John Money

John Money

John Money was a man of English and Welsh Christian fundamentalist parents, born in New Zealand. One of his most known legacies is coining the modern use of the term "Gender", albeit its real etymology comes from the Latin word genus, meaning "type" or "kind" and was later used in early English to refer to grammatical categories exclusively.

“	[...] people were gonna say 'Well, the Dave Reimer case could have been successful'. I'm living proof. And if you're not gonna take my word as gospel, because I have lived through it, who else are you gonna listen to?	”
—David Reimer, one of John Money's test subjects in his final public interview

Experiments on David and Brian Reimer

In 1966 when David Reimer, originally known as Bruce Reimer was born, a botched circumcision meant that he would live without genitalia. When John Money took note of this, he persuaded his parents that a sexual reassignment surgery would be in their best interest for the boy. At the age of 22 months, an orchiectomy was performed on him, and his name changed to Brenda Reimer. However when offered to implant an artificial vagina, the parents understandably refused. Money then published papers on the surgery being successful.

According to a Canadian journalist John Colapinto, when David and his twin brother Brian reached the age of 6, Money showed the boys pornography, performed genital inspections, forced them to perform various sexual acts, and on "at least one occasion" took pictures of aforementioned acts. David Reimer also claimed that Money was very nice and mild when around his parents, but ill-tempered when alone.

“	He told me to take my clothes off, and I just did not do it. I just stood there. And he screamed, 'Now!' [...] I thought he was going to give me a whupping. So I took my clothes off and stood there shaking.	”
—David Reimer

At the age of 14 when David was under phychological stress and agony, he was told the truth by his parents. Shortly after that, he started calling himself David, and underwent more surgical procedures to undo his "body modifications". In 2002, David's brother Brian was found dead from overdosing on antidepressants at the age of 36. Two years later, David committed suicide by shooting himself.

By the time this secret experiment was discovered by the society at large, there was no significant backlash as the idea of a purely socially constructed gender identity and infant sex change had become normalized.

Gender

John Money played a significant role in shaping the general public's understanding of the term, being closely associated with the distinction between biological "sex" and psychological "gender". He argued that the two terms refer to physical body structure and psychological indentity respectively, effectively implementing newspeak which would then lead to the term "sex" slowly becoming used exclusively for the act of sex, and the malleable "gender" becoming the term for both psychological and physical identity.