As Nature Made Him

Though Dr. Money “was already one of the most respected, if controversial, sex researchers in the world,” he is waiting for a case like Bruce’s (25). He “coined the term gender identity” and is “the world’s undisputed authority on the psychological ramifications of ambiguous genitalia” (25). He is a confident man, but he had a difficult childhood in a deeply religious home. A childhood passion for music and astronomy redirected into a passion for psychology: Money is “drawn to the study of the mind and emotions” (27).

His specific interest in sexuality is a reaction against “the repressive religious structures of his upbringing”; Money is “a fierce proselytizer for sexual curiosity and exploration” (27). He is sexually outspoken, and that boldness gives the impression that he is not “looking necessarily to do things differently than the way he’s concluded is best” (29). The “taboo-breaking attitude to sex” that he takes in popular psychology books “found its echo in the way he pursued his professional research career” (30).

In graduate school, Money has his “first exposure to hermaphroditism—also known as intersexuality—a term of classification for a variety of birth anomalies of the internal and external sex organs” (30). He writes his doctoral dissertation on the subject, approaching it from a psychological perspective rather than the dominant biological perspective. Because more than 95% of his intersex patients in a clinic he sets up after graduate school “fared equally well psychologically whether they had been raised as boys or girls,” Money concludes that “the primary factor determining an intersexual child’s gender identity was not biology, but the way the child was raised” (32).

On this basis, Money encourages surgeons to steer intersex people toward “conversions to girlhood,” which are easier to accomplish than the building of artificial penises (32). Money recommends that these surgeries happen “within the first two and a half years of life” and that the gender identity of the child never be questioned (32). All children, in Money’s eyes, have “psychosexual neutrality at birth”: This is a significant contribution to a major question in the scientific world.

In 1952, Colapinto explains, Money gains boldness when his surgery for a woman named Christine Jorgensen in Denmark passes through the news. Money urges Johns Hopkins Hospital to be the first institution in the United States “to embrace transexual surgeries” (36). After seeking the help of some well-known doctors, he connects with Dr. Harry Benjamin, who helps him convince Dr. Claude Migeon and Dr. Milton Edgerton to join his Gender Identity Clinic.

In 1966, “a strategic decision” is made to end the secrecy around the clinic and release news to the New York Times (37). The story is picked up by many outlets, including CBC’s This Hour Has Seven Days, the show on which Ron and Janet first hear of Dr. Money. When confronted, Dr. Money is confident, so confident that he refuses to listen to criticism. He “had a reputation for tantrums” (38). Nevertheless, he is the leader in many fields, and “his theories on the psychosexual flexibility at birth of humans form the cornerstone of an entire medical specialty—pediatric endocrinology” (39).

Colapinto does attend to one young graduate student, Milton Diamond, “who was willing to question John Money” in the mid-1960s (40). Working in a lab in Kansas, under anatomist William C. Young, Diamond is following the prenatal development of sex hormones that shape bodily development. The team wonders “whether these prenatal hormonal effects on the anatomy were mirrored in the brain” (41). He works intense hours tracking female guinea pigs that have been treated with testosterone at critical stages in their development.

The pigs’ behavior changes significantly, but the team struggles to name the guinea pigs’ new behavior. Young believes in psychosexual neutrality. Together, but under Young’s leadership, the team decides to state “that they had discovered, in the fetal guinea pig, the organizing principle for adult masculine sexual behavior” (43). In short, hormones released before birth organized the body in masculine and feminine structures. Where Young urges caution in applying the findings to humans, Diamond thinks that “Young and the others were being too cautious in failing to link their animal findings directly to the human situation” (43). In a paper, he directly addresses Money’s claims.

While an earlier paper challenging Money was lost, Diamond’s is put out in 1965 by a well-known American journal published out of Johns Hopkins. Though the two thinkers are mismatched, the power of Diamond’s argument is in its “Science 101 objection to the unquestioning acceptance of Money’s theory” (48). There is no “unequivocal male” who has been “reared successfully as a female” in 1965 (48). But less than two years after Diamond’s article, Money receives Janet’s letter.

The Reimers, then 20 and 21, visit Johns Hopkins for a meeting with Dr. Money. Though the hospital atmosphere intimidates Ron and Janet, Dr. Money explains to interviewers later that he spoke to them using accessible language. If given a vagina, he explains, their child “would develop psychologically as a woman and would find her erotic attraction to men” (50).

It is unclear whether the Reimers “understood that such a procedure was in fact purely experimental” (50). At the time, Money has never performed such surgeries except on intersex people. But because of his theory of the “gender identity gate,” the point “after which a child has locked into an identity as male or female,” the Reimers must decide soon: Within just months, Bruce will pass this threshold (51). Though they ask friends, they need to make their own barely informed decision.

They decide that the surgery will provide their child with the greatest chance of future happiness. They choose the name Brenda Lee, and Janet sews girlish baby clothes. Then, on July 3, 1967, Brenda has surgical castration surgery under Dr. Howard Jones. Jones, along with the hospital, expresses concern with the health and fitness of the child; ethical concerns are the purview of boards and trial directors, not surgeons. Colapinto describes the surgery in close detail.

Ron and Janet cast aside all their doubts about the surgery’s efficacy; this, to Dr. Money, is “vital” to Brenda’s identification with womanhood (54). But Money himself, Colapinto explains, harbors reservations about the surgery, especially after the article from Kansas. One of his graduate students studies girls exposed to testosterone in the womb, and her findings mirror the Kansas experiment. Infant sex-reassignment surgery, Money starts to recognize, might not be dependably positive.

Money encourages the Reimers not to tell Brenda she has ever been other than a girl. They try to train her using dolls and to “teach her to be neat and tidy” (56). Adult David Reimer will remember the time when child Brian begged to shave and his father “gave him an empty razor and some shaving cream to play with” but refused to do the same for Brenda, who was offered makeup (56). This episode, adult Brian recalls, “was typical of the way their parents tried to steer him and his sister Brenda into opposite sexes” (56).

As he describes the twins’ childhood, Colapinto reveals that, as adults, the twins “rejoined each other on the same side of the gender divide” (57). Brenda has become David. As adults, David is smooth-faced and thin, where his brother is balding and bearded. Still, though, one can see that they are identical twins. Though as children Brenda and Brian were both “exceptionally attractive” in normative gender roles, “this illusion of two children of opposite sexes disappeared the second Brenda moved” (57).

In interests and behaviors, both men remember, Brenda Is like a boy. As a Girl Scout, she “was miserable” (57). Brenda tends to be dominant, beating up her brother and besting him at shooting guns. She only seems feminine “when she wanted to please” her parents (58). Janet would write to Dr. Money and emphasize Brenda’s more feminine moments “so that the psychologist would know that Janet and Ron were doing everything they could to implement his plans” (58).

It is clear that “Brenda was the leader of the pair, and it was Brian who followed her lead into boyish mayhem and mischief” (59). Their parents are worried, but the boys do not think about Brenda’s gender presentation much. Brian remembers thinking about it, eventually, in grade one or two. He notices that Brenda behaves differently from all the other girls. While it is easy for family to accept the “tomboy” excuse, “Brenda became the object of instant ridicule from both boys and girls” at school (60). Even teachers seem to see her as different.

The kids’ kindergarten teacher, Audrey McGregor, remembers reports of Brenda urinating standing up, a fact that had distressed Janet since the children were toilet trained. McGregor senses that Brenda doesn’t feel “she was a little girl” (61). When Brenda underperforms in school, Dr. Money administers an IQ test that deems her average and writes a letter to school authorities. Upon the recommendation that Brenda would grow out of her psychological problems, authorities place her in first grade at a new school.

Brenda struggles at her new school. She is seen as negative, inextricably set apart from her peers. Though sent to school looking neat, she falls apart; a former guidance counselor says that “Brenda was really a rough little kid” (63). Finally, Ron and Janet share Brenda’s medical history with the Child Guidance Clinic in order to explain Brenda’s problems in school. The teachers feel relieved, thinking “no wonder” Brenda cannot concentrate (64). She is held back to repeat grade one while her brother, Brian, moves forward.