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Infant sex reassignment surgery

Gender Outsiders: Transgendered & Others

A look at Dr. John Money who popularized infant sex reassignment surgery and one patient who finally committed suicide.

Money's meetings with Brenda were a darkly comic study in how a scientist could refuse to see the evidence he didn't want to see, and how a subject can gradually learn to respond to his cues. Worse, his efforts to make her conform to his expectations were coercive and abusive. Her refusal to receive vaginal surgeries—her penis was gone, but her doctors had not yet put a vagina in its place—was met not with an effort to understand her stance but with a series of attempts to manipulate her into agreeing to the procedures.

Jesse Walker, Reason: The Death of David Reimer

Comments

thanks for the article. it doesnt particularly suprize me that money couldnt see the forest for the trees. there was always something i found particularly distubing about how strident money, green and some of those other "gender scientists" were.(and even more disturbing were the charges towards the end of the piece, but i am hardly suprized by the charge or the charges of verbal abuse) but i have to dispute something in the article. what the intersexed and transgendered communities are fighting for is not polar opposites as the author seems to think. this kind of falls into the category of the 'western propensity for thinking only in dicotomies.'. this isnt an argument over nature/nurture, although they do play a part, no, it is more a call for self-determination. a child should not be operated on until they have an idea of who they are, no matter how uncomfortable it makes the parents to say that they dont know what gender their child is. openness about how often this happens would combat the shame involved. and as for what the trans community wants, it too comes down to self-determination-- the right to say this is how i understand myself, and i should have the right to change my body as i see fit, as an adult, without having to get therapy. this is as fundemental as a woman's right to choose, and in some way is linked-- we are talking about my body and my choice.

How do you feel?

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My thanks,
Richard