Author: Aida Rostami, Y12
On august 22nd, 1965 in Winnipeg Canada, Janet Reimer had successfully become a proud mother of identical twins originally named Bruce and Brian. The twins were growing healthily up until they started experiences issues when urinating and they were diagnosed with phimosis. This is a condition in which the foreskin of penis head cannot be pulled back. To resolve this problem at 7 months old they were taken to get circumcised, however the parents were unaware of the method taken to have the boys circumcised; the doctor proceeded by using the method of cauterization. Cauterization is a heating technique where the skin is essentially burnt off instead of using the traditional blade.
Unfortunately, during the surgery, Brian Reimer had faced the inconveniences of suffering a surgical accident in which his penis had been burnt off. By no surprise his parents were devastated after hearing the news and decided against risking their other son undergoing the same procedure but luckily Bruce’s phimosis had later resolved itself with time. However, there was still the decision to be made of how they would approach Brian’s accident. The parents worried that Brian would develop major psychological issues if he were to grow up as a man with no penis, during this time their mother- Janet recalled watching a show on tv that had featured a psychologist who specialised in the biology of gender and sexual identity, he was named Dr. John money. To the Reimer family he appeared as a charismatic, intelligent and confident and once they did some more research into him, they also found that he was well respected and reputable by his peers in his field.
In basis the reason the Reimers were interested in Dr. money was because he had a theory that gender was not something you were born into but rather something you learnt through socialisation and upbringing. He believed that there was no preconceived psychological idea someone had on how they should act depending on their gender but rather it was an environmental construct. Nonetheless this was a sufficient solution for the family of Brian and they felt this resolved the issue they had been struggling with. Therefore they contacted Dr. Money and explained their situation to him. Dr. money was more than eager to go forward with the operation as he believed this would be the best case he could experiment with to support his theory of nurture not nature and add credibility to his words since they were twins from the same genes.
They arranged to meet at the johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore for the parents to discuss things further and become familiar with the plan of action, within this meeting Dr. Money convinced the parents that he was confident it would be in their best interest to raise Brian , their son, as a girl. From then on Brian was renamed as Brenda Reimer and her entire life was altered.
At 22 months old, his testes were removed and he was supplied with oestrogen hormones to inhibit the growth of his male features and he was dressed in skirts and dressed and given all kinds of dolls to play with however this all backfired when Brenda was unconsciously behaving like a boy and didn’t have interest in the activities his mum planned for him but would rather join his brother in his “masculine games”. All the while Janet would never speak up about the truth from the accident and assured her that it was normal and that she was simply just a “tomboy”.
Growing up both twins would make yearly visits with Dr. Money but through time as Brenda was not showing convincing signs of supporting money’s theory he started to become more aggressive within the visits. He would conduct random inspecting experiments, force the children to act out sexual scenes and take nude photographs of them. After many sessions money attempted to persuade Brenda in undergoing a full transitioning surgery to transform him into a biological female, even brining in other patients to share their story and persuade him but in the end Brenda told his parents that he would take his life if he were to ever have to see that doctor again. At this point the parents decided to tell the kids the truth, individually. Whilst the news made sense to Brenda and he felt relieved, his brother Bruce had a hard time processing the fact that his sister was actually his brother leading to Bruce developed schizophrenia. Later on Brian renamed himself to David and started taking testosterone hormones to combat the medication he was on before and underwent many surgeries to rid him of the hormone induced breasts he had developed and surgically obtained male genitals, he had also received a sum of money for the botched circumcision. However sadly Bruce passed in 2002 due to an antidepressant overdose and on may 2nd 2004 David took his own life after facing many financial and marriage issues. All the while Dr. Money was spreading false news of how this experiment ended up succeeding in his favour and that his theory was proven true.
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