Bruce Reimer: biography, history and interesting facts

Bruce Reimer is a resident of Canada, who for the first 14 years of her life was brought up as a girl. He became a real victim of a medical experiment, as a result of which he was unable to overcome psychological trauma and committed suicide at the age of 38.

In this article, we will try to understand how wrong decisions of doctors and pseudoscientific arrogance affect the fate of a person, and also to find out why Bruce Reimer could not become a girl?

We were born

Bruce (who later chose the name of David Reimer) and his twin brother Bryan were born on August 22, 1965 in the Canadian city of Winnipeg to a couple of young farmers. The boys were absolutely healthy, but after a few months, parents began to worry that their children feel unpleasant pain when urinating.

Alarmed by this problem (which was completely unnecessary), they took them to the family doctor. The doctor suggested solving the problem using a standard operation: circumcision. Instead of using a surgical knife, the specialists used a new method, in which the skin is burned under the influence of an electrosurgical needle. The operation did not go as planned, and, unfortunately, Bruce's penis was burned and was not subject to recovery.

A boy or a girl?

Bruce's parents were naturally worried about how an adult guy can live happily without the normal functioning of sexual functions. They turned to Dr. John Hopkins, who worked at a medical center in Baltimore and supported radical ideas about sexual identity, gaining popularity in the 1960s.

At one of the receptions, they met with the psychologist John Mani, who was developing new views on puberty. He first expressed the conviction that sexual identity is a very plastic concept, and all the psychological and behavioral differences between boys and girls were absorbed by them in infancy. This concept became a real axiom in the 1960s.

Dr. Mani believed that Bruce Reimer was an ideal experiment, especially since he had a twin brother who could serve as a "control for comparison." Then he asked the parents of the boys not to restore Bruce's penis, but to "make" the vagina in his place and raise him as a girl.

At 22 months Bruce's testicles were removed. From that moment on, he was called Brenda. Dr. Mani also advised his father and mother never to tell the boy what happened to him as a child.

A successful report

In 1972, Dr. Mani published the first details of an amazing experiment in his book "Man and Woman, Boy and Girl." Bruce Reimer, whose story roused the whole world, was brought up as a girl. The psychologist stressed that the consequences of dressing him in a dress became visible in a year. Kid began to give a clear preference for women's clothes and was proud of his long hair.

By the age of four and a half, he was much more careful than his brother. And unlike him, he did not like being dirty. Mother reported that her daughter tries to copy her while cleaning and cooking in the kitchen, while the boy did not care about it. Bruce Reimer, who grew up as a Brenda, was pleased to receive a doll and a doll house for Christmas, and did not even look at the garage with his brother's cars and tools.

Influential findings

Dr. Mani's report was extremely influential and understandable. If a boy can turn into a girl only in the absence of a penis, changing it in a dress and growing a hair, then you can cast doubt on the cultural origin of man. This conclusion was confirmed by the psychologist in the report "Sextual Signature" in 1977.

The doctor also noted that by the age of four, looking at the children, it was impossible to be mistaken, where the boy is, and where the girl is. At the age of 5, a small Brenda already independently preferred to wear dresses, use hair bands, bracelets and hairpins, and was also a little in love with her dad (like all little girls).

Dr. Mani came to the conclusion that the result of reincarnation was so successful, thanks to their quick actions in the first year of the boy's life.

Doubts of scientists

Dr. Middleton Diamond has become interested in this story since 1972, when Mani first reported this experiment to the whole world. However, his requests for more information about the teenage maturation of Bruce remained unanswered.

In 1992, Dr. Diamond managed to track down one of the doctors involved in the Brenda / Bruce Reimer project. It was a psychiatrist from Winnipeg, Dr. Keith Signadson. He knew that Dr. Mani essentially distorts the facts in this case, but he did not have the courage to challenge the famous specialist.

Then Diamond persuaded Signadson to tell everyone about the true results of the experiment. And they jointly published in March 1997 the story of Bruce in the report "The Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine", which again shocked the whole world.

Bruce Reimer: A True Biography

The truth was the opposite of what Dr. Mani reported in his articles. The boy did not easily move from man to woman. Bruce strongly "struggled" with his appointment to the female sex, even when he did not know about the true origin. According to the mother, Bruce Reimer, as a child, always tore off his dresses, played with other boys in the mud, trampled the dolls his relatives gave him.

School was for him an endless nightmare. Teachers and students noticed the "man's side" in Brenda. The girls constantly avoided her, and the boys laughed at her. Teachers were anxiously asking parents why Brenda was so strange and absolutely not feminine. One of the boy's few friends later recalled that as far as everyone seemed, Brenda was a girl only physically. But all that she did and said, indicated that she did not want to be her. She was much more competitive than the other girls. Always argued with the fry and even fought with them, proving their rightness. And the bruises on her face did not bother her at all.

Natural confrontation

Injections of female hormones did nothing to make Reimer Bruce turn into Brenda. Later his brother recalled that in his sister there was nothing feminine. She walked like a guy, sitting with her legs apart. She said that she does not like to clean the house, do make-up, and categorically avers the thought of marriage. Brother and sister wanted to play with the boys, build fortresses, eat snow and play in the army. When she was given a rope, she used it only to bind the boys in the games. Always preferred to play with a dump truck and soldiers.

It is important to note that such conclusions were made by people who did not know about the true reality. They all thought that Bruce Reimer was a girl, though rather strange. Children in the school called her "gorilla". One girl who mocked Brenda was very surprised when she grabbed her shirt collar, picked it up and threw it to the floor. Many boys wanted to be as strong as Brenda.

The truth is revealed

On March 14, 1980, when Brenda was 15 years old, her parents, Ron and Janet Reimer, finally told their child the truth. Reimer Bruce was an ordinary boy, until a terrible act of medical negligence destroyed his penis. Brenda was "released."

The boy is not insane, his life has made sense. When his sexual interest in girls began to grow, Brenda insisted on the immediate restoration of her male identity. And she did it with surprising ease, despite the lack of penis and testicles. He chose a different name for himself, David, because he felt that his life was like a battle between David and Goliath.

Bruce Reimer - crippled destiny

When the boy grew up and became already a thirty-year-old man, he began to cooperate with Dr. Diamond to refute all the "successful" conclusions of Dr. Mani.

Shortly after the publication of the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, David agreed to give an interview about this story to Rolling Stone. He told me that he could never forget the nightmares that had happened to him as a child. And he noted that he lives in a very troubled time. This article became the basis for the book "How Nature Made It". He even appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show to share his experiences and impressions.

Bruce Reimer, despite all the difficult tests that happened to him at a young age, was able to marry a woman that gave birth to him three children.

But in 2004 he decided to commit suicide. His twin brother died of an overdose two years ago. So David began to suffer from deep depression. 14-year-old marriage collapsed, personal life was in decline, he lost $ 65,000 in unprofitable investments, and therapy from a psychologist reminded him of the brutal experiment he had been having.

His mother told the New York Times that her son would not have killed himself, had it not been for a downward spiral that began with the experiments of Mani. Janet herself spent her whole life in depression, and his father had alcoholism in recent years. They blamed themselves for the torment that their children were subjected to.

Dr. Mani, who died in 2006, stopped publicly commenting on the case back in 1980. He never admitted that the scientific experience was failed.

Summarizing, it is worthwhile to bring the thoughts of Dr. Diamond. In his article, he noted that all these combined medical, surgical and social efforts did not help to succeed in the child's adoption of another gender identity. Then, perhaps, we should understand that there is something important in the biological composition of the individual, we have not come to this world neutral, in each of us there is a certain degree of male and female "beginnings" that manifest themselves in us regardless of the opinion of society.