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John Money

John Money (1921–2006), a New Zealand-American psychologist at Johns Hopkins, introduced the term "gender role" in 1955 and used "gender identity" in 1966 in the press release about the Johns Hopkins gender clinic (source). His Reimer case ended in tragedy: he presented the case as a success, while David Reimer did not identify as a girl and began living as a boy at fourteen. Critics accuse him of fraud or malpractice.

The thesis: gender as learned

Money worked with intersex patients at Johns Hopkins Hospital. He was a prominent proponent of the "theory of gender neutrality": gender identity would develop mainly through social learning and could be changed with the right interventions during the first two years of life (source). On that basis he advocated surgical "normalisation" of the genitals of intersex children (source). See also Robert Stoller.

The Reimer case: a failure presented as a success

In 1966, eight-month-old Bruce Reimer lost his penis in a botched circumcision. Money persuaded the parents that sex reassignment was in his best interest; at 22 months Reimer was castrated and raised as a girl ("Brenda") (source). Money described the case as the "John/Joan" case and reported an apparently successful development as a girl, even after David told his father at fourteen that he had always felt like a boy (source). According to Colapinto, Reimer did not identify as a girl while living as Brenda and was bullied by classmates (source). Money's colleague Richard Green defended him: Money wanted to help and acted according to the medical knowledge of the time.

According to Colapinto's biography As Nature Made Him, Money had the twins Bruce and Brian carry out "sexual rehearsal play" during consultations from the age of six, because he considered it important for a healthy adult gender identity; both boys were traumatised (source). David later lived as a man and took his own life in May 2004. His twin brother Brian died in July 2002 of an overdose of medication (source).

What the case showed

Diamond and Sigmundson (1997) reported the outcome: Reimer rejected being raised as a girl and had lived as a boy since puberty. The authors wrote that later cases should be handled in light of this outcome (source). It is a single case, but it undermined the assumption that gender can be almost entirely steered in early childhood. Before that, Money's view on the malleability of gender had been the dominant view in the field for about thirty years (source).

The term "gender identity" was not coined by Money. According to Wikipedia, the term entered the field in the early 1960s through Hooker and Stoller; Money introduced "gender role" (source). See also metaphysical claim and unfalsifiable.

Impact

Money founded the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in 1965 (source). The Cass Review (2024) calls the care for young people with gender dysphoria "an area of remarkably weak evidence" (source); see also the evidence-based objection.

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