It is not surprising that David Reimer took his own life on May 4, 2004. He had never fully recovered from the death of his twin brother two years earlier, and unemployment plus illness had compounded the breakdown of his marriage. But the real damage had been done in his childhood. He was the victim of gender tampering, humiliation, and identity confusion. He had oscillated between being a boy, a girl, and then a boy again: “I thought I was an it.”1

Born a Canadian in 1965 as Bruce, David underwent a routine circumcision operation at eight months. Unfortunately a snowstorm prevented the regular surgeon from attending, and the procedure went horribly wrong; David suffered genital mutilation. Plastic surgery was not an option at the time, and doctors could offer only pessimism. The Reimers were distraught, fearing Bruce would never be able to live a normal life. Some months later, however, they happened to catch a television interview with John Money, a renowned sexologist at Johns Hopkins University. To Janet Reimer’s astonishment, Money confidently explained that babies are born gender-neutral and that with a little work, one could actually change their sex. The theory seemed to offer a lifeline for baby Bruce, and the Reimers quickly contacted Money, who was pleased to have a perfect subject on which to test his theories. At the hand of Baltimore surgeons, Bruce became Brenda on July 3, 1967, and the Reimers headed back to Winnipeg with strict instructions from Money never to tell the child what had happened.

The experiment soon broke down. “Brenda” tried to rip off the first dress her mother put on her.2 “When she watched her father shaving, she wanted a razor, too.”3 She preferred toy guns and trucks to dollhouses and Barbies, and when she tussled with her brother, it was clear she was the stronger. School only worsened the problems. ‘“They wouldn’t let him use the boy’s washroom or the girls,” his mother recalled. “He had to go in the back alley.”’4 The other children teased her mercilessly as “It” because of her masculine gait and mannerisms. Meanwhile, she was also required to keep up periodic appointments with John Money, horrifying sessions in which he forced her to strip naked and stare at sexually explicit pictures so as to cement her “gender reassignment.” Despite all the evidence to the contrary, Money advertised his “John/Joan” experiment as a resounding success, supporting the liberationist notion that gender patterns were nothing but social convention. Feminists gloated.5

In her teens, “Brenda” attempted suicide and was constantly under psychiatric treatment. Finally, at the age of 14, she refused to take any more estrogen injections and confronted her father. He broke down in tears and told her everything. Within weeks, “Brenda” took the name David—he admired the courage of the biblical David who killed Goliath—and received both reconstructive surgery and testosterone injections. In time, David developed into a muscular and handsome young man, but the repeated surgeries sent him into a spiral of depression. At 22, he fell to his knees and prayed to God, begging to become a husband and father. Three years later, the Lord answered his prayer when he married Jane and adopted her three children.6

As a guinea pig, David Reimer was Dr. Money’s dream. Using David’s identical twin brother as a control, the Johns Hopkins professor went to work to prove that nurture trumped nature when it came to gender identity. What better case to demonstrate that “conventional patterns of masculine and feminine behaviour can be altered?”7 Feminists lauded his conclusions; hospitals adopted the approach; the study, now known as the John/Joan case, enhanced Money’s reputation.

However, David Reimer was no guinea pig. Neither was he a girl. In treating him as both, Dr. Money and his confederates did David a great wrong. They also demonstrated the perversity and wickedness to which men can sink when they think they are smarter than God.

Footnotes:
1
“Tragic End of David Reimer,” Reality Resources Website, www.realityresources.com/tragic.htm (accessed, February 24, 2005).

2
The masculine pronoun, of course, would be more correct here: From a Christian perspective, gender is created and therefore divinely assigned. We have opted to use the feminine simply to underscore the tragic absurdity of the experiment.

3
Katie Chalmers, “A Sad End to Boy/Girl Life,” The Winnipeg Sun Website (May 10, 2004), http://www.canoe.ca/NewsStand/WinnipegSun/News/2004/05/10/453481.html (accessed February 28, 2005).

4
“Tragic End of David Reimer,” Reality Resources Website, www.realityresources.com/tragic.htm (accessed, February 24, 2005).

5
John Money stopped publicly commenting on the Reimer story in 1980. As of this writing, he is still an emeritus professor at Johns Hopkins University. His collected papers are housed at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. Paul McHugh, as the psychiatrist-in-chief of John Hopkins in the late ‘70s, halted Money’s surgical gender experiments. His comments on the scientific studies that led to this decision can be found in “Surgical Sex,” First Things 147 (November 2004): 34-38, http://www.firstthings.com/ftissues/ft0411/articles/mchugh.htm.

6
Information for this article came from: Elaine Woo, “Obituaries: David Reimer, 38; After Botched Surgery, He Was Raised as a Girl in Gender Experiment,” The Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2004, B12. Oliver Burkeman and Gary Younge, “Cover Story: Being Brenda,” The Guardian (London), May 12, 2004, G2. John Colapinto, “Gender Gap: What Were the Real Reasons Behind David Reimer’s Suicide?” Slate, June 3, 2004, http://slate.msn.com/id/2101678/ (accessed, February 24, 2005). John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (New York: Harper Collins Publishing, 2000).

7
“Death of David Reimer,” The Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood UK Newsletter, Summer 2004, 3.
article was adapted from Kairos Journal

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located on Rt. 40 across from the Principio Health Center.