David Reimer was born as a male identical twin in Winnipeg, Manitoba. His birth name was Bruce; his twin brother was named Brian. At the age of 6 months, after concern was raised about how both twins urinated, both boys were diagnosed with phimosis. They were referred for circumcision at the age of 8 months. On April 27, 1966, a urologist performed the operation using the unconventional method of cauterization. The procedure did not go as doctors had planned, and David Reimer's penis was burned beyond surgical repair.[1]
Reimer's parents, concerned about their son's prospects for future happiness and sexual function without a penis, took him to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore to see John Money, apsychologist who was developing a reputation as a pioneer in the field of sexual development and gender identity, based on his work with intersex patients. Money was a prominent proponent of the 'theory of Gender Neutrality'; that gender identity developed primarily as a result of social learning from early childhood and could be changed with the appropriate behavioral interventions. The Reimers had seen Money being interviewed on the Canadian news program This Hour Has Seven Days, where he discussed his theories about gender. He and other physicians working with young children born with abnormal genitalia, believed that a penis could not be replaced but that a functional vagina could be constructed surgically, and that Reimer would be more likely to achieve successful, functional sexual maturation as a girl than as a boy.[2]
They persuaded his parents that sex reassignment would be in Reimer's best interest, and, at the age of 22 months, surgery was performed to remove his testes. He was reassigned to be raised as a female and given the name Brenda. Psychological support for the reassignment and surgery was provided by John Money, who continued to see Reimer annually for about ten years for consultations and to assess the outcome. This reassignment was considered an especially valid test case of the social learning concept of gender identity for two reasons. First, Reimer had a twin brother, Brian Reimer, who made an ideal control since the two not only shared genes and family environments, but they had shared the intrauterine environment as well. Second, this was reputed to be the first reassignment and reconstruction performed on a male infant who had no abnormality of prenatal or early postnatal sexual differentiation.
For several years, Money reported on Reimer's progress as the "John/Joan case," describing apparently successful female gender development, and using this case to support the feasibility of sex reassignment and surgical reconstruction even in non-intersex cases. Money wrote: "The child's behavior is so clearly that of an active little girl and so different from the boyish ways of her twin brother." Notes by a former student at Money's lab state that during the followup visits, which only occurred once a year, Reimer's parents routinely lied to lab staff about the success of the procedure. Twin brother Brian Reimer later proved to be schizophrenic.
Reimer had experienced the visits to Baltimore as traumatic rather than therapeutic, and when Dr. Money started pressuring the family to bring him in for surgery during which a vagina would be created, the family discontinued the follow-up visits; from 22 months into Brenda's teenaged years Reimer urinated through a hole surgeons had placed in the abdomen.Estrogen was given during adolescence to induce breast development. Having no contact with the family once the visits were discontinued, John Money published nothing further about the case to suggest that the reassignment had not been successful.
Reimer's later account, written two decades later with John Colapinto, described how, contrary to Money's reports, when living as Brenda, Reimer did not identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers, and neither frilly dresses (which he was forced to wear during frigid Calgary winters) nor female hormones made him feel female. By the age of 13, Reimer was experiencing suicidal depression, and told his parents he would commit suicide if they made him see John Money again. In 1980, Reimer's parents told him the truth about his gender reassignment, following advice from Reimer's endocrinologist and psychiatrist. At 14, Reimer decided to assume a male gender identity, calling himself David. By 1997, Reimer had undergone treatment to reverse the reassignment, including testosterone injections, a double mastectomy, and two phalloplasty operations. He also married a woman and became a stepfather to her three children.
His case came to international attention in 1997 when he told his story to Milton Diamond, an academic sexologist who persuaded Reimer to allow him to report the outcome in order to dissuade physicians from treating other infants similarly. Soon after, Reimer went public with his story and John Colapinto published a widely disseminated and influential account inRolling Stone magazine in December 1997.[3] They went on to elaborate the story in a book, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl.[2]
[edit]Death
Colapinto split the revenues from the book with Reimer, giving him financial security but not freedom from his problems. In addition to his life-long difficult relationship with his parents, Reimer had to deal with the death of his twin brother from an overdose of antidepressants in 2002, unemployment and separation from his wife Jane. On the weekend of May 2, 2004, she told him she wished to temporarily separate; Reimer stormed out of the house and did not return. On May 5 Jane Reimer received a call from the police that they had located her husband but he did not want his location revealed. Two hours later, they called again, informing her of his suicide. Reimer had returned home while she was out and retrieved a shotgun, sawing off its barrel before leaving. On that morning of May 5, he drove to the nearby parking lot of a grocery store, parked his car and fatally shot himself in the head.[4]
Depressing stuff, huh? Apparently, that surgery on babies was normal at that time, and it was depicted as trying to 'save' the child from psychological burden in the future. Bunch of crap.
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