The Reimer Children: Plot Summary

The Reimer children were the perfect experiment that just fell into the lap of Dr. John Money at John’s Hopkins. With the accident that happened to Bruce during his circumcision the Reimer parents were faced with the choice of raising Bruce as a boy despite him never growing up to be a fully functioning man or search for another option. With the information of what Dr. Money was doing coming on the TV at the time when Janet was watching she found the other option that she had been looking for. In this deal the Reimer family was able to give Bruce what they thought would be a more normal childhood and life while Dr. Money had a perfect experiment to try and prove his conclusions that were not as concrete as he had advertised them. Because

Money and had not spoken with or seen him since Dr. Money’s trip to Winnipeg when the twins were young teenagers. Because of this Dr. Money had no new information to present in his published works and he was often question as to why this was. He often said that he had “lost contact” with the family since an interview with BBC that did not go well. David lived with his family out of the way of cameras and reporters wanting to know his story. It benefitted him greatly that his name had been left out the interviews and reports that had been published about his story because no one knew who he was and that is how he preferred it. Years later, Milton Diamond who had initially challenged Dr. Money on his theory that someone can have their gender reassigned reached out to Keith Sigmundson who had been the most consistent person in Brenda’s life for help figuring out what ended up happening to Brenda. Dr. Sigmundson was reluctant because he knew challenging Dr. Money rarely ended well for anyone who tried it and he did not want to ruin his career over it. David was given anonymity in the process of the paper that was written during 1994. The paper chronicled David’s life and how the reassignment that was chosen for him had worked out. Because of Dr. Money’s reputation it took two years for the pair to find anyone who would publish it, but finally the American Medical Association’s Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent

John Money was of the idea that nurture can change a person’s gender identity if they were to have interest genitalia. Nurture is defined as experiences that shape how a person acts and how they view themselves. This is similar to the theory that B.F. Skinner held regarding reinforcement. The theory explains that in the formative years of a child you can encourage certain behaviors, such as those of a proper girl/woman and you can discourage other behaviors such as fighting and playing with toys meant for boys. This is the belief that drove John Money with all the of the experiments that her performed over his career at John’s Hopkins. This is what drove all of his decisions in the case of Brenda Reimer. Dr. Money believed that if Brenda was raised as a girl not being told that she was once a boy that she would grow up to be a normal female with the help of surgery and hormone injections. He viewed human newborns as “total psychosexual blank slates” that could be changed despite what they were biologically born as. He told the Reimers when they made the decision to have their son sexually reassigned that for it to work that they must never tell their child and continually reaffirm the fact that they are a girl, and always have been a girl. Over the course of thirty years Dr. Money debated with Dr.