Tragic end for boy brought up as girl

13.05.2004

By DAVID USBORNE in New York

David Reimer told his parents in their hometown of Winnipeg, Canada, that though he was in a rough patch - recovering from the death of his twin brother two years ago and from his separation from his wife - things would get better soon. He didn't explain how.

Now his family know. On May 4, 38-year-old David Reimer took his own life. While his recent ills surely contributed to the despair, his mother knows there was more to it than that.

His death was the final coda to a life that became a world-renowned case study in the perils of tampering with gender. Over the span of his life he had been a boy, then a girl and then a boy again. "I thought I was an 'it'," he once said.

The wrenching story of David Reimer began with a snowstorm in 1966. His parents drove him to hospital for a routine circumcision. He was eight months old.

But the regular surgeon had not made it in and an assistant took over. She bungled the job. A cauterising implement burned David's penis - then baptised as Brian - and it fell off. A witness later said that when the mistake was made there was a sizzling sound, like a steak being seared.

Left with a child with testicles but no penis, his parents were not sure what to do.

When the boy was more than a year old, they learned about a doctor in Baltimore who had a reputation of helping people of ambiguous gender. His name was John Money and they went to see him.

It was New Zealander Money, author of 40 books on human sexuality, who convinced them that the best course was to transform their son into a daughter.

He recommended surgery, including clinical castration, and hormone treatment. Brian's parents agreed and the treatment began. Brian became Brenda and long trousers gave way to skirts.

For Money, who had pioneered studies in sexology at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University, it was an irresistible challenge. He was a main proponent at the time of the theory that was briefly popular in the 1960s and 1970s, that gender identity was not necessarily predetermined in the womb.

It was more about environment. In the controversy that still rages today over the balance between nurture and nature in determining our sexual selves, Money was a hero of the camp favouring nurture.

Better still for Money, the Reimer case offered an unheard-of opportunity to prove his theory. The patient had an identical twin, who was indisputably male. He had an experiment, therefore, with a readily supplied control subject.

Nurture, with help from the knife and some pills, would demonstrate how their gender paths could be separated forever.

And all seemed to go well. All remnants of Brenda's male genitals were gone and her parents did all they could to raise a daughter. All the while, the so-called John/Joan case, expounded with pride by Money, was celebrated by science and sociologists everywhere.

However, as Money's reputation continued to grow, things in the Reimer household were not as people imagined. It was only in 2000 that the true story of Reimer's experience reached a wide public.

By then, out of dresses and back in the world as a boy, Brian - by then named David Reimer - had decided enough was enough. The truth had to be told.

By going on the Oprah Winfrey Show and collaborating on a book with a New York journalist, he revealed that Money had consigned him to a childhood of humiliation, confusion and misery.

"David was a hero," commented Milton Diamond, who collaborated on the first scientific papers to expose the disaster of the John/Joan case, on hearing of his death.

"David didn't give permission for what was done to him. Even though he didn't have a penis, he still knew he was male."

His family are left now to grieve for a loved one who was subjected to such humiliations without his consent.

The loss of his twin brother, they said, hit him hard. He also took his own life. For the past two years, David Reimer made the pilgrimage to his brother's grave every day to arrange fresh flowers and pull out the weeds.

And then the wife with whom he had established the traditional male role walked away, with the children. He slumped into depression. Soon after he lost his job.

His mother, Janet, tried to pay tribute at the funeral. "He was the most generous, loving soul that ever lived. He liked music. He liked jokes. He was so generous."

She said this as she buried his son on what was Mother's Day in Canada.

- INDEPENDENT