Shashwat Goyal
Extra Blog Post
David
Reimer (born Bruce Reimer) was born male but was raised as a girl after sex reassignment
following an unconventional electrocauterization circumcision that damaged his
penis beyond surgical repair. His parents consulted Dr. John Money, a sexologist
known for his theory that gender is learned and not innate. Money suggested a sex
reassignment, and Bruce underwent a surgery that removed his testicles and constructed
an artificial vulva when he was 22 months old. He was subsequently raised as
Brenda by his parents until he was 15, when he reassigned himself as male. Dr.
Money used Bruce’s case to reinforce his theory of gender through studying him
(her) during annual visits (David Reimer, Wikipedia; John Money, Wikipedia). This
post will talk about the biological component of gender as well as the problems
with the study that Dr. Money conducted to support his flawed theory.
Part
of what made Bruce’s case so important to Money was the fact that Bruce had a
twin brother. This enabled Money to study Bruce’s reassignment in contrast to
his twin brother, who acted as a control. Until Bruce was 13, he annually
visited Money with his brother. According to him, the sessions often involved the
enactment of sexual positions as part of ‘sexual rehearsal play’ that Money
felt was essential to the development of a “healthy adult gender identity” (David
Reimer, Wikipedia). Money represented Bruce’s case as a successful reassignment
while Bruce’s parents also misrepresented the success of the assignment. Brenda/Bruce,
meanwhile, was being bullied in school for his tomboyish personality. At 13, he
threatened suicide to his parents if they took him back to Money, following
which the visits stopped. At 15, he was told the truth of his condition and decided
to reassign himself back to a boy, naming himself David. He had a mastectomy,
an artificial penis constructed and testosterone injections before marrying a
single mother at the age of 25. In 1997, he went public with his story with a
rival of Money, Dr. Milton Diamond. His story caused a re-evaluation of Money’s
theories, which until now had been widely accepted due to Money’s misrepresentation
of Bruce’s case (David Reimer, Wikipedia; John Money, Wikipedia).
Bruce
reported that regardless of being raised as a girl, wearing dresses and being called
Brenda, he never really felt that he was a girl. Bruce’s gender dysphoria points
to at least a partly non-social basis of gender. Foetal development plays a major
role here, as the development of self-identity and the brain’s view of itself is
prenatal as well as postnatal. Hence, Bruce’s postnatal reassignment failed to
completely switch his gender identity. When researchers first discovered the
gene on the Y chromosome (SRY) that led to males, the female mice that were inserted
with SRY developed not only male genitalia, but also male behaviours like
mounting females, etc (Siddhartha Mukherjee, 2016). This also suggests that at
least some behaviour considered male and female is driven by genes. The extent
of this is not entirely clear in humans, but it holds to reason that sexual
drive, among other behaviours fundamental to biology, would be partly decided by
the chromosomes of an individual. This was seen in the case of a woman named ‘C’.
She had been born with ambiguous genitals, and her mother had raised her as a
female though she was chromosomally male. C said that while she identified as
female, and had for 48 years until she was told about her reassignment, she
felt a she “[had] the brain of a man” (Siddhartha Mukherjee, 2016). She was
tomboyish and wore a mix of (socially considered) masculine and feminine clothes.
She initially married heterosexually but eventually started dating women. While
she handles her duality well for the most part (she had some bouts of
depression as well as guilt over her homosexuality), and provides an example of
someone whose gender is largely constructed socially, but her sexual and erotic
drive remains ‘male’, her chromosomal sex (Siddhartha Mukherjee, 2016).
Money’s
unethical and unconsented study affected not only Bruce, but his brother (he
developed schizophrenia and died of an anti-depressant overdose), and many other
children who were reassigned based on Money’s falsified results. Bruce’s family
did have a history of mental illnesses, as his mother had suffered from depression
as well as the fact that his twin developed schizophrenia, which is known to
have a genetic component. However, Bruce’s suicide at 38 is largely considered a
result of his identity and subsequent marital problems. This case warns us not
only of the dangers of unethical research, but also that we can’t treat the nature/nurture
debate deterministically, at least as far as sex and gender are considered.
Nature and nurture both play important and intertwined roles and overemphasis
on any one would certainly result in more Bruce/Brenda/David Reimers.
References
1) Mukherjee,
S. (2016, December 29). Why Sex Is Mostly Binary but Gender Is a Spectrum. In Nautilus. Retrieved 16:24, March 5,
2019, from http://nautil.us/issue/43/heroes/why-sex-is-binary-but-gender-is-a-spectrum
2) Wikipedia contributors. (2019, February
26). David Reimer. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:23, March 5, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=David_Reimer&oldid=885114716
3)
Wikipedia
contributors. (2019, March 5). John Money. In Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Retrieved 16:23, March 5, 2019, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=John_Money&oldid=886277644
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