Journal #16: Gender Identity
A pair of twins were born in Canada on August 22, 1965. The twin brothers, Bruce and Bryan, were a gift to their mother, Janet Reimer, and were born as two healthy children.
When the two were 7 months old, they went in for a routine circumcision. During the circumcision, the doctor was using electrical equipment and Bruce’s penis got burnt off. At such a young age the parents did not want to put the baby through the 60 reconstruction surgeries. They had no idea how to go through with raising Bruce.
A few months later, Janet learned about a doctor named Dr. John Money. She saw him on a TV show and he was talking about sex changes and transsexuals. Dr. Money spent most of his time studying intersex people, who were both males and females.
Dr. Money’s theory was that no matter what sex a child was born, their gender was debatable for their first two years of their life. The gender identity of the child was built by how the parents raised the baby. Dr. Money told the parents about changing her son into a daughter would be the best solution, therefore they starting calling Bruce Brenda.
Dr. Money told the parents to give Brenda no reason to feel like she was a boy because the sex change would fail. During the beginning of Brenda’s life, her mother dressed her in girly dresses which gave her a womanly gender expression. During these years the twins went to see Dr. Money for yearly meetings. Dr. Money would ask them questions that would be looking at if his theory of gender neutrality was standing. He published his findings, that nurture not nature determines whether we feel feminine or masculine.
Although he made everything in this seem fine with the family, back at home Brenda started to behave in a masculine fashion. She’d rather be playing with her brother toys than her dolls. Once Dr. Money found out about the change of habits he insisted that she needed to know the difference between male and female. He talked to her about genitalia, and tried to convince her to have a vagina construction. He also took pictures of her and her brother naked and showed her graphic photographs of a women giving birth when she was 7 years old and at the age of 12 he tried to convince her to take a hormone to grow breast.
When Brenda was 13 years old, the family told the twins the truth about Brenda actually being a boy. Brenda was relieved as she thought that she was going insane and turned herself back into a boy named David. This was her way of coming out. With the compensation money from the circumcision, he got a new penis constructed. This sexual orientation was towards women, and he married Jane Fontane.
His relationship with Brian worsened because all the attention went towards David and Brian wasn’t the only boy in the family no more. After Brian’s death, David’s marriage started to fail and he ended his life by shooting himself in the head when he was 38 years old.
Dr. Money says that he can’t be blamed because the family waited too long to decide if they wanted to turn their son into a girl. They decided when he was 2 years old which was when the gender gate was closing. He published the positive parts of the experiment and let people believe that he was still successful even after Brenda stop visiting him.
Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dr_money_prog_summary.shtml
http://www.apa.org/pi/lgbt/resources/sexuality-definitions.pdf
Images: (top to bottom)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/dr_money_prog_summary.shtml
http://www.tempi.it/bruce-brenda-david-la-tragica-storia-della-prima-vittima-del-dottor-money-il-guru-del-gender
