EFFORTPOST David Reimer - The Circumcision That Changed Everything

Circumcision is a controversial issue. For some, it is a form of hygiene that protects men against STDs. For others, it is a form of mutilation that decreases sexual sensitivity. If only we let adults decide for themselves, it would be less of an issue. Today I wish to discuss David Reimer and how a botched circumcision changed his life forever.

The Botched Circumcision

Janet and Ron Reimer were two Mennonites who married in December 1964. Ron was a quiet yet industrious man who supported his family through his job as a coffee truck operator. On 22 August 1965, Janet gave birth to a set of identical twins. She was eighteen at the time, while Ron was nineteen.

The boys were named Bruce and Brian, and they were so identical that it was impossible to tell them apart, even for the parents. Bruce, the older of the two, had been born underweight and had to stay in the hospital for a little while, but when he was discharged, both children took to life with energy and vigor. All seemed to be going well until Janet noticed that the two boys were always in distress after urinating. She took the boys to a pediatrician who declared that the boys had phimosis. The cure? Circumcision. The operation would be administered at St Boniface Hospital by Dr Jean-Marie Huot.

Neither parent was worried about the operation. Circumcision seemed like a routine, minor operation that would heal quickly and be forgotten by the boys. Oh how wrong they were. Bruce was the first twin to be operated. He was put to sleep by anaesthesiologist Dr Max Cham. To remove the foreskin, a knife would not be used. Instead, a cautery machine would be made use of. What happened next is too harrowing to write, so I'll just copy and paste from his biography, As Nature Made Him.

It was decided that Brian would not be circumcised. His phimosis cleared on its own - the procedure had been useless. Ron and Janet were called to the hospital where they described Bruce's genitals as looking like charcoal. It was obvious there was no coming back from an injury of this nature. Over the next few days, pieces of Bruce's peepee dried and crumbled away.

At the time, peepee restoration surgery was in its infancy, so there were limited options for the Reimers. Thus, Bruce continued life without a peepee. One doctor gave the following harrowing diagnosis:

he will be unable to live a normal sexual life from the time of adolescence: that he will be unable to consummate marriage or to have normal heterosexual relations, in that he will have to recognise that he is incomplete, physically defective, and that he must live apart

Finding Help for Bruce

The Reimers were transferred to the Mayo Clinic where they recommended a prosthetic phallus. However, this would be a primitive peepee requiring several surgeries throughout childhood. This was not promising to the Reimers who resigned themselves to the fact that they would have to raise a mutilated son.

A cloud of misery fell over the Reimer household. Rob had nightmares of strangling Dr Huot. Janet was stuck at home because she was afraid of hiring a babysitter who would gossip about the child's missing genitals. Overall, the Reimers' peaceful life was disrupted beyond repair.

Things would take a turn when, while watching television one evening, the Reimers saw Dr John Money. The doctor was at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore talking about the wonders of s*x reassignment surgery. The Reimers had received advice that they might want to raise Bruce as a girl, so it caught their attention. They decided to write Dr Money a letter describing what happened to Bruce. It did not take long for the Reimers to get a reply. Dr Money was very, very interested and he invited the family to Baltimore.

Dr John Money

Dr John Money was born in 1921 in New Zealand, and he moved to the USA when he was twenty-five. He achieved his Ph.D. from Harvard before going on to work at Johns Hopkins. It is this man who coined the term "gender identity", and he was deeply interested in the nature vs nurture debate surrounding gender and s*x. By the time the Reimers found him, he was a worldclass expert on the psychological effects of ambiguous genitalia and he was a pioneer of transexual surgeries.

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Notes from Holly!

So what motivated Dr John Money to focus on s*x and genitalia so much? One reason has to do with his upbringing. He had a bad relationship with his strict dad, which gave him a negative view of masculinity and manhood. This led him to wonder "if the world might really be a better place for women if not only farm animals but human males also were gelded at birth."

It was also a form of rebellion against his religious upbringing and a form of devotion to the ongoing sexual revolution at the time. He championed bisexuality, open marriages, and nudism. He also promoted pedophilia, arguing that it was not necessarily damaging to children.

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It was Dr. Money's belief that hermaphroditic children could be raised either male or female, and that gender was socially constructed. In other words, infants were psychosocial blank slates. Hence with surgeries, a lot of hermaphroditic children were turned into girls. The reason for this is that it was easier to make a prosthetic vagina than a fake phallus. According to Dr Money, all that was required was that the surgery take place before the child turns 2, and that the doctor and parents are unwavering in implementing the assigned gender.

The Reimers Meet Dr John Money

Janet and Ron were twenty and twenty-one years old respectively when they first met Dr Money. Thanks to his professional mannerisms and confident aura, the Reimers were taken in by him and believed everything he had to say. Using theory, diagrams, and fancy words, he explained to the Reimers why it would be best for Bruce to undergo s*x reassignment. Despite their faith in Dr Money, the Reimers were hesitant to go through with the surgery, and they told the doctor they needed some time to think about it. They were rushed forward by the doctor who claimed the procedure needed to be done as soon as possible.

Eventually, the Reimers agreed to the procedure and on Monday 3 July 1967, Bruce was castrated. The boy was turned into a girl and renamed Brenda Lee Reimer. Janet and Ron were given strict instructions not to tell Brenda of the circumstances of her birth, and to keep up the facade that she is a female in every way. The parents abided, and raised Brenda as a girl, giving her dolls and dresses.

Despite all the effort taken, there was still something remarkably masculine about Brenda. Her teachers noted that she moved, spoke, and gestured like a boy. Her twin brother also noticed that Brenda was a tomboy who preferred playing with boys' toys and male hobbies. Though she would be given dolls at Christmas and birthdays, she never wanted to play with them. Perhaps most notably, Brenda would always pee standing, a fact that weirded out her peers.

The Reimers brought their concerns to Dr Money who assured them that all was normal. There were just some girls who displayed tomboyisms, and Brenda was one of them. Furthermore, it was not unheard of for girls to insist on peeing standing.

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Notes from Holly!

While Brenda was struggling psychosocially, Dr Money was representing the case as a success in his scientific papers in which Brenda was referred to as John/Joan. Dr Money argued that Brenda had adapted well to his female identity and gender reassignment. This could not be further from the truth. Regardless, the papers were used in the burgeoning feminist movement to demonstrate that gender was socially constructed.

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When Brenda hit her teen years, she was given female hormones to induce female puberty. However, this did nothing to change Brenda's tomboyish behaviour.

Brenda Turns Into David

In Brenda's teen years, things began to unravel. She still needed two major s*x reassignment surgeries, but she absolutely refused to get them. Dr Money, seeing his research hang in the balance, set out to try and convince Brenda to get the surgery.

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Notes from Holly!

During the visits to Dr Money's office, Dr Money would sexually assault the twins. He forced them to simulate s*x acts with each other and inspect each other's genitals. This caused the twins great distress.

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Janet and Ron began having doubts about the success of the gender transition. No matter how many dresses she wore and how many dolls she was given, Brenda would just not give up her boyish nature. At school, Brenda would be teased for her boyish nature. Furthermore, she expressed no sexual desire for boys, and showed interest in women instead. Dr Money just suggested that Brenda is a lesbian.

On 14 March 1980, the Reimers spilled the beans to Brenda and explained everything that happened since that cursed circumcision. Brenda felt relief upon hearing the news, because all she ever wanted to be was a boy. The revelation that she had been born a boy made everything make sense! Immediately, Brenda decided to revert to her birth gender - male. He chose the name David for himself. He liked it because it conjured imagery of having the odds stacked against you and conquering like the Biblical David against Goliath.

He had a double mastectomy done to remove his breasts, and he no longer saw Dr Money. Instead, he developed homicidal thoughts regarding the doctor who had started the s*x reassignment process. In 1981, he underwent surgery to create a rudimentary peepee. He also received a fake scrotum. Over three years, he was hospitalized eighteen times for blockages and infections in his artificial urethra franklin.

Conclusion

This is the story of David Reimer and how a simple circumcision led to a lifetime of pain. There are some good parts in the ending. David married a woman named Jane Fontane and they adopted three children. After discovering Dr Money's research, David went public with his story in a bid to disprove Dr Money's theories. Unfortunately, David Reimer died from suicide on 4 May 2004. He was 38 years old.

When discussing David Reimer, many use his case to delve into trans theory. I, instead, wish to highlight the damage that a botched circumcision brought about. CIRCUMCISION BAD.

Tune in next time when I discuss Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.