wonderfulness!
Oh my god. This is sickening how Dr. Money treated those poor boys. He didn’t even view them as human. So sad.
I wouldn’t consider this in any way, shape or form “the best they could do in the ’60’s”
A gripping documentary. I feel disgusted by the actions of Dr Money. Surely a reputable scientist would not try to validate a theory using only one case example. That’s inductive reasoning at its worst. And then, when it became clear that Bruce/Brenda did not identify as a girl after all, he ignored the evidence and clung to his deluded theory with tragic results.
Guys! Let’s calm down for second and think as Doctor/Researcher. You should take difficult decisions as doctor and risks as researcher. In this case his theory and reputation was at risk at the cost of psychological trauma for kids. But yes, you will learn from success/failure of experiment. I would agree with John Money’s method at that time and not to mention Genitalia and secondary sexual features are things kids learn to distinguish gender. Photography is common practice in Medical research!
At what age did you join NAMBLA?
Is anyone left alive
who has a brain, an ounce of courage, or single drop of concern for
children?
The problem is, we’re pretty much considered lunatic for having those qualifiers in our character makeup?
If
you’re not of the opinion that life has no meaning if you aren’t having
five or more orgasms a day, starting the moment your baby sized 1 month
old hand accidentally brisks by your genitals, then, your not only, not
normal, but you have “no right” in participating in the “progress” of
society!
Here’s a brief example of one reality of thousands, I’ve
researched . . Truncated and wrapped in sarcastic TRUTH, It goes sort of
like this: you know, some (always ugly) feminist, who earned “psyche
and religious” certificates at Harvard and elsewhere, by exchanging
sexual favors with other perverts, (professors) and (somewhere in the
mix, got pregnant, either by a willing male homosexual – who had a
temporary relapse – or by an otherwise nice guy who was deceived and
later dumped when his sperm was no longer needed,) – whew, an ugly
lesbian mother LIKE THAT, who also carries a covert but passionate hate
for children, at one time or another, got a picture of her son
accidentally brushing his penis, which of course, meant she discovered
her 1 month old son is CLEARLY! – homosexual – or, perhaps, needs to
have his male biological systems stopped so he can be reversed after his
mental mama the ugly but well educated lesbian finishes brainwashing
him for 14 years or so, and actually convinces him he was born in a
mistake of a body. The child, now 19 or so, most likely on psyche meds.
hormones, and a plethora of HIV meds, occasionally needing a fist full
of other antibiotics to thwart new, untreatable tuberculosis etc.,- has
all sorts of suicidal desires, spends 14 hours a day telling everyone
“it gets better” on “its” blog, and democrats steer every one to his
site and tell us, “‘it’ is a product of their successes!” Meanwhile,
each and every working person, has pennies from each pay check, stripped
from their checks, to pay for each one of these successes, “resulting in TRILLIONS being robbed and blown on ‘theories’ like Money’s” and society as a
whole is crumbling all around us, and we ask these people, to keep
making things better for us.
Hmmmm, I just can’t figure out why the heck
things are the way they are? With all these fabulous “gay” people
controlling every thing, and dictating all our laws, we should be
exploding in miraculous economic and social wonderfulness!
I hope this fraud “Dr” Money is rotting in hell somewhere.
he died in 2006. I must say I believe he is definitely rotting somewhere that is for sure. It is just a shame he was able to live to 84 years old.
This man lived his whole life feeding his evil appetites. How sad for the lives he destroyed-how horrible that people let him get away with it.
In an insane ironic twist, 4 years before he entered into his self-titled role as sexologist who would argue the nurture argument for thirty years, Money had written his dissertation based on studies of over 250 intersexual, micropenis, and hermaphrodite patients in which he argued that: left unaltered, these people “not only made an ‘adequate adjustment’ to life, but lived in a way virtually indistinguishable from people without genital differences”.
WHAT on earth made him change his mind? There is little comment on it.
Source: application to Widener Library at Harvard University. Senior Dissertation to the college’s Ph.D program in 1951. John Money (thank you John Colapinto)
I have been lead to this site by a comment on a very similar case http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/06/07/sissy.boy.experiment/index.html
I believe that extreme scientific positions in psychology and inhumane treatments come often from Aspergers. Freud for example assists his dear colleague Fließ in his failed nose surgery on Emma Eckstein (both probably on cocaine) and wants a belly surgery on his eldest daughter in order to cure them from hysteria, talks to his future wife of a disposition for “neurasthenia” in his father s family (with one family member having a hydrocephalus and two others being institutionalized at the age of 19 and 20), makes interesting remarks on the weirdness of his children and has a grandson who is diagnosed with autism (painter Lucian Freud). Take a look at the memories of Simone de Beauvoir pupil-lover Bianca Lambin or at Skinner s baby box (http://io9.com/5946822/did-bf-skinner-really-put-babies-into-boxes ), bearing in mind that many autists are hypersensitive towards loud sounds and stitching clothes.
In many of these sad cases where kids are involved it is their parents to have taken the initiative, and I guess that often they are on the spectrum, too, together with their kids: the dullness with which the mother speaks (and her son Brian) seems a little bit too heavy for my liking, and schizophrenia, the illness Brian got diagnosed with, is closely linked to autism as is the term Asperger to both high-giftedness and psychopathy. Still I think it is very courageous of these parents to talk openly about their change of mind in public. (BTW this is quite typic for Aspergers to do so.)
As for the sexual particularities of some autists, see the publications of Prof. Michael Fitzgerald (on necrophilia;
“Young, Violent and Dangerous to Know”) and Tony Attwood/Isabel Henault (“Autism, Sexuality and the Law”).
I am not saying that all people on the autism spectrum are monsters, most can be really very affectionate and have very interesting ways to see the world, but they do have a big problem with cognitive empathy (see Adam Smith) and society has an even bigger problem with recognizing and accepting their differences, and this mix leads with a certain likeliness to people that are pretty weird. So there is a need to warn against a particular kind of autists, in particular the ones best at “Pretending to be normal” (Liane Holliday Willey) and at putting on what Tony Attwood calls an “Aspergian Mask”, because they often manage to make their “Aspergian faulty logic” to prevail in those areas they feel particularly attracted to (psychology/psychatry and the juridic system).
Circumcision kills. This proves it.
What kind of a monster cuts a child’s penis ? ”Oh it went wrong and we cut off his whole penis instead of just the tip” ….Insanity. Pure insanity.
The monster is called a “mohel.” He uses a ca. 4000-yr-old technique that, to the best of my knowledge, NEVER resulted in amputation of the penis. If you’ve ever been to a brit milah (Jewish circumcision), you will know that it is impossible to cut the penis off with that technique. If poor David’s doctors had CUT off the foreskin instead of trying to BURN it off, this tragedy would not have occurred.
I was born the same way kinda lol they told me for years I was both, then it find out it was lies , they just couldn’t fix me and had to make me a female ! Ahhhhh not wonder I never understood my momor my sister!but also now see why my dad left to, no excuss , but he did!. Either way we are born they NEED to leave us alone until WE!!! Find out who we want to be. Either way, we already got a majore issue to walk throu in life, and it’s no shoes I would wish on any one. But I would also understand there pain from birth and learn to deal with it . Life can suck no matter what the problem. Just gotta keep on moving . But lies and and head games ? No we can live with out . That just made it harder for me to accept it and move on. Lies for 30 years. And now I know? They allll walked away , every one but my grandma. My best friend in the world. With out her? It’s really gonna suck. But that’s part of life ,, right??
What were his parents point of view of the experiment, did they let the issue slide? They weren’t involved at all…
Just read through most of the comments here and I think this discussion is missing the real damage done by Money. Because of the work he did at John Hopkins Hospital, especially with intersex children, he set the standard of treatment by most western hospitals. For years doctors were obsessed with convincing parents to FIX the gender of intersex children quickly – largely because of this theory that gender can be changed in the first 18 months.
I ran a support service for trans people for 5 years and we had to support many victims of this policy. One I remember was born hermaphrodite – both testies and ovaries – so the doctor said to the stepfather “Its got both so what do you want – a boy or a girl?” He decided boy and then bullied the child to be a boy. Forced male stereotyping, testosterone injections, regular surgery – all this despite it becoming obviour that her gender identity was female. Eventually she was told the truth about what had happened at age 35 and started gender reassignment but it was already too late – the psychological damage was already done. If they had waited until the child showed gender preference – at about 3 -5 years old – they could have got this right and today she would not be living in a secure mental health unit.
That is just one of the heart wrenching stories I could tell. What makes me angry is that it was clear very early that this theory that gender identity is the result of nurture not nature never had any real evidential support – but because it had huge academic support from some very vocal radical feminists like Germaine Greer and Janis Raymond they were able to continue to promote it. The radical feminist movement needed this to be true and so defended it even when it was obvious it was not – it was also supported by anti-gay organistations like NARTH and the Clarke Institute in Toronto who used it to support their claims to be able to cure homosexuality.
This is John Money’s legacy – thousands of peoples lives destroyed and still being damaged by people who continue to hang on to his destructive theories despite the evidence to the contrary. So the more that can be done to discredit him and his work the better. Rikki Arundel http://www.genderspeaker.com
Ironic his name was “Dr Money”
What a tragic story.
This is transgender history something very much celebrated in the West
Is he a transvestite, transgender, or transexual?
This is tragic and enraging. This boys’ life was ruined and totally unnecessarily. He was circumcised as a result of a faulty diagnosis- it is very rare for an infant to have a true case of phimosis since the foreskin is fused to the glans until later in boyhood or adolescent. One of nature’s brilliant tactics to keep the glans clean and protected until the boy is old enough to wash himself. Now this story has become a broadway play and the plot summary states that his genital loss was the result of an “accident”. Hopefully this play will generate discussion about the barbarity of circumcision as well as genital reassignment of minor children. We are still in the dark ages when it comes to a boys’ right to an intact body.
I’ve known of this case for a while, today reading the British Guardian of a person (male) who found a positive outcome after he got beaten for his femininity. Looking at the sources of the article I got here. Indeed a very sad tale. My opinion goes against “gate keepers” starting on parents, family members and early education teachers. Must young adults left alone would find their place in society. Force any person into doing something they don’t want too and somewhere down the line you will get your answer. Murder, abuser, liar. and the list could go forever. If you trust your kids they would call whenever there is a need, trust me on that one. Allow them to decide when to get into religion, chose love partners, tattoos, circumcision and so on. If these families and doctors would have done a bit of research perhaps they would had find out about how Pacific Islanders, for example people from Tahiti; who nurture their 5th born as a female regardless the gender at birth. I really don’t have all the details of this practice but life have already provide us with must of all combination of humans. In Costa Rica there is a group of females that become males around 11-12 years of age. Religions and high society standards have made sure these “abnormalities” stay in the dark, only to please those that we all shall fear. Gate keepers!