David Reimer’s Forced Sex Reassignment (1965)
YouTube/FacebookDavid Reimer was born Bruce Reimer and was biologically male, but a botched circumcision led to his forced sex reassignment when he was just a baby.
Ron and Janet Reimer had twin sons at a Winnipeg, Canada hospital in 1965. They named their sons Bruce and Brian. For eight months, this was their reality. But both Bruce and Brian had difficulty urinating and were eventually diagnosed with phimosis, which prevents the foreskin from retracting.
To remedy the condition, the Reimers took their sons to the hospital so that they could be circumcised. Bruce was the first of the twins to be taken into surgery. His surgeon used an electrocautery needle rather than a blade and accidentally singed the infant’s penis. Brian was never taken into the operating room, and his phimosis eventually healed on its own.
The Reimers were clueless as to what to do with Bruce, though. That is, until they caught a TV program featuring psychologist John Money, one of the best known sex researchers in the U.S. Money theorized that children were gender-neutral until age two, and therefore parents could influence the sex of their child behaviorally in the first couple of years of their life.
Believing that Money could help, the Reimers wrote to him. He responded, and they flew out to meet him at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Then, he proposed a solution to their situation: castrate young Bruce, give him a prosthetic vagina, and raise him as a girl.
The Reimers agreed to Money’s proposition, renamed Bruce as Brenda, and paid for a sex reassignment surgery as well as estrogen supplements.
Each year, the Reimers met with Money so he could observe the twins’ development. Money eventually turned these observations into a 1975 book titled Sexual Signatures, in which he wrote of “Brenda”:
“The girl already preferred dresses to pants, enjoyed wearing her hair ribbons, bracelets, and frilly blouses, and loved being her daddy’s little sweetheart. Throughout childhood, her stubbornness and the abundant physical energy she shares with her twin brother and expends freely have made her a tomboyish girl, but nonetheless a girl.”
Money touted the sex reassignment surgery and psychology experiment as a success, but it was a bold-faced lie. In reality, “Brenda” struggled throughout “her” childhood with issues like gender identity and bullying. “She” often complained to “her” parents about feeling like a boy, and the secret wreaked havoc on the rest of the family as well. Ron Reimer became an alcoholic, Janet Reimer attempted suicide, and Brian Reimer abused substances.
Once the twins entered their teens, their parents finally told them the truth about their infancy — and for “Brenda,” suddenly everything made sense. Choosing now to live as a boy named David, Reimer went through numerous surgeries to transition back to being a male again.
The physical stress, however, alongside ongoing mental health struggles, had pushed David Reimer to the edge. He attempted suicide multiple times by his early 20s, and though it seemed that his life later improved — he eventually married and became a stepfather to three children — Reimer unfortunately died by suicide in 2004. He was just 38 years old.
