The Truth Behind the Gender Debate
For most of human history, science existed to describe reality, not to bend it. It was a discipline built on curiosity, humility, and the relentless testing of ideas against evidence. But every so often, science stops asking questions and starts defending answers. That shift, from exploration to ideology, is at the center of one of the most unsettling chapters in modern medicine: the story of how the biological fact of sex was gradually replaced with the fluid language of “gender,” and how one tragic experiment in the 1960s became the cornerstone of a belief system still shaping lives today.
Until the middle of the twentieth century, the word sex meant something simple and verifiable: the biological distinction between male and female, determined by reproductive anatomy and chromosomes. Gender, by contrast, lived almost exclusively in grammar books. A noun had gender, masculine, feminine, or neuter, but a person had sex. Dictionaries, medical journals, and court documents used those terms interchangeably for centuries because they described the same reality. The split between sex and gender did not come from new scientific discovery. It began as a matter of polite speech. In classrooms and pediatric offices, adults found it easier to talk about a child’s “gender” than their “sex,” the latter being uncomfortably close to the word for intercourse. It was, at first, nothing more than a euphemism.¹
That simple linguistic softening opened the door for a radical redefinition. In 1955, psychologist John Money and his colleagues John and Joan Hampson at Johns Hopkins University introduced the term gender role in a series of papers on intersex children.² They proposed that a person’s sense of being male or female could be learned through socialization, that identity was a psychological construct rather than an immutable biological fact. It was a theory with enormous implications: if gender could be taught, then it could also be reassigned.
Money’s premise sounded revolutionary, but it was actually redundant. Every human being learns behavior, language, manners, and expectations. A child learns to talk, to read, to swim, and to tell right from wrong. The idea that people also learn social customs attached to masculinity or femininity is obvious. Claiming that identity itself could therefore be reassigned was not science, it was speculation. The difference between what humans learn and what they are is the difference between skill and biology. Conditioning can change behavior, but it cannot rewrite chromosomes or reproductive design. Money’s theory did not reveal that gender was learned. It only restated that humans learn at all, then stretched that truism into a dangerous experiment.
A decade later, Money received what he considered the perfect test case. In 1965, identical twin boys were born in Winnipeg, Canada, Bruce and Brian Reimer. At eight months old, Bruce’s penis was accidentally destroyed during a routine circumcision performed with an electrocautery device.³ Desperate for guidance, the parents saw a television program featuring Money, whose new “gender identity clinic” at Johns Hopkins claimed that nurture could override nature. Money persuaded them to raise Bruce as a girl. At twenty-two months, surgeons removed the remaining tissue and fashioned a rudimentary “vaginal” opening. The child was renamed Brenda, dressed in girls’ clothing, and scheduled to receive estrogen at puberty.
Money documented the case for years, citing it as proof that gender identity was learned. Academic journals repeated his claims, and textbooks echoed them. What was left out were the mounting signs of distress. Brenda rejected dolls, refused dresses, and insisted she was a boy. By age eleven, she was deeply depressed. When her parents finally told her the truth, she immediately chose to live as male again, taking the name David, a symbolic reference to the biblical underdog who faced the giant. David underwent surgeries to reconstruct male genitalia and later spoke publicly about his ordeal. His twin brother died by suicide in 2002, and David took his own life in 2004.⁴
The Illusion of Proof
John Money claimed that his purpose was to demonstrate that gender identity could be shaped by environment rather than biology. On paper, his goal was to prove that identity was learned, not innate, and that with the right conditioning, a child could be molded into the opposite sex. In theory, the experiment was meant to persuade the child to believe they were something they were not. In practice, it became much more than that.
To convince the child, Money first had to convince everyone around the child. Parents, doctors, and teachers were instructed to reinforce the illusion at every turn. The deception depended on absolute compliance. The entire family was asked to participate in a kind of social theater in which truth was forbidden and illusion became the rule. The goal was no longer to understand human nature, but to remake it through repetition and reinforcement.
This is where the line between science and ideology vanished. If reality could not be changed, then perception had to be controlled. The Reimer case showed that the only way to maintain the illusion was to manipulate not just the child, but the environment that surrounded him. It was not enough for Bruce to believe he was Brenda; society itself had to be made to play along.
In doing so, Money created what might be described as a living experiment in collective denial. His theory required an entire community to suspend disbelief, to replace what was biologically evident with what was socially commanded. That need to control perception rather than confront truth is the very definition of ideological science. It is also the reason his legacy remains one of the most profound ethical failures in the history of psychology.
Journalist John Colapinto and sexologist Milton Diamond uncovered the full record in the late 1990s.⁵ They revealed that Money’s therapy sessions with the twins had included what he called sexual rehearsal play, explicit role-acting exercises that the family later described as abusive and humiliating. According to Colapinto’s investigation and Diamond’s correspondence with the Reimers, Money photographed some of these sessions and threatened the children when they resisted. There was no institutional review or oversight, and the ethical violations were grave enough that modern researchers now cite the case in discussions of informed consent and child protection. While Money faced no criminal charges, professional circles widely condemned the methods once they became known. The case became a turning point in how human-subject research is supervised.
Modern medical ethicists and child advocates now recognize what happened to David Reimer as a textbook case of medical child abuse. The deception, coercion, and non-consensual procedures he endured would violate nearly every standard of research and pediatric care in effect today. In the decades since, the case has become a central lesson in medical ethics, taught in universities as an example of how institutional prestige can blind even experienced professionals to basic moral principles. It prompted far-reaching reforms in human-subject protections, requiring independent oversight boards, informed consent processes, and strict limits on research involving minors.
The ethical foundation is clear. Forcing a child into an identity, medical path, or psychological condition that does not arise naturally or that the child cannot comprehend constitutes harm. Whether the pressure comes from a researcher, a clinician, or a parent, the result is the same: an infringement on the child’s autonomy and emotional development. The guiding standard in modern medicine is that no child should be used to satisfy an adult’s ideology, belief system, or social ambition. Every child deserves protection from manipulation, regardless of the motive behind it.
A new cultural trend has begun to appear in which parents publicly frame or promote their child’s identity on social media, sometimes encouraging a declared transgender identity at very young ages. In certain instances, the level of parental direction over the child’s appearance, speech, or behavior raises concerns among psychologists and child-welfare experts. Some parents record and share videos of their children discussing gender or sexuality online, a practice known as “sharenting,” that can expose minors to lasting digital footprints and emotional strain. Specialists in child development emphasize that when adults shape or broadcast a child’s emerging identity, particularly in sensitive areas of sexuality or self-understanding, the results can be unpredictable and potentially harmful. History has already shown that interference in the natural course of a child’s development, however well-intentioned, can lead to confusion, distress, and long-term damage.
Statistically, such cases are extraordinarily rare. Clinical studies conducted before social media influence became widespread estimated the prevalence of gender dysphoria, the medical condition in which a person experiences persistent distress about their biological sex, at fractions of a percent. Even using generous modern estimates, the probability that three children in one family would each experience genuine gender dysphoria is astronomically low. Yet stories of parents claiming that multiple children are transgender have appeared in news and social media. While each case must be judged individually, the statistical improbability alone should invite careful scrutiny. It suggests that social influence, peer reinforcement, and parental expectation may play a larger role than biology in some of these situations. The lesson from history remains the same: when ideology replaces evidence, children can become casualties of belief.
Despite its implications, the Reimer tragedy did not reverse the course of gender theory. By the time the truth emerged, the language of “gender identity” had already reshaped medicine, education, and law. Johns Hopkins closed its gender clinic in 1979 after a review concluded that the outcomes did not justify the procedures, but by then the model had spread worldwide.⁶ Professional inertia, academic prestige, and cultural momentum carried it forward.
Psychiatry’s own manuals trace this drift. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, First Edition (DSM-I), published in 1952, classified “sexual deviations” as a mental disorder under the broader category of Sociopathic Personality Disturbance. The DSM-II, released in 1968, continued this view, listing transsexualism as a mental disorder under “Sexual Deviations.” The DSM-III, published in 1980, replaced the term with Gender Identity Disorder, still classified as a mental condition within the section on Psychosexual Disorders. The DSM-IV, released in 1994, retained that diagnosis, continuing to treat it as a mental disorder. Only with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), published in 2013, did the American Psychiatric Association remove the “disorder” label and replace it with Gender Dysphoria, describing distress rather than the identity itself.⁷
The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases, Eleventh Revision (ICD-11), released in 2018, went even further, moving Gender Incongruence out of the “Mental and Behavioral Disorders” section entirely and reclassifying it under “Conditions Related to Sexual Health.”⁸ This reclassification was made to reduce stigma, but it introduced confusion. Despite the new title, Gender Incongruence is not a condition of sexual function or reproduction. It describes a psychological state of mind, not a physiological condition. In other words, it remains a matter of perception rather than biology, even though it no longer appears under mental-health categories.
Biologically, human sex remains a binary system organized around two gametes, sperm and ova. Chromosomal patterns (XX and XY) and the reproductive roles they enable define male and female across the species. Intersex variations exist, but they represent developmental anomalies within that binary, not additional sexes. To this day, no reproducible biomarker distinguishes dozens of “genders” beyond the two biological sexes. The science has not changed; only the vocabulary has.
The consequences of that semantic evolution reach beyond academia. When definitions drift, so do policies. Terms that once had precise meanings in medicine and law become tools for ideology. The Reimer case shows what happens when professionals treat human beings as experiments in social theory. The tragedy was not that a child questioned his identity, it was that adults decided to rewrite it for him.
Ethical medicine now recognizes four safeguards drawn directly from this history. First, evidence must precede ideology; untested theories cannot justify irreversible procedures. Second, informed consent must be genuine and age-appropriate; minors cannot comprehend lifelong consequences. Third, outcomes, good or bad, must be published transparently, not selectively. Fourth, mental health must be addressed before physical alteration; treating distress with surgery instead of understanding its source repeats the mistakes of the past. But are these safeguards really being actively practiced? Based on the current state of the medical community and this topic, it appears that the answer to that question is no.
The story of David Reimer is more than a cautionary tale. It is a mirror reflecting how easily science can drift from truth when ego, politics, or compassion without evidence take the reins. The origin of today’s gender debate lies not in new biology but in a sequence of untested assumptions that were elevated to doctrine. Language softened reality, theory replaced data, and a single child paid the price. But now thousands of other children, perhaps hundreds of thousands or more, may pay a similar price if this reckless and destructive ideology is not dealt with in an appropriate manner. Supporting a delusion does not help the person who is delusional, it actually makes things worse for them. It is time to once again admit that this is a mental disorder that needs treatment, not encouragement.
The remedy is not cruelty; it is clarity. Compassion and truth must work together, not against each other. Helping those who suffer confusion or distress begins with honesty about what is biologically real and what remains theory. When science stops asking questions, it stops being science. The world owes it to the next generation to remember that lesson.
References
- Oxford English Dictionary, historical entries for “sex” and “gender.”
- Money, J., Hampson, J. G., & Hampson, J. L. (1955). “Hermaphroditism: Recommendations concerning assignment of sex, change of sex, and psychologic management.” Bulletin of the Johns Hopkins Hospital, 97, 284–300.
- Colapinto, J. (2000). As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. HarperCollins.
- Ibid.; Diamond, M., & Sigmundson, H. K. (1997). “Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Implications.” Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 151(3), 298–304.
- Colapinto, As Nature Made Him; Diamond, M., personal correspondence and commentary, 1997–2000.
- Meyerowitz, J. (2002). How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States. Harvard University Press.
- American Psychiatric Association. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th ed.).
- World Health Organization. (2018). International Classification of Diseases, 11th Revision (ICD-11).
