WINNIPEG, Manitoba, May 11 — David Reimer, a man who was born a boy but raised as a girl in a famous medical experiment, only to reassert his male identity in the last 20 years of his life, died on May 4. He was 38. His family says he committed suicide. His mother, Janet Reimer, said she believed that her son would still be alive had it not been for the devastating experiment, which led to much emotional hardship. “He managed to have so much courage,” she said Sunday. “I think he felt he had no options. It just kept building up and building up.”
After a botched circumcision operation when he was a toddler, David Reimer became the subject of a study that became known as the John/Joan case in the 60’s and 70’s. His mother said she was still angry with the Baltimore doctor who persuaded her and her husband, Ron, to give female hormones to their son and raise him as a daughter. As he grew up as Brenda in Winnipeg, he faced cruelty from the other children. “They wouldn’t let him use the boys’ washroom or the girls’,” Ms. Reimer recalled. “He had to go in the back alley.”
His sexual reassignment was then widely reported as a success and proof that children are not by nature feminine or masculine but through nurture are socialized to become girls or boys. David’s identical twin brother, Brian, offered researchers a matched control subject. But when, as a teenager, he discovered the truth about his past , he resumed his male identity, eventually marrying and becoming a stepfather to three children. In 2000, John Colapinto wrote “As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl,” providing David an opportunity to tell his story. He wanted to save other children from a similar fate, his mother said. His mother said he had recently become depressed after losing his job and separating from his wife. He was also still grieving over the death of his twin brother two years earlier, she said
I remember learning about this in my Human Sexuality class in college. It’s a facinating story academically, but a tragic one on the personal level. I am sorry to hear about this sadness, but I hope David has found the peace he was seeking.
I’m not sure if he was included in the interviews on an HBO documentary, but it was basically the same thing, though the reassignments were mostly on sexually ambiguous (hermaphrodite) patients. The result was the same. Does anyone know what the “standard” is these days? I know the patients in the documentary were for allowing the sexual identity to emerge without surgical or hormonal intervention.
I’m very depressed about this, I had hoped he’d have a happy ending. In the documentary, he seemed to be coping well and have a good life: wife, kids, job; not overly bitter about his childhood.
Then he lost his wife, his job, his twin brother . . . Being naturally disposed to depression after that ghastly childhood, I’m not surprised he killed himself, but seeing his obit this morning really threw me.
That’s just horrible- my thoughts go out to his family.
FYI, I just read about him through an old (I think) thread where I believe it was either you or KellyM. Eve that linked to his story. The thing had me near tears.
Thank you so much for the education on transgender issues- there’s so much that never even occured to me before.
I read that book and I couldn’t believe the arrogance of the medical community. I too thought he had finally gotten to a point where he could be happy. I’m sorry that wasn’t the case.
I also remember watching a show about gender reassignment. The focus was mainly on hermaphrodites but they covered a little boy with a micro penis and one tiny testicle. The doctors tried to brow beat the parents into reassigning him as a girl but they refused so the bastards took the testicle anyway. The parents sued and they are raising him a boy buy he has to take hormones every day to keep him growing and his bones strong. There was other stuff that this poor kid faces but it was a long time ago and I’ve forgotten a lot. I wish doctors wouldn’t be so damn cruel!
Damn, that’s so sad for him and his family. Looks like the more recent events only reinforced the notion that life was going to be one long sequence of external forces making him suffer.
Y’know, all these reports about “medically necessary” realignment do create a bad taste in my mouth… so if a child is male, and by accident or birth defect ends up with defective or incomplete “equipment”, or is hermaphroditic, the default setting is to get rid of the “defective” bits, and “make a girl out of what’s left”? I’m not comfortable with that. Anyway, many people grow up with physical abnormalities or missing limbs/senses, and what we do is offer support in their challenges. It would have been painful enough for the boy to grow up with the sequelae of his injury, but to on top of it make it determine his very identity…
I mean, TG persons are people who have figured what their sexual identity is, and freely choose whether to modify their physique to make it match that identity. There was no freedom in David’s choice, just validation of a theory.
I remember seeing a documentary on this guy some years ago and it did seem like he was doing better (though of course you could tell he’d suffered a lot of pain and heartache).
This is a truly horrible, sucky ending to this guy’s story. My prayers go out to his family, and may he now find the peace that he was seeking. This is heartbreaking.
In similar news, it was recently discovered that a girl in Japan is not a girl at all. Turns out the boy has a condition which normally hides his genitals from view.
And this boy, son of a civil servant and doting mother, grew up to become one of the most notorious mass-murderers and megalomaniacs in the history of mankind, and even has his own cable channel devoted to him nearly 60 years after his suicide…
