John Money, a "sexologist," first used the term “gender” as a human characteristic. Money introduced the terms gender identity, gender role and sexual orientation.
Money established the first clinic in the United States to perform sexual reassignment surgeries on both infants and adults.
David Reimer was Money's most famous case and it was fundamentally flawed. In 1966, a botched circumcision left eight-month-old Reimer without a penis. Money persuaded the baby's parents that sex reassignment surgery would be in Reimer's best interest. At the age of 22 months, Reimer's testicles were surgically removed. He was reassigned to be raised as female and his name changed from Bruce to Brenda. Money further recommended hormone treatment. Money published a number of papers reporting the reassignment as successful.
According to David Reimer's biography, starting when Reimer and his twin Brian were six years old, Money showed the brothers pornography and forced the two to rehearse sexual acts, with David playing the bottom role as Brian "[pressed] his crotch against" David's buttocks. Money also forced the two children to strip for "genital inspections" and would even photograph the twins doing these acts.
For several years, Money reported on Reimer's progress as the "John/Joan case", describing apparently "successful" female gender development and using this case to support the feasibility of sex reassignment and surgical reconstruction. His claim was not true. Money continued to misrepresent the results as a success for decades. By the time this was discovered, the idea of a purely socially constructed gender identity and infant Intersex medical interventions had become accepted theory in some circles.
At 14 years old and in extreme psychological agony, Reimer was finally told the truth by his parents. He chose to begin calling himself David, and he underwent surgical procedures to revert the female bodily modifications to normal.
David Reimer's case came to international attention in 1997 when he told his story to Milton Diamond, an academic sexologist, who persuaded Reimer to allow him to report the outcome in order to dissuade physicians from treating other infants similarly. Soon after, Reimer went public with his story, and John Colapinto published a widely disseminated and influential account in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1997. This was later expanded into The New York Times best-selling biography As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl (2000), in which Colapinto described how—contrary to Money's reports—when living as Brenda, Reimer did not identify as a girl. He was ostracised and bullied by peers (who dubbed him "cavewoman"), and neither frilly dresses nor female hormones made him feel female.
On July 1, 2002, Brian was found dead from an overdose of antidepressants. On May 4, 2004, after suffering years of severe depression, financial instability, and marital troubles, David committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a sawed-off shotgun at the age of 38. Reimer's parents have stated that Money's methodology was responsible for the deaths of both of their sons.
Money's unreported failure led to the surgical reassignment of thousands of infants as a matter of policy.
