John Money: How an Embodiment of Evil Invented Gender & Sexual Orientation

In this episode, Simone and Malcolm dive into the life and controversial experiments of John Money, the psychologist and sexologist who played a pivotal role in shaping modern concepts of gender and sexual orientation. They discuss the disturbing case of David Reimer, a boy raised as a girl following a botched circumcision, and explore how Money's fabricated findings continue to influence contemporary medical and social practices. The conversation also touches on the prevalence of dishonesty in trans medical research, the ethical implications of gender reassignment surgeries on minors, and the broader cultural ramifications of Money's theories. This sobering episode aims to unravel the psychological and societal impacts of Money's work, highlighting the urgent need for honest discourse and cultural sensitivity.

Malcolm Collins: Hello, Simone. Today we are going to be talking about the monster who invented the concept of gender and sexual preference. And when I say monster, he is not a monster because he invented these concepts or, or popularize them at least but for the things that he did in his life. And I don't think that anyone who hears this story is going to say any word, but Monster should be used to describe this individual.

Well, he, whoa. Or just. Just to go over the gist of it basically a young kid was assigned as a woman at birth because he had a botched circumcision. And so, this guy had him raised as a woman and then. While they were still under age, forced him and his brother to have sex and filmed it and took lots of pictures.

Oh. And then he wrote a bunch of papers about how this person was, was a perfectly normal woman now and then the doctors started taking either bot circumcision or intersex patients and doing these procedures on them like removing their genitals and stuff, even though it turns out that he had lied in all of his research and the kid actually had committed un alive and so had his brother and he did not at all adopt to the role of a woman.

And he continued this life for. Decades. And then some investigators figured out what really happened and a lot of stuff went back. And it is from this guy where all of the beginning ideology, where the modern trans and gay movement came from. Not, not that he, like gay people exist, like there were same-sex attractive people before him, but the way that we interact with this concept as a society today around sexual orientation and gender came from this guy and this faked experiment.

Simone Collins: This is, that's

Malcolm Collins: significantly worse than you probably thought, right?

Simone Collins: Monster doesn't do justice to someone like that. That's,

Malcolm Collins: and one of the things that's the kind you wanna talk about, point blank, you find

Simone Collins: them

Malcolm Collins: why he lied. Like what was his motivation in all of this?

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And I think in understanding his motivation for lying, we can get a better understanding of why D like the, the Traverse Stock Clinic didn't release the data that was leaked after it was shut down.

Mm-hmm. That putting people on puberty blockers was increasing their probability of unli. Why is this same chain of dishonesty so prevalent within existing trans medical research? Why do we have the warpath files? You know, we're, we're all these WPATH

Simone Collins: files,

Malcolm Collins: WPATH files we're, we're all of these documents from researchers in the space communicating were released and we learned that they had been intentionally manipulating their research and results and that they knew that this was a major problem.

So I think in understanding his psychology, we can understand how this is still going on today.

Okay,

Simone Collins: let's

Malcolm Collins: get started.

Simone Collins: Oh my gosh, sorry. I'm just still reeling from what happened to those poor children, those people. I'm, I feel so bad. Yeah. Well,

Malcolm Collins: I mean, it's,

Simone Collins: it's still happening then. Was he punished for this?

Malcolm Collins: Not really, no. Is he still alive, famous within the field? A a Simone? This, this is still happening today is the thing, right?

Like there are still people undergoing, like children undergoing medical procedures that all of the evidence says is going to basically destroy their lives. Yeah. Like we, we sorry I shouldn't say all the evidence, I should say the preponderance of evidence. There is evidence on the other side. But the pendulum is definitely, you can see our other episodes on that.

John Money, a prominent figure in psychology and sexology was born in Morrisville, New Zealand in 1921, and later emerged in the United States in 1947, earning his PhD from Harvard University in 1952. His work at John Hopkins University, particularly in the mid 20th century, focused on human sexual behavior and gender identity, where he coined terms like gender, role, and sexual orientation.

Money's research was groundbreaking, but became highly controversial, especially due to his experiments on gender reassignment, most noticeably the case of David Ramir. The David Ramir case often referred to as the. Joan Case began in 1965 when David initially named Bruce was born as a healthy male.

At eight months old, a botch circumcision resulted in the loss of his member prompting his parents to seek advice for money, . Adhering to his theory of gender neutrality, that gender is primarily learned and can be reassigned in early life. Advised the parents to raise David as a girl.

At 22 months, David underwent surgery to remove his testes and construct rudimentary female genitalia. He was renamed Brenda and was given estrogen during adolescence to promote breast development. Money. Tracked David's progress. Presenting the case as a success in his 1972 publication, man and Woman, boy and Girl, suggesting its supported feasibility of sex reassignment for children with atypical sexual autonomies.

So I'll note a few things here that are really core to the beginning of this. He was the one who suggested that this person be castrated. After the, the botch thing happened, he was the one who said, I wanna do this as part of a theory. So, so basically if you're like, why did he lie about this later?

I think he had this theory and if he had admitted. His theory was wrong. He would have to admit that he had this kid castrated and it was the wrong decision. Yeah. Basically as time went on, the horror of what he had wrought through his initial in mistakes became bigger. And I think it parallels what we're seeing was in the modern trans movement.

You know, we now know that in, in gender discontentedness and gender non-content news 2024 of 13 year olds who present as, or, or, or who are gender discontented and would, you know, so they would, would prefer to be the other gender. Mm-hmm. Around nine and 10 of them are perfectly comfortable with their gender.

Mm-hmm. If no treatment is, is, is brought to them if treatment is brought to them, then they end up with a around 50% un unliving. Risk rate which is wild to me, the amount of harm that can be done. And, and we're, we're just not talking about this. Right? Yeah. You know, especially young ages where we know that this is, is such a big problem right now.

Now I I, I'd also note here that his intuition aligned with the urban monoculture, as we've talked about when we're trying to explore sort of how the urban monoculture thinks and builds ideas, which is like the world woul