At risk of getting myself banned (I guess a litmus test for myself to see how zealous the mods are here), one of the pioneering studies done in the field ended in suicide.
The thing is, this story you mention isn’t a situation of trans health care; this is a situation of actual child abuse. The parents literally forced a gender identity onto their child who seems to have otherwise been cisgender. It’s not all that different from what conservative parents will often do with their actual trans children.
If anything, this story shows the harms that come by denying gender-affirming care to children. That child was not a girl, and denying him of his identity caused irreparable damage. All because the parents were too scared to tell their child that the doctor fucked up the circumcision.
Unfortunately, right out of the gate you were complaining about people labelling folks as bigots, claim that arguments against trans care are being censored and then fail to provide evidence for why we should ban trans health care. This makes it really difficult to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re arguing in good faith out of concern for children’s wellbeing.
The sad reality is that many people arguing against trans care are in fact bigots and trans issues have been turned into a political football to the detriment of all trans people including children. If you have real concerns about children’s well being and want to be taken seriously, you need to state plainly what your key concerns are and allow space for being wrong. Otherwise, because of the nature of discussion around this issue in the public sphere, people may assume that you’re bigoted against trans people, rightly or wrongly.
Maybe it’s a good time to ask yourself why you find these arguments that you’ve been bringing up convincing specifically for the issue of trans health care.
If you are concerned with the welfare of children, surely the most sensible thing is to allow doctors to be in charge of their healthcare rather than banning things and reducing the options doctors have for taking care of them.
If you are concerned with the welfare of children, surely the most sensible thing is to allow doctors to be in charge of their healthcare rather than banning things and reducing the options doctors have for taking care of them.
Are you suggesting that there’s an epidemic of undiagnosed MSP and that it’s the cause of trans children existing? Because if so, you’re probably gonna need to venture past Page 1 of your Google searches to break that one down for us.
This is not a pioneering study done in the field, jfc. This isn’t a transgender story, this is a story of abuse. Did you read the article? Did you do any research into this at all? Did you at least read his biography? Because I have. To summarize: David was born a cisgendered man whose doctors botched his circumcision so badly he needed reconstructive surgery. His parents consulted a sexologist they saw on TV (the now disgraced John Money), and he convinced the parents to give David a sex change. Not for David’s benefit mind you, but because the sexologist wanted to make a name for himself based on his theories on gender being easily malleable (and he briefly did, until the truth came out). A lot of gross messed up stuff happened, like the sexologist would make David roleplay sex with his twin brother I shit you not. He would make them watch hetero porn with him. And then he would make them get into sexual positions and make them playact sex together. He also took photos (and I think video) of these two children simulating sex.
So to summarize real quick, the pedo-sexologist who committed acts of psychological, medical and sexual abuse on these children, is your “pioneering study” guy. Let me guess, you thought that John Money was a success and that he proved his theory that gender identity is easily manipulated? I’ve seen this exact anti-trans disinformation twist before, along with thinking David was trans (he wasn’t) and pointing out David’s “trans suicide”. You should be more suspicious of your sources for information. By the 90s we already knew John Moneys work with David was useless. And the disinfo machine loves to leave out a very important fact: Davids brother Brian killed himself two years before David took his own life. I guess the suicide of the depressed cisgendered brother who never transitioned muddies the trans-suicide agenda being pushed.
Whenever I see his story pop up, the terfs (and the unfortunately misinformed) end up erroneously thinking this is a story of a trans kid who killed themself. Disinfo will say this story proves that you can manipulate someone into believing they’re a different gender then they know themselves to be. And look! Disinfo swears theres reputable science papers by John Money to back this up! ha.
David was a straight, cisgendered man. His story is not a transgender story. It’s many other things; a story of child abuse, medical abuse, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. It’s the a story of a cisgendered person experiencing gender dysphoria and not understanding why. To me, what his story really shows us is that a persons personal sense of gender is an innate and pervasive thing; a complex combination of mind and body that persists; no matter how much abuse you throw at it. Because even though David was raised to believe he was a woman; had his role as a woman constantly being reinforced by his entire world, had everyone in his life telling him he was a woman, he still knew he was a man and deeply struggled to understand why he felt that way.
An experiment was performed on an unknowing child by raising him as a girl, following his botched circumcision, with disastrous results.
How is this relevant to the issue of transgender health care? Sounds like a pretty good study of why infant circumcision is bad but it doesn’t seem like an example of trans health care causing harm.
At risk of getting myself banned (I guess a litmus test for myself to see how zealous the mods are here), one of the pioneering studies done in the field ended in suicide.
The thing is, this story you mention isn’t a situation of trans health care; this is a situation of actual child abuse. The parents literally forced a gender identity onto their child who seems to have otherwise been cisgender. It’s not all that different from what conservative parents will often do with their actual trans children.
If anything, this story shows the harms that come by denying gender-affirming care to children. That child was not a girl, and denying him of his identity caused irreparable damage. All because the parents were too scared to tell their child that the doctor fucked up the circumcision.
Removed by mod
Unfortunately, right out of the gate you were complaining about people labelling folks as bigots, claim that arguments against trans care are being censored and then fail to provide evidence for why we should ban trans health care. This makes it really difficult to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you’re arguing in good faith out of concern for children’s wellbeing.
The sad reality is that many people arguing against trans care are in fact bigots and trans issues have been turned into a political football to the detriment of all trans people including children. If you have real concerns about children’s well being and want to be taken seriously, you need to state plainly what your key concerns are and allow space for being wrong. Otherwise, because of the nature of discussion around this issue in the public sphere, people may assume that you’re bigoted against trans people, rightly or wrongly.
Maybe it’s a good time to ask yourself why you find these arguments that you’ve been bringing up convincing specifically for the issue of trans health care.
If you are concerned with the welfare of children, surely the most sensible thing is to allow doctors to be in charge of their healthcare rather than banning things and reducing the options doctors have for taking care of them.
Straight up facts!
Are you suggesting that there’s an epidemic of undiagnosed MSP and that it’s the cause of trans children existing? Because if so, you’re probably gonna need to venture past Page 1 of your Google searches to break that one down for us.
This is not a pioneering study done in the field, jfc. This isn’t a transgender story, this is a story of abuse. Did you read the article? Did you do any research into this at all? Did you at least read his biography? Because I have. To summarize: David was born a cisgendered man whose doctors botched his circumcision so badly he needed reconstructive surgery. His parents consulted a sexologist they saw on TV (the now disgraced John Money), and he convinced the parents to give David a sex change. Not for David’s benefit mind you, but because the sexologist wanted to make a name for himself based on his theories on gender being easily malleable (and he briefly did, until the truth came out). A lot of gross messed up stuff happened, like the sexologist would make David roleplay sex with his twin brother I shit you not. He would make them watch hetero porn with him. And then he would make them get into sexual positions and make them playact sex together. He also took photos (and I think video) of these two children simulating sex.
So to summarize real quick, the pedo-sexologist who committed acts of psychological, medical and sexual abuse on these children, is your “pioneering study” guy. Let me guess, you thought that John Money was a success and that he proved his theory that gender identity is easily manipulated? I’ve seen this exact anti-trans disinformation twist before, along with thinking David was trans (he wasn’t) and pointing out David’s “trans suicide”. You should be more suspicious of your sources for information. By the 90s we already knew John Moneys work with David was useless. And the disinfo machine loves to leave out a very important fact: Davids brother Brian killed himself two years before David took his own life. I guess the suicide of the depressed cisgendered brother who never transitioned muddies the trans-suicide agenda being pushed.
Whenever I see his story pop up, the terfs (and the unfortunately misinformed) end up erroneously thinking this is a story of a trans kid who killed themself. Disinfo will say this story proves that you can manipulate someone into believing they’re a different gender then they know themselves to be. And look! Disinfo swears theres reputable science papers by John Money to back this up! ha.
David was a straight, cisgendered man. His story is not a transgender story. It’s many other things; a story of child abuse, medical abuse, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. It’s the a story of a cisgendered person experiencing gender dysphoria and not understanding why. To me, what his story really shows us is that a persons personal sense of gender is an innate and pervasive thing; a complex combination of mind and body that persists; no matter how much abuse you throw at it. Because even though David was raised to believe he was a woman; had his role as a woman constantly being reinforced by his entire world, had everyone in his life telling him he was a woman, he still knew he was a man and deeply struggled to understand why he felt that way.
further reading/citations:
the 1997 medical paper & review of Moneys work that, along with Davids testimony, began to shed light on this: http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1997-sex-reassignment.html
Davids biography: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl by John Colapinto
a more detailed and damning article from 2017: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/david-reimer-and-john-money-gender-reassignment-controversy-johnjoan-case
a very disturbing amount of detail of what happened for those that can handle it: https://www.simplypsychology.org/david-reimer.html
and finally wikipedia for those that hate fancy links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money#Sex_reassignment_of_David_Reimer
How is this relevant to the issue of transgender health care? Sounds like a pretty good study of why infant circumcision is bad but it doesn’t seem like an example of trans health care causing harm.