As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl by John Colapinto
The horror of the case at a the heart of gender ideology
In 2000, John Colapinto wrote a book detailing the trauma of a family destroyed by a medical mistake.
The story started in 1967, when twin boys were born to the Reimer family. Sadly, one of the twins, David, suffered at the hands of a doctor who screwed up his circumcision. Frantic, and at a loss of what to do, the family was referred to Dr. John Money at Johns Hopkins University, who was a sex researcher at the time. Dr. Money viewed the Reimer twins as the perfect experiment and told the Reimers to raise David as a girl named Brenda.
It did not go well.
The family took the advice of this expert to hide a medical mistake with catastrophic results. Keep in mind that Ron and Janet Reimer were lower middle class folks from Canada who trusted the medical establishment. Problems with the twins were evident early on with behavioral issues, mental health issues, and social issues. Keep in mind both twins, David living as Brenda, and Brian had these issues. The parents continued to seek the advice of Dr. John Money and the doctor continued to tell them that David needed to be Brenda. The book provides a far more detailed and documented history than this.
Colapinto also reveals that Dr. John Money was, in my opinion, hideous. The book provides documentation of abuse, coercion, and sexual assault against the twins. Read the book to learn more, but I was disgusted not only with this man’s behavior toward this family and the twins, but also in his reporting of his “success” in turning David into Brenda. Dr. Milton Diamond, another sex researcher, didn’t believe him and made every effort to call him out on his deceptions, but the psychiatric industry at the time blindly supported Dr. John Money and Dr. Milton Diamond was silenced. Dr. Diamond eventually worked with David to bring these lies into the public sphere. Yet Dr. Diamond is not as familiar a name as Dr. John Money.
You may already know the end of this story. When David learned the truth about himself at age 15, he went back to living as a boy and as a teenager, and he refused to go back to Dr. John Money. By that time, the significant damage had already been done.
David and Brian Reimer both committed suicide. Brian struggled with substance abuse most of his life and ended up killing himself by overdose. David spent some time publicly debunking Dr. John Money’s “success” with him, including appearing on Oprah with his mother. David also killed himself when he was 38 years old.
The expert who guided this family became a hero to those who promote the lie that a human being can change themselves from male to female and vice versa. In an obituary on NBC, for instance, Dr. John Money is called a “pioneer” and the person without whom, the “whole field of study might not have existed.” Even the entry in Simply Psychology, which blandly explains the devastating effects of all this on David, describes Dr. John Money in favorable terms. Neither article mentions the abuse that the twins endured at the hands of Dr. John Money or the lies in his research.
Take the current cultural milieu and set it aside for a moment.
Colapinto wrote this as a case study well before it became a cultural fight. It is written without bias. He is a writer for The New Yorker and has written about a variety of topics, none of which could be interpreted as politically biased in any way. The information he shares about the abuse perpetrated by Dr. John Money comes from multiple documented sources, and if you take the time to read this book, you may be left wondering, like I was, how in the world this man rose to such prominence.
I went through graduate school for counseling in 2010, before the gender ideology craze became a religious movement, yet I do remember Dr. John Money’s name mentioned along with his theories on gender identity. It wasn’t pushed on us then like it is in graduate schools now, but I remember hearing about David’s case. It was presented in a very clinical, superficial manner with none of the information that I read about in Colapinto’s book. Never once did I hear the name Dr. Milton Diamond.
In my mind, the education and training I received was deceptive and it’s worse now. Just think—a whole generation of counselors, social workers, psychologists, and psychiatrists are being trained with Dr. John Money’s theories as relevant scientific fact in the field of psychology. In my opinion, Colapinto’s book should be included on the required reading list for any course having to do with gender ideology.
Ultimately, this book highlights the arrogance of the supposedly educated, the lack of spine from peer reviewers, and the lack of compassion or empathy for regular people. Dr. John Money is celebrated in the field of psychology and by those who promote his theories as an excuse for mutilating children. Yet nothing is said about his disturbing sexual proclivities, the fraudulent research, or the family he destroyed. The entire field of psychology succumbed to conformity to celebrate his work, completely discounting any information that opposed him. My heart aches for Janet Reimer. In the Oprah interview, in tears, she explained that they believed the doctor, they trusted the doctor. But Dr. John Money nor those who supported him in the field considered the fact that a family was destroyed in the process.
Let me repeat that, this man destroyed the Reimer family and his work continues to destroy families. Anyone touched by anything related to gender ideology will confirm that when a family becomes infected by this, it is destroyed. In my opinion, Dr. John Money’s legacy should be “destroyer of families.”
This is the case that started it all. This is the doctor celebrated as a pioneer despite his horrific failures. This is the family destroyed so a whole new field of study could change our entire society. I will admit, the book is disturbing. But it’s worth it.