social-construction

David Reimer

1965–2004

I do not know if this counts as an experiment but I cannot help but feel that Reimer was treated like a lab rat. David was one of a set of twins born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, as Bruce Reimer. When he was six months old he was subjected to an unconventional method of circumcision that involved electric burning and things went badly when his penis was basically burned beyond repair.

His parents were concerned about the boy’s future and when he was two years old they took him to the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, to meet with psychologist John Money. Money was a huge believer that gender was a social construct and persuaded the Reimers to subject their son to a gender reassignment surgery. The Reimers went ahead and did so, and Bruce was renamed Brenda.

During her childhood, Brenda was subjected to many exercises by Dr. Money to make sure he would be girl-like. Money kept a record about Brenda’s progress but the Reimers would routinely lie about the results to make the doctor happy.

Brenda had a miserable childhood. It was obvious she was different from the other girls and was teased by the other children about it. Brenda was made to take female hormones but claimed they had no effect. David talked about allowing a boy to kiss him once and did not like it at all.

When she was thirteen years of age, Brenda told her parents she would commit suicide if they made her see Dr. Money ever again. The parents complied and told her the truth about her identity. At fourteen, Brenda renamed himself David and went through a reversal of gender reassignment.

When he was 22 years old, he went public with his story and many people were horrified by his ordeal. He received enormous public support and even made an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show but David still suffered from depression. His twin brother, Brian, suffered psychological damage from this as well since he was an unwilling participant in Dr. Money’s exercises to make David feel more girl-like and also from survivor’s remorse if you will. Brian took his own life in 2002. David’s relationship with his parents understandably never repaired and his marriage fell apart. David took his own life in 2004 at the age of 38, two years after his twin brother.

There are many feminists today who claim gender is nothing more than a social construct. All of them should be required to read up on David Reimer’s story.

Social psychologist Diarmuid O’Murchu suggests that Plato and Aristotle are primarily responsible for our binary view of gender and the idea that gender and sexuality are “biologically ingrained, and determined by God, the creator of the natural order.” Over the next few days, I’ll summarize some of O’Murchu’s helpful insights from his recent book, Incarnation: A New Evolutionary Threshold.

O’Murchu outlines the “norms” with which we are all no doubt familiar:

Men are supposed to be rational, assertive, tough, and focused on material success; women are supposed to be more emotional, modest, tender, and concerned with a nurturing quality of life. According to that same philosophy, the male is superior in strength, wisdom and fertility; the woman provides the passive, receptive incubator to fertilize the male seed and assure the continuance of the human race. [1]

This was not always the case. Many ancient peoples treated men and women in a much more egalitarian way. Our current binary roles can be traced back to the Agricultural Revolution. These gender stereotypes are socially constructed behaviors and attributes that differ by culture, rather than absolute truths or tenets of the Judeo-Christian tradition. [2] Many cultures identify a third or even fourth gender. The Bible often refers to “eunuchs” (see Isaiah 56:4-5 and Matthew 19:12, for instance) which may or may not have included people that today might identify as transgender, bisexual, intersex, gay, or lesbian.

.. In spiritual terms, gender is an attribute of the “false” or passing self, and is thus not one’s essential identity in God. The “True Self” or “Anchored Self” is beyond gender, which is probably the point Jesus is making when he says in heaven there is no marriage or giving in marriage (Luke 20:35).