The video that this post refers to can be found here:
Dr. Money’s Theory of Gender Neutrality took the side of nurture in the nature/nurture debate. The nature side claims that the “observable differences between men and women are biological” while the nurture side claims that “these differences are acquired through socialization” (Wade and Ferree, 49). Money’s theory was basted in the nurture side: that a human is a blank slate at birth (ibid, 50) and that “as far as its gender is concerned, a baby is essentially neutral for the first two years of life. During these critical two years, the child’s upbringing—how it is nurtured—will determine whether it feels masculine or feminine” (O’Connell, 9:30).
Bruce and Brian Reimer were two identical twins. At seven months old, they were taken to a hospital to be circumcised. The faulty procedure destroyed Bruce’s penis. Because of the accident, the procedure was not performed on Brian (Woo). Not knowing what to do, Bruce’s parents wrote to Dr. Money. Dr. Money saw the Reimer twins as the perfect subjects in an experiment to prove his theory correct. In any scientific experiment, there must be a dependent variable and an independent variable. In this experiment, the independent variable was nurture. The dependent variable is the effects of nurture: the way a human is nurtured will have an effect on his gender identity. Brian would be the control group: a boy raised as a boy will identify as a boy. Bruce would be the experiment: a boy raised as a girl will identify as a girl. Money believed that Brian would identify as a boy and that Bruce would identify as a girl.
Dr. Money’s experiment had many flaws and ethical issues from the very beginning. First, he violated the rules of the scientific method. Instead of forming a hypothesis and then conducting tests to determine if the results of the tests supported his hypothesis, he determined that his hypothesis was true and manipulated the test to make the results appear to support his hypothesis. Throughout the experiment, and for years after it had failed, he published false information about the experiments and the results.
Second, he instructed the Reimers to make Bruce a girl: they were to rename him with a girl’s name, dress him in girl’s clothes, and give him a girl’s haircut. Two, he instructed that Bruce’s testicles be removed and that a “rudimentary vulva” be constructed so that Bruce would look like a girl during childhood (O’Connell, 11:40). Three, he had the Reimer parents give Bruce estrogen so that as he grew up, he would continue to look like a girl, even developing breasts. Thus, Bruce became Brenda. This violated the very premise of his theory that biology (nature) has nothing to do with gender identity. If nature has nothing to do with gender identity, why would Brenda need to biologically look like a female? If nature has nothing to do with it, why would Dr. Money used nature to manipulate Bruce into believing that he was a female named Brenda?
Third, he violated another aspect of his own theory. His theory stated that during the first two years of life, the child would be forming his gender identity. Bruce was seven months old when he lost his penis. During those seven months, he was raised the way his twin brother was: as a boy. That didn’t change after he lost his penis. Bruce wasn’t castrated until he was twenty-two
months old, just two months shy of turning two (David Reimer: The boy who lived as a girl). He had twenty-two months of being nurtured and socialized as a boy. During these nearly two years of his life, Bruce had been forming his gender identity. At nearly two years old, he was a terrible candidate to Money’s experiment, yet Money chose to us him anyway.
Fourth, during his annual visits with Brenda (and sometimes Brian), Money did not look at the results of his experiment in a clinical manner. Brenda knew that she was a boy from the second her mother put a dress on her. By the time that Brenda was five, it is easy for anyone to see that his experiment had failed. Brenda both knew that she was a boy and could easily communicate that knowledge to Dr. Money. Instead of abandoning the experiment, he resorted to force. He used anger, guilt, shame, and manipulation in an effort to convince Brenda that she was a girl.
Fifth, Money did sinister things during the experiment that had nothing to do with the experiment, but he used his title as a doctor and the scope of his experiment to justify his actions. He had the twins take their clothes off and act out sexual situations and positions while he took pictures. I don’t see how this activity convinces anyone of their gender. I don’t know of anyone who went through this a child as part of the process of choosing their identity. Money was merely satisfying his own perversions under the banner of science.
Sixth, he was experimenting on a human being. He directly intervened in not only Bruce/Brenda’s life, but he also intervened in his twin brother Brian’s life, and the lives of their parents. Both twins killed themselves as a result of their treatment. There were so many other ways of conducting tests to see whether his hypothesis was supported or not. He could have interviewed people the way that Alfred Kinsey did (Brewer). Had he done this, he may have found male-bodied people who identified as women. He would have been able to use non-biased data to form a conclusion. He could have compared this conclusion to his hypothesis.
As stated as the first of Dr. Money’s unethical practices, Dr. Money took drastic measures on Bruce to ensure that his experiment would be a success. To make Bruce appear as a girl, he had Bruce castrated, and he had the remaining skin constructed into what appeared to be a vulva so that biologically, Bruce would look like a girl. Further, he had Bruce injected on a regular basis with estrogen so that as he grew up, his body would continue to look like a girl—to the extent that as Brenda, he developed breasts that required a mastectomy to remove (Woo). For the nurturing aspect, he instructed the Reimer partents to raise Bruce as a girl. They to tell him that he was a girl. He was to look like a girl, dress like a girl, and be treated like a girl (in the way that culture from the 1960s did). Tragically, even when Bruce/Brenda asked about his gender, both Dr. Money and the parents would outright lie. His mother would attempt to pacify Bruce/Brenda by explaining that his male tendencies were because he was a tomboy.
The Reimer parents played an important role in the manipulation of Bruce/Brenda. Dr. Money knew that if they were both not 100% cooperative, then his experiment would fail. As the parents, they would be with their child every day out of the year, and Dr. Money would only be involved for a once-a-year visit. It was almost entirely up to the parents to maintain the charade. They had to give consent to have the surgeries performed on Bruce to convince him that he was biologically a female. They had to socialize him as a female by dressing him as a girl, cutting his hair as a girl, and giving him girl toys like dolls and dollhouses.
The Reimers were the perfect candidates for a predator like Dr. Money to take advantage of. One, they were members of the Mennonite faith and lived in Winnepeg, Canada, the home of the Canadian sect of Mennonites (Rolls, 133). I grew up in the Mormon faith in the center of the Mormon church. I renounced my membership many years ago. Looking at the faith from an outsider’s point of view, I can see that when a person grows up in a social bubble, he is generally naive about the world outside that bubble. The Reimers, living in a Mennonite bubble in Canada could easily fall prey to a person whose credentials speak for him: a well-respected expert at a prominent hospital in the United States of America. Most importantly, however, the Reimers were desperate to help their mutilated baby. They were looking for someone who could help them give their baby a healthy and happy life. Dr. Money appeared to have all the answers they were looking for. He was able to use their desperation to comply with his instructions.
I do not believe that Dr. Money’s experiment could take place today. I once taught third grade at a local private school. During history, my little eight and nine-year old students were boggled and astonished that the people we studied could be so stupid. We jokingly decided that history is literally the study of dumb people. (I also told them that forty years from now, they will look back on this current society and wonder how we were ever this dumb too.) In all seriousness, the class determined that people of any era merely do the best they can with the knowledge that they have. We can all agree that John Money went too far with his experiment, reverting to deceit and corruption to get his way. Sadly, these kind of people still exist today and will most likely exist in any era. One lesson my students and I have learned from studying history is that we should learn from people’s mistakes and strive not to make them ourselves. I believe that the science and medical communities continuously learn from their mistakes and strive to improve their experiments in both a scientific and an ethical manner. There are now groups of people who approve and monitor experiments. They check for flaws and contradictions in the hypotheses and in the procedures. I am hopeful that these educated people have learned from flawed experiments like Dr. Money’s and will choose more effective ways based on knowledge and experience to better further science and medicine in the future.
Sources
- Brewer, Joan Scherer. “Kinsey Interview Kit.” Kinsey Institute, kinseyinstitute.org/pdf/Kinsey_Interview_Kit.pdf
O’Connel, Sanjida. Dr Money and the Boy With No Penis. BBC, 2014 - “David Reimer: The boy who lived as a girl.” CBC News, May 10, 2014. web.archive.org/web/20120807123535/http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/reimer/
- Rolls, Geoff. Classic Case Studies in Psychology. 3 rd ed. Routledge, 2015
- Wade, Lisa and Myra Marx Ferree Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions. 1st ed. W.W. Norton and Company. 2015
- Woo, Elaine. “David Reimer, 38; After Botched Surgery, He Was Raised as a Girl in Gender Experiment.” Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2004. http://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-may-13-me-reimer13-story.html
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