When Reimer was a baby, a doctor botched his circumcision, and sex researcher Dr. John Money convinced Reimer’s parents of his theory that “gender identity” (a term Money coined) was not assigned by nature, but by nurture. He thus got them to castrate the child and raise him as a girl.
Money said the “success” of the reassignment “proved” his theory, in part because Reimer was a perfect test subject: he had an identical twin brother. It was literally a textbook case, written up in medical, psychiatric, and other texts as proof that gender was malleable — and widely promoted by Dr. Money.
But Money apparently never let on that over time, the experiment actually proved to be a disaster: Reimer, who was renamed “Brenda”, preferred toy guns to dolls, and never adapted to his female personality. At 14, “Brenda” refused to continue taking artificial hormones, and when he learned the truth about his childhood he reclaimed his male identity, and the name David. But the psychological scars of his childhood, coupled with the death of his twin two years ago, overcame him. He committed suicide on May 4 in his hometown of Winnipeg, Man., Canada. He was 38.