Welcome to Genderland, where everything you know to be is turned on its head
We owe Genderland to John Money, who theorized that identity is divorced from biology
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Remember "Alice in Wonderland"? Little Alice followed the White Rabbit into a bizarre, nonsensical world, and each adventure was wackier than the last. Well, parents, welcome to "Genderland," where everything you know is truly turned on its head.
Most people assume someone with a Y chromosome and affiliated genitals is male, and the rest of us, with two X chromosomes, are female. Can anything be more obvious than that? But for sex educators, this is a thorny subject requiring pages of clarification. There’s more to male or female than DNA and anatomy, they instruct kids – there’s also gender: your inner sense of being male, female, both or neither.
Every parent needs to visit Genderland, well ahead of his or her child, and carefully observe the landscape. Many will feel, as Alice did, like they’ve fallen down a black hole and landed in a truly bewildering place.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}A protester holds a cardboard poster during a Black Trans Lives Matter rally in New York City on Sept. 19, 2022. (John Nacion/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
We Are All Hermaphrodites
We owe Genderland to psychologist John Money, who in 1955 introduced the theory that identity is divorced from biology. He claimed we’re born gender-neutral and then socialized to develop a sense of maleness or femaleness. Each child, he insisted, has the potential of being either sex.
Money was fascinated by hermaphrodism – a rare disorder where elements of both male and female reproductive systems are present. He dedicated his life to proving to the world that psychologically, we are all hermaphrodites.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}His Ph.D. thesis, completed in 1952, was on this medical condition and its treatment, and he pioneered work in "sex assignment" – the decision of whether to raise a particular hermaphrodite as male or female. He established the country’s first clinic for sex-change surgery for adults, later making similar interventions available to children.
The eminent professor had some troubling views. He was a proponent of open marriage and adult–child sexual encounters, even incest. He argued for using pornography in early education. Money also showed evidence of deep emotional wounds and gender issues, likely from childhood abuse by his father.
"I suffered from the guilt of being male," he wrote. "I wore the mark of man’s vile sexuality… I wondered if the world might really be a better place for women if not only farm animals but human males also were gelded (neutered) at birth." That’s troubling, isn’t it, coming from a doctor who advised parents to have their sons castrated?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Money’s anti-biology theory was speculation until Bruce Reimer appeared at his clinic. Bruce, Money’s most famous patient, was born a healthy boy in 1965, with an identical twin named Brian. In a ghastly accident while being circumcised at eight months, Bruce’s penis was destroyed. His parents heard Money on TV claiming with certainty that a little estrogen, a few Barbie dolls, and some surgery could make a boy into a girl, so they turned to him in their desperation over their son’s plight.
Per Money’s instructions, Bruce was castrated, renamed Brenda, and dressed in frilly clothes. He would be raised alongside Brian, who would be given trucks and GI Joes – the perfect test case for Money to prove to the world that biology can be denied.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}When the twins were 5, Money declared the experiment a complete success. Brenda, he announced, was flourishing as a girl. The twins became a landmark case, widely cited as proof that a sense of male or female is learned, not inborn.
Textbooks were rewritten and Money’s theory was taught as dogma. Parents all over the world facing similar circumstances – due to trauma or medical conditions – were advised to castrate their sons and raise them as girls.
A Gigantic Hoax
Fast-forward to 1996. Money published a book claiming yet again that the experiment was a resounding success, although he’d been out of touch with them for 20 years.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}But a year later, "Brenda" came forward and revealed that "she" was now David, a janitor in a slaughterhouse, married and father to three adopted children. The public learned that the whole thing was fraudulent. Contrary to Money’s published results, far from accepting the sex reassignment, David fought it from the start – refusing to play with dolls, preferring wrestling over cooking, and urinating standing up whenever possible.
In short, Bruce/Brenda/David and his brother endured years of agony, exacerbated by his "therapy" with Money. During their yearly visits, it turned out, he demanded the children remove their clothes, examine each other’s genitalia, and act out sexual intercourse.
After years of this nightmare and despite Money’s warning never to do so, the parents heeded Brenda’s psychiatrist’s advice and revealed the truth to the twins when they were 14. Brenda’s reaction?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"I was relieved. Suddenly it all made sense why I felt the way I did. I wasn’t some sort of weirdo. I wasn’t crazy." He at once returned to living as a boy. Mrs. Reimer informed Money, who simply stopped mentioning the case. He offered no public response or apology.
While the pretense ended, the misery did not. David eventually suicided and Brian died of an overdose. The damage had been done, both to the Reimers and to academic and public perceptions about sex and gender.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Money theorized that identity is based on feelings, not physical reality. He held up the ill-fated twin experiment as his proof of concept, when it could not have been a more miserable failure. Far from being a psychological hermaphrodite, David’s outcome suggested male and female are permanently hardwired since before birth.
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Yet sex educators remain loyal to Money’s phony idea even today. Gender is a manmade set of concepts, they instruct your child, cultures teach what it means to be a man or woman.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Hard science in this century says differently. Parents: beware the dangerous and outdated gender ideology presented as facts to your children. Protect them from confusion and harm now, before they fall into the rabbit hole of Genderland, and wander too far to return.