Bruce Reimer is a Canadian who was raised as a girl for the first 14 years of his life. He became a real victim of a medical experiment, as a result of which he could not overcome psychological trauma and committed suicide at the age of 38.
In this article we will try to understand how the wrong decisions of doctors and pseudoscientific arrogance affect the fate of a person, and also find out why Bruce Reimer could not become a girl?
We were born
Bruce (who later chose the name David Reimer) and his twin brother Brian were born on August 22, 1965 in the Canadian city of Winnipeg to a couple of young farmers. The boys were perfectly he althy, but after a few months, parents began to worry that their children were experiencing unpleasant pain when urinating.
Alarmed by this problem (which was completely unnecessary) they took them to the family doctor. The doctor suggested that the problem be solved with the help of a standardoperations: circumcision. Instead of using a surgical knife, experts have used a new method in which the skin is burned under the influence of an electrosurgical needle. The operation didn't go as planned and unfortunately Bruce's penis was burned beyond repair.
Boy or girl?
Bruce's parents were naturally concerned about how an adult guy could live happily without the normal functioning of sexual functions. They turned to Dr. Johns Hopkins, who worked at a medical center in B altimore and supported the radical ideas about sexual identity that were gaining popularity in the 1960s.
At one of the receptions they met with psychologist John Money, who was developing new views in the field of puberty. He first expressed the conviction that sexual identity is a very plastic concept, and all the psychological and behavioral differences between boys and girls were learned by them in infancy. This concept became a real axiom in the 1960s.
Dr. Money thought that Bruce Reimer was an ideal experiment, especially since he had a twin brother who could serve as a "comparison control". Then he suggested that the boys' parents not restore Bruce's penis, but "make" a vagina in its place and raise him as a girl.
At 22 months old, Bruce's testicles were removed. From that moment on, they began to call him Brenda. Dr. Mani also advised his father and mother never to tell the boy what was wrong with him.happened in childhood.
Successful report
In 1972, Dr. Money published the first details of an amazing experiment in his book "Man and Woman, Boy and Girl". Bruce Reimer, whose story stirred the whole world, was raised as a girl. The psychologist stressed that the consequences of dressing him in a dress became noticeable after a year. The kid began to give a clear preference for women's outfits and was proud of his long hair.
By the age of four and a half, he was much neater than his brother. And unlike him, he didn't like being dirty. The mother reported that the daughter tries to copy her when cleaning and cooking in the kitchen, while the boy did not care about it. Bruce Reimer, who grew up with Brenda, happily received a doll and a dollhouse for Christmas, and did not even look at his brother's garage with cars and tools.
Influential Findings
Dr. Money's report was extremely influential and quite understandable. If a boy can only turn into a girl by missing a penis, dressing him up in a dress, and growing his hair out, then the cultural origin of a person can be called into question. This conclusion was confirmed by a psychologist in the Sexual Signatures report in 1977.
The doctor also noted that by the age of four, looking at the children, it was impossible to make a mistake where the boy was and where the girl was. At the age of 5, little Brenda already independently preferred to wear dresses, use hair bands, bracelets and hairpins, and was also a little in love with herdad (like all little girls).
Dr. Mani concluded that the result of the reincarnation was so successful due to their quick actions in the boy's first year.
Scientists' doubts
Dr. Middleton Diamond has been interested in this story since 1972, when Money first reported the experiment to the world. However, his requests for more information on Bruce's adolescence went unanswered.
In 1992, Dr. Diamond managed to track down one of the doctors involved in the Brenda/Bruce Reimer project. It was a psychiatrist from Winnipeg, Dr. Keith Signadson. He knew that Dr. Money was fundamentally misrepresenting the facts in this case, but he did not have the courage to challenge the famous specialist.
Then Diamond convinced Signadson to tell everyone about the true results of the experiment. And they jointly published Bruce's story in March 1997 in the "Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine" report, which shocked the world again.
Bruce Reimer: true biography
The truth turned out to be the opposite of what Dr. Mani reported in his articles. The boy did not easily pass from man to woman. Bruce "struggled" in every possible way with his appointment to the female sex, even when he did not know about the true origin. According to his mother, Bruce Reimer as a child always tore off his dresses, played with other boys in the mud, and trampled on dolls that his relatives gave him.
School was an unending nightmare for him. Teachers and students noticed a "masculine side" in Brand. The girls constantly avoided her, and the boys laughed at her. Teachers anxiously asked parents why Brenda was so strange and completely unfeminine. One of the boy's few friends later recalled that as far as everyone seemed, Brenda was only a girl physically. But everything she did and said indicated that she did not want to be her. She was much more competitive than the other girls. She always argued with the fry and even fought with them, proving her case. And the bruises on her face didn't bother her at all.
Natural opposition
Injections of female hormones did nothing to turn Reimer Bruce into Brenda. His brother later recalled that there was nothing feminine about his sister. She walked like a guy, sat with her legs apart. She spoke about the fact that she did not like to clean the house, do makeup, and categorically averted thoughts of marriage. The brother and sister wanted to play with the boys, build fortresses, eat snow and play army. When she was given a jump rope, she only used it to tie up boys in games. I always preferred to play with the dump truck and the soldiers.
It is important to note that such conclusions were made by people who did not know about the true reality. They all thought that Bruce Reimer was a girl, albeit a rather strange one. The kids at school called her "gorilla". One girl who made fun of Brenda was very surprised when she grabbed her by the collar of her shirt, picked her up and threw her to the floor. Manythe boys wanted to be as strong as Brenda.
The truth has been revealed
On March 14, 1980, when Brenda was 15 years old, her parents, Ron and Janet Reimer, finally told their child the truth. Reimer Bruce was an ordinary boy until a terrible act of medical malpractice destroyed his penis. Brenda was "released".
The boy is not crazy, his life has found meaning. As his sexual interest in girls began to rise, "Brenda" insisted on immediately reclaiming her male identity. And she did it with surprising ease, despite the absence of a penis and testicles. He chose a different name for himself - David, because he felt that his life was reminiscent of the struggle between David and Goliath.
Bruce Reimer - crippled fate
When the boy grew up and became a thirty-year-old man, he began to cooperate with Dr. Diamond to refute all the "successful" conclusions of Dr. Money.
Shortly after the release of The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, David agreed to be interviewed by Rolling Stone about the story. He said that he could never forget the nightmares that happened to him in childhood. And he noted that he lives in a very turbulent time. This article became the basis for the book How Nature Made Him. He even appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show to share his experiences and impressions.
Bruce Reimer, despite all the hardships that happened to him at a young age, was able to marry a woman who bore him three children.
Butin 2004 he decided to commit suicide. His twin brother died of an overdose two years ago. Therefore, David began to suffer from deep depression. A 14-year marriage was crumbling, his personal life was in decline, he lost $65,000 in a bad investment, and therapy with a psychologist reminded him of the cruel experiment he was subjected to.
His mother told the New York Times that her son would not have killed himself if he hadn't been in a downward spiral that started with Mani's experiments. Janet herself spent her whole life in depression, and her father suffered from alcoholism in recent years. They blamed themselves for the torment they put their children through.
Dr. Money, who died in 2006, stopped publicly commenting on the case as early as 1980. He never admitted that the scientific experiment was a failure.
Summing up, it is worth giving Dr. Diamond's thoughts. In his article, he noted that all these combined medical, surgical and social efforts did not help to achieve success in the child's acceptance of a different gender identity. Then, perhaps, we should understand that there is something important in the biological composition of the individual, we did not come into this world neutral, each of us has a certain degree of masculine and feminine "principles" that manifest themselves in us regardless of the opinion of society.
