Hetero-Home ... Nature or Nurture?

The Death of David Reimer - Reason.com

On May 4, 2004, David Reimer committed suicide in Winnipeg. Thirty-eight years old, he had been a slaughterhouse worker and an odd-job man. He had also been both a boy and a girl, thanks to one of the darker episodes in the history of pseudoscientific hubris.

Born Bruce Reimer in 1965, David suffered a botched circumcision when he was eight months old. Most of his penis was burned off, and reconstructive surgery was too primitive at the time to restore it. Dr. John Money, a sexologist at Johns Hopkins University, persuaded Reimer's parents to have their son completely castrated and raised as a girl.

This was not simply a matter of trying to make the best of a bad situation. Money had been a leading exponent of the theory that children were born psychosexually neutral and could be assigned to either gender in the first years of their life. He had retreated somewhat from the most radical statement of this thesis, but stood by the central contention that when it came to sexual identity, nurture trumped nature. Bruce—now named Brenda—was an ideal test case. Along with everything else, she was an identical twin; so as an object of study, she came bundled with a built-in control.

...

Brenda Reimer resisted being classified as a girl from the beginning. The first time she wore a dress, she tried to rip it off. She preferred her brother's toys to her own. (A toy sewing machine was untouched, Colapinto writes, "until the day when Brenda, who loved to take things apart to see how they worked, sneaked a screwdriver from her dad's tool kit and dismantled the toy.") She got into fights, insisted on peeing standing up, and ran into terrible problems at school, where the other kids quickly recognized her as someone who didn't fit the ordinary sexual categories. By the time she was 10, she was declaring that she wanted to grow up to marry a woman, not a man.

• Money's meetings with Brenda were a darkly comic study in how a scientist could refuse to see the evidence he didn't want to see, and how a subject can gradually learn to respond to his cues. Worse, his efforts to make her conform to his expectations were coercive and abusive. Her refusal to receive vaginal surgeries—her penis was gone, but her doctors had not yet put a vagina in its place—was met not with an effort to understand her stance but with a series of attempts to manipulate her into agreeing to the procedures. (She succeeded in avoiding the surgery but was compelled to take estrogen pills, though she flushed them when she could.) Also disturbing was Money's belief that Brenda, in Colapinto's words, "must understand at a very early age the differences between male and female sex organs." Not an objectionable idea in itself, except that Money accomplished it by showing Brenda and her brother pictures of adults having sex and by forcing them to disrobe and examine each other's genitals. Worst of all, he allegedly insisted, starting when the twins were six, that they "play at thrusting movements and copulation"—more bluntly, that they pretend to have sex in various positions while he watched. (This last detail has been disputed.)

• Finally, when Brenda Reimer learned the truth about herself, at age 14, she decided to start living her life as a boy. She had her estrogen-created breasts removed, took testosterone injections, changed her name to David, and eventually had surgery to create a penis. In 1990 David married. The allegedly successful transformation of a boy baby into a girl was in fact a complete failure.
Why did David Reimer commit suicide?

Just shy of a month ago, I got a call from David Reimer's father telling me that David had taken his own life. I was shocked, but I cannot say I was surprised. Anyone familiar with David's life—as a baby, after a botched circumcision, he underwent an operation to change him from boy to girl—would have understood that the real mystery was how he managed to stay alive for 38 years, given the physical and mental torments he suffered in childhood and that haunted him the rest of his life. I'd argue that a less courageous person than David would have put an end to things long ago.

After David's suicide, press reports cited an array of reasons for his despair: bad investments, marital problems, his brother's death two years earlier. Surprisingly little emphasis was given to the extraordinary circumstances of his upbringing. This was unfortunate because to understand David's suicide, you first need to know his anguished history, which I chronicled in my book As Nature Made Him:The Boy Who Was Raised As a Girl.
...
Dr. Money And The Boy With No Penis | Watch Documentary Online for Free

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Read how this devastated his life and the lives of his twin brother and their parents.

How can we demand that people live out their lives lying to themselves and to others about their sexuality?

Why would we even want to do that?

Who is demanding such a thing? Can you be specific, because I have seen absolutely no evidence of it anywhere outside the minds of people who think that expressing an opinion is wrong if they disagree with it.

By the way, the example you chose is a totally absurd one to use to make your point. This boy was the victim of botched medical procedure, and his parents were forced to make the best of a bad situation. If it proves anything it proves that gender isn't actually a function of the mind, it is totally dependent on the body.
 
Imagine the futures of children today whose attention seeking parents insist that four year olds and six year olds are "transgendered" and raise them in opposition to their natural biology? Brenda Reimer was described in all ways as being a normal little girl. She wasn't was she? Her parents reported that she liked pretty dresses and played with her dolls. That wasn't true was it? A single article won't give the whole truthful story. Dig deeper look further. Brenda Reimer was the success of nurture over nature until it wasn't a success any more.

In almost all cases of transgendered children the child will develop out of the initial confusion. The sissy boy may never be a jock. That doesn't mean he has to be shoehorned into high heels either.

Its so much ore than a "single article" and no where was he described as being a "normal little girl".

This is just more evidence that our sexuality is hardwired into us. Hetero or Homo - we're born that way.

Wrong.

There was a deliberate attempt to reassign this child's gender, which is totally separate from sexual preference. No wonder your OP didn't make sense, you think gender and sex are the same thing.
 
Yeah, obviously mutilating children is unquestionably wrong. Perhaps someday the barbaric nations will come around, and abandon their detestable superstitions.

It's worse than that.
Deaths from Circumcision

117 average deaths a year are caused by circumcision.

Performing plastic surgery on a neonatal child is beyond barbaric.

You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.
 
Imagine the futures of children today whose attention seeking parents insist that four year olds and six year olds are "transgendered" and raise them in opposition to their natural biology? Brenda Reimer was described in all ways as being a normal little girl. She wasn't was she? Her parents reported that she liked pretty dresses and played with her dolls. That wasn't true was it? A single article won't give the whole truthful story. Dig deeper look further. Brenda Reimer was the success of nurture over nature until it wasn't a success any more.

In almost all cases of transgendered children the child will develop out of the initial confusion. The sissy boy may never be a jock. That doesn't mean he has to be shoehorned into high heels either.

Its so much ore than a "single article" and no where was he described as being a "normal little girl".

This is just more evidence that our sexuality is hardwired into us. Hetero or Homo - we're born that way.

My belief is we're asking the wrong questions about the whole thing, and that sexuality and gender don't literally exist but rather are constructs. If we didn't have words to describe male/female, gay/straight I wonder what'd happen.

Though we're just another kind of animal, we're the only one we apply these terms to. No one says such n such animal is questioning its sexuality, or is trans, but where people are ocncerned, because we just love categorizing things we dump all kinds of terms onto one another so we feel different and alienated from each other. When we feel separated from the rest of our community we feel fearful, and fearful people are easy to control and manipulate.

What do you base this belief on? If gender is just a construct why did this male have so much trouble adjusting to being a female even though he was raised that way? I think the case in the OP more than debunks your belief, or those of Money, which was the reason the article was written in the first place.
 
Yeah, obviously mutilating children is unquestionably wrong. Perhaps someday the barbaric nations will come around, and abandon their detestable superstitions.

It's worse than that.
Deaths from Circumcision

117 average deaths a year are caused by circumcision.

Performing plastic surgery on a neonatal child is beyond barbaric.

You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.
Circumcision wouldn't even be a thing of some perverts on a hill five thousand years ago had not decided to start doing it.

It's backward to perform cosmetic surgery on a child's genitalia. If any doctor suggests this I would call his ethics into question.

Backward religious practices aren't in any way ethical or advisable.

Complications of it decades later has caused a person to commit suicide.

It isn't ethical.
 
Yeah, obviously mutilating children is unquestionably wrong. Perhaps someday the barbaric nations will come around, and abandon their detestable superstitions.

It's worse than that.
Deaths from Circumcision

117 average deaths a year are caused by circumcision.

Performing plastic surgery on a neonatal child is beyond barbaric.

You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.

Obviously, religion played a role in introducing circumcision into the medical community.

John Harvey Kellogg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ironically, the desensitization of the American male is the main reason for this country's obsession with sexual aesthetics and pornography, since secondary stimulation is usually necessary to get the job done.
 
It's worse than that.
Deaths from Circumcision

117 average deaths a year are caused by circumcision.

Performing plastic surgery on a neonatal child is beyond barbaric.

You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.
Circumcision wouldn't even be a thing of some perverts on a hill five thousand years ago had not decided to start doing it.

It's backward to perform cosmetic surgery on a child's genitalia. If any doctor suggests this I would call his ethics into question.

Backward religious practices aren't in any way ethical or advisable.

Complications of it decades later has caused a person to commit suicide.

It isn't ethical.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Have you considered educating yourself to overcome your ignorance? Circumcision predates those perverts on the hill by centuries, maybe millennia.

Here is a link that is meets your standards for accuracy.

History of male circumcision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 
It's worse than that.
Deaths from Circumcision

117 average deaths a year are caused by circumcision.

Performing plastic surgery on a neonatal child is beyond barbaric.

You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.

Obviously, religion played a role in introducing circumcision into the medical community.

John Harvey Kellogg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ironically, the desensitization of the American male is the main reason for this country's obsession with sexual aesthetics and pornography, since secondary stimulation is usually necessary to get the job done.

I suggest you read some actual scholarly articles, there was a pretty widespread belief among doctors that circumcision prevented disease. Of course, these same doctors thought that leeches were a valid treatment for almost everything, which I challenge anyone to tie to any religion. You shouldn't assume that everything stupid in history is related to religion.
 
It's worse than that.
Deaths from Circumcision

117 average deaths a year are caused by circumcision.

Performing plastic surgery on a neonatal child is beyond barbaric.

You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.
Circumcision wouldn't even be a thing of some perverts on a hill five thousand years ago had not decided to start doing it.

It's backward to perform cosmetic surgery on a child's genitalia. If any doctor suggests this I would call his ethics into question.

Backward religious practices aren't in any way ethical or advisable.

Complications of it decades later has caused a person to commit suicide.

It isn't ethical.

He didn't commit suicide because he was circumcised.
 
You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.
Circumcision wouldn't even be a thing of some perverts on a hill five thousand years ago had not decided to start doing it.

It's backward to perform cosmetic surgery on a child's genitalia. If any doctor suggests this I would call his ethics into question.

Backward religious practices aren't in any way ethical or advisable.

Complications of it decades later has caused a person to commit suicide.

It isn't ethical.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Have you considered educating yourself to overcome your ignorance? Circumcision predates those perverts on the hill by centuries, maybe millennia.

Here is a link that is meets your standards for accuracy.

History of male circumcision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

it's still barbaric.

And I live how when somebody disagrees with you, you become a petulant little child.
 
You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.
Circumcision wouldn't even be a thing of some perverts on a hill five thousand years ago had not decided to start doing it.

It's backward to perform cosmetic surgery on a child's genitalia. If any doctor suggests this I would call his ethics into question.

Backward religious practices aren't in any way ethical or advisable.

Complications of it decades later has caused a person to commit suicide.

It isn't ethical.

He didn't commit suicide because he was circumcised.
No, just due to botched cosmetic surgery on an 8 month old child.
 
You do know that circumcision was widely advised by doctors, and that, since this boy was 8 months old when he was circumcised, it was most likely under medical advice, and had nothing to do with your bias against religion, don't you?

Maybe you should consider reading more carefully rather than blaming religion for everything.

Obviously, religion played a role in introducing circumcision into the medical community.

John Harvey Kellogg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ironically, the desensitization of the American male is the main reason for this country's obsession with sexual aesthetics and pornography, since secondary stimulation is usually necessary to get the job done.

I suggest you read some actual scholarly articles, there was a pretty widespread belief among doctors that circumcision prevented disease. Of course, these same doctors thought that leeches were a valid treatment for almost everything, which I challenge anyone to tie to any religion. You shouldn't assume that everything stupid in history is related to religion.

Sure, but quackery like clitoridectomy are no longer sanctioned by the medical community. And why? Because they are not in the fucking bible!
 
Circumcision wouldn't even be a thing of some perverts on a hill five thousand years ago had not decided to start doing it.

It's backward to perform cosmetic surgery on a child's genitalia. If any doctor suggests this I would call his ethics into question.

Backward religious practices aren't in any way ethical or advisable.

Complications of it decades later has caused a person to commit suicide.

It isn't ethical.

Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Have you considered educating yourself to overcome your ignorance? Circumcision predates those perverts on the hill by centuries, maybe millennia.

Here is a link that is meets your standards for accuracy.

History of male circumcision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

it's still barbaric.

And I live how when somebody disagrees with you, you become a petulant little child.

The fact that I am correcting your misconceptions about the origins of circumcision is not proof that I disagree with you. All it actually porves is that you were wrong about something. Also, I am not the one being petulant here. I can prove that by the fact that you are the one that resorted to insults in the CDZ, while all I did was mock your opinion.
 
Obviously, religion played a role in introducing circumcision into the medical community.

John Harvey Kellogg - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Ironically, the desensitization of the American male is the main reason for this country's obsession with sexual aesthetics and pornography, since secondary stimulation is usually necessary to get the job done.

I suggest you read some actual scholarly articles, there was a pretty widespread belief among doctors that circumcision prevented disease. Of course, these same doctors thought that leeches were a valid treatment for almost everything, which I challenge anyone to tie to any religion. You shouldn't assume that everything stupid in history is related to religion.

Sure, but quackery like clitoridectomy are no longer sanctioned by the medical community. And why? Because they are not in the fucking bible!

Yeah, that is why, it has nothing to do with the fact that it actually damages the female who receives one.
 
Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Have you considered educating yourself to overcome your ignorance? Circumcision predates those perverts on the hill by centuries, maybe millennia.

Here is a link that is meets your standards for accuracy.

History of male circumcision - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

it's still barbaric.

And I live how when somebody disagrees with you, you become a petulant little child.

The fact that I am correcting your misconceptions about the origins of circumcision is not proof that I disagree with you.
You haven't corrected shit. As usual you are just raising hell.

All it actually porves is that you were wrong about something.
I wasn't wrong and you have failed to prove it.

Also, I am not the one being petulant here. I can prove that by the fact that you are the one that resorted to insults in the CDZ, while all I did was mock your opinion.
I didn't, I still haven't.

You mock facts and call them opinions there is no need to insult you.
 
I suggest you read some actual scholarly articles, there was a pretty widespread belief among doctors that circumcision prevented disease. Of course, these same doctors thought that leeches were a valid treatment for almost everything, which I challenge anyone to tie to any religion. You shouldn't assume that everything stupid in history is related to religion.

Sure, but quackery like clitoridectomy are no longer sanctioned by the medical community. And why? Because they are not in the fucking bible!

Yeah, that is why, it has nothing to do with the fact that it actually damages the female who receives one.
Nobody seems to care that it damages the boys that receive circumcision.
 
Sure, but quackery like clitoridectomy are no longer sanctioned by the medical community. And why? Because they are not in the fucking bible!

Yeah, that is why, it has nothing to do with the fact that it actually damages the female who receives one.
Nobody seems to care that it damages the boys that receive circumcision.

Two points here:

#1.) We get your point...you like uncut penis.

#2.) Your preference for this being genetic is not supported by the case posted. It is a horrific case for sure, but does not support people being born "gay."
 
it's still barbaric.

And I live how when somebody disagrees with you, you become a petulant little child.

The fact that I am correcting your misconceptions about the origins of circumcision is not proof that I disagree with you.
You haven't corrected shit. As usual you are just raising hell.

All it actually porves is that you were wrong about something.
I wasn't wrong and you have failed to prove it.

Also, I am not the one being petulant here. I can prove that by the fact that you are the one that resorted to insults in the CDZ, while all I did was mock your opinion.
I didn't, I still haven't.

You mock facts and call them opinions there is no need to insult you.

You didn't blame a bunch of nuts on a hill for all circumcision? Was that someone else?
 
Sure, but quackery like clitoridectomy are no longer sanctioned by the medical community. And why? Because they are not in the fucking bible!

Yeah, that is why, it has nothing to do with the fact that it actually damages the female who receives one.
Nobody seems to care that it damages the boys that receive circumcision.

Damage? Is this another delusion? Can you point out where this resource, or ay other, says anything about damage from circumcision that is in any way comparable to what females who have a cliterectomy experience?

Circumcision: Learn the Pros and Cons of This Common Surgery
 

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