Bruce Reimer’s life must be one of the most tragic stories of modern times, but it is symbolic of what can occur when we attempt to recreate what God has created.
Born in Canada in 1965 alongside identical twin Brian, Bruce became a social experiment that would not only have devastating consequences for his own life, but would reweave the social fabric of the generations to follow.
As was common at the time, parents Ron and Janet decided to have their boys circumcised.
Tragically, Bruce’s procedure went horribly wrong and his penis was mutilated.
Doctors informed his parents that restructuring the organ was extremely difficult and eventually they were referred to Dr John Money at the John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, USA.
At the time, Dr Money was considered one of the leading authorities and pioneers on ambiguous genitalia (people born with both male and female genitalia) and transsexual surgery.
He was one of the first to suggest one’s sex and one’s gender were exclusive components of their identity.
Stepping outside his speciality of people with mixed genitalia, Dr Money proposed that all humans were biologically born as male or female but were gender neutral, i.e. how they perceived themselves was a social construct determined by how they were treated in the first few years of their lives.
In other words, he believed any child could be psychologically moulded to become either a boy or a girl and science could reconstruct any genitalia to fit the perception.
When the desperate Reimer family presented, Dr Money was provided with the perfect opportunity to prove his theory.
He emphasised that a quick decision was required as the “gender identity gate” closed between two and a half and three years and a child would be then locked into one gender or the other.
At the time it was considered surgically easier to construct a vagina than restore a penis so, at age 22 months, despite the fact such procedures had only ever been performed on children with ambiguous organs, Bruce’s damaged penis, along with testicles, were removed and a rudimentary vagina and new identity as Brenda were created.
From that point the Reimers raised Brenda as a girl and Dr Money made yearly follow-up visits to track progress.
Despite early concerns from the parents, Dr Money reassured them this was simply a “tomboy” phase.
In 1972, when the twins were seven, Dr Money revealed his “successful” experiment to the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in Washington. With the benefit of a male twin, Dr Money contrasted Brenda’s feminine temperament and behaviour, such as cleanliness, an interest in dolls and the kitchen, to her brother’s interest in cars, tools and lack of interest in anything domestic as an indicator that one’s gender could be socially manufactured.
The ramifications of Dr Money’s findings soon rippled far and wide. Elements of the burgeoning feminist movement harnessed the findings as proof that men and women were, in essence, the same, as did those lobbying for the liberalisation and legalisation of a diversity of sexual identities and behaviours.
Influential academics and social leaders interpreted Dr Money’s conclusions as proof that concepts such as gender and heterosexuality were social constructs and utilised the momentum he triggered to politically, socially and scientifically mould society to fit these perceptions.
However, what did not come to light until decades later was the darker side of Brenda’s harrowing ordeal, facts never made public by Dr Money. Brenda was not told of her gender switch until she was a teenager when physiological changes started.
She was angry but relieved at being able to pinpoint the source of her persistent anxiety and confusion.
“Suddenly, it all made sense why I felt the way I did. I wasn’t some sort of weirdo. I wasn’t crazy,” she would say.
After learning the truth, Brenda wanted to reclaim her male identity so she changed her name to David and opted for painful surgery to reverse effects of hormonal treatment.
As an adult, he wanted the medical world to know the experiment was a failure and allowed his story to be published by journalist John Colapinto.
It portrayed a tragic personal and family life and, when David committed suicide at 38, Colapinto wrote, “he has ended his sufferings forever”.
David’s tragic life is an extreme example of personal and social repercussions that can result when humanity attempts to redefine God’s original plans. But, in reality, it is a practice we are all guilty of to some extent.
Each time we choose to satisfy our own desires we are, in essence, robbing ourselves of receiving the fullness of God’s love and when we inflict these desires onto others, particularly children, we are moulding them into someone they were never created to be.
And when enough people choose to live this way, we progressively and inevitably separate ourselves from God’s protective care and become a society he never intended us to be. Dr Money may not be the root of all evil, but placing our desires before God’s certainly is.