This story was originally published in the Dec. 11, 1997, issue ofRolling Stone.
IN LATE JUNE 1997, I arrive at an address in a working-class suburb in the North American Midwest.
He is 31 years old but could pass for a decade younger.
David Reimer, pictured here, had not made his name public at the time of this article’s publication in 1997. Here, he goes by John.Reuters/Redux
Ordinarily a rough-edged and affable young man, he stops smiling when conversation turns to his childhood.
Which, in a sense, he is.
The young mans sole condition for talking to me was that I withhold some details of his identity.
The physicians in his hometown I will identify by initials.
No other details have been changed.
My parents feel very guilty, as if the whole thing was their fault, John says.
But it wasnt like that.
They did what they did out of kindness, and love and desperation.
When youre desperate, you dont necessarily do all the right things.
THE IRONY was that Frank and Linda Thiessens life together had begun with such special promise.
Linda, an exceptionally pretty brunette, had spent much of her teensfighting off guys who were too fresh.
Frank, a tall, shy fair-haired man, was different.
I thought, Well, hes not all hands,' Linda recalls.
I can relax with him.'
Three years later, at ages 18 and 20, they married and moved to a nearby city.
The nurse asked him, Is it boys or girls?'
And he said, I dont know!
I just know theres two of em!'
Their pediatrician explained that the condition, called phimosis, was not rare and was easily remedied by circumcision.
He referred them to a surgeon.
The operations were scheduled for April 27, 1966, in the morning.
We werent worried, Linda says.
We didnt know we had anything to worry about.
But early the next morning, they were jarred from sleep by a ringing phone.
It was the hospital.
Theres been a slight accident, a nurse told Linda.
The doctor needs to see you right away.
In the childrens ward, they were met by the surgeon.
Grim-faced, businesslike, he told them that John had suffered a burn to his penis.
Linda remembers being shocked into numbness by the news.
I sort of froze, she says.
It was just like I turned to stone.
Eventually she was able to gather herself enough to ask how their baby had been burned.
Through mechanical malfunction or doctor error, or both, a surge of intense heat had engulfed Johns penis.
It was blackened, Linda says, recalling her first glimpse of his injury.
It was like a little string.
And it went right up to the base, up to his body.
Over the next few days, the burnt tissue dried and broke away in pieces.
They gave little hope.
It would serve as a conduit for urine, but that is all.
Back home, with nowhere to turn, the couple sank into a state of mute depression.
Months passed during which they could not speak of Johns injury even to each other.
On their small black-and-white television screen appeared a man identified as Dr. John Money.
He was saying that it could be that babies are born neutral and you could change their gender.
Something told me that I should get in touch with this Dr. Money.
She wrote to him soon after and described what had happened to her child.
Dr. Money responded promptly, she says.
He also happened to inquire, Linda says, about the twin brother whom she had mentioned in passing.
He asked if they were identical twins, Linda says.
She informed him that they were.
Someone, she says, was finallylistening.
DR. MONEY was, indeed, listening.
He was a very conscientious scientist when it comes to collecting data and making sure of what hes saying.
I dont know very many social scientists who could match him in that regard.
Indeed, Hampson admits that Money is almost too good at the art of persuasion.
I think a lot of people were envious, says Hampson.
Hes kind of a charismatic person, and some people dislike him.
Moneys often-overweening confidence actually came to him at some cost.
His childhood and youth in rural New Zealand had been beset by anxieties, personal tragedies and early failure.
That was easier for me than for most of them.
He was eight years old when his father, after a long illness, died.
His death was not handled very well in our family, Money wrote.
Thats rather heavy duty for an eight-year-old, Money wrote.
It had a great impact on me.
As an adult, Money would forever avoid the role of man of the household.
After one brief marriage ended, he never remarried, and he has never had children.
His later decision to narrow his studies to the psychology of sex had a similarly personal basis.
From now on, he would be a fierce proselytizer for sexual exploration.
Perhaps he could be a little more willing to compromise on that.
Undaunted, Money continued to push on into uncharted realms.
Moneys experimental, taboo-breaking approach to sex was paralleled in his professional career.
Up until then, the syndrome had been studied solely from a biological perspective.
He concluded that these children were born psychosexually undifferentiated.
None of the women … reported a loss of orgasm after clitoridectomy.
Moneys protocols for the treatment of intersexual children hold to this day.
results in a response from the physician that theyre just not sure.
But Money was not interested solely in intersexes.
I frequently find myself toying with concepts and working out potential hypotheses, he mused.
It is like playing a game of science fiction …
It is as much an art as the creative process in painting, music, drama or literature.
But if his colleagues considered Moneys ideas to be science fiction, they werent prepared to say so publicly.
By 1965, the year of John and Kevin Thiessens birth, Moneys reputation was virtually unassailable.
There was, however, at least one researcher who was willing to question Money.
He was a young graduate student at the University of Kansas.
For his topic, Diamond decided to write a response to Moneys now-classic papers on sexual development.
Diamonds critique appeared inThe Quarterly Review of Biologyin 1965.
The young couple were awestruck by the vast medical center dominating the top of a rise on Wolfe Street.
I accepted whatever he said.
And what Dr. Money had to say was exactly what the Thiessens ached to hear.
Today, Frank and Linda say that this was a distinction they did not fully grasp until later.
I see no reason, Linda recalls him saying, that it shouldnt work.
Indeed, Moneys eagerness to begin is evident in a description of the interview written almost 10 years later.
When she was 11 or 12 years old, she could be given the female hormones.
If Dr. Money seemed to be in a hurry, he was.
He explained to Frank and Linda that they would have to make up their minds quickly.
John was now 17 months.
They went home to think about it.
Linda says that Dr. Money made no secret of his impatience with the delay.
He wrote in a letter that we were procrastinating,' Linda recalls.
But we wanted to move slow, because we had never heard of anything like this.
Back home, they canvassed opinions.
Their pediatrician recommended against such drastic treatment, and so did their parents.
But finally, Frank and Linda realized that they alone had to decide.
They alone were the ones living with the reminder, at each diaper change, of Johns terrible injury.
After months of indecision, they made up their minds.
That summer, five months after their first meeting with Money, they returned to Baltimore with their baby.
And so, on July 3, 1967, the baby underwent surgical castration.
Whether Money himself was able to eradicate his own doubts about the childs future development is debatable.
Then one usually expects that the childs psychosexual differentiation will be congruous with the sex of rearing.
In any given case, however, it is not possible to make an absolute prediction.
He told us not to talk about it, Frank says.
Not to tell Joan the whole truth and that she shouldnt know she wasnt a girl.
Linda had sewn dresses and bonnets for her new daughter.
It was shortly before Joans second birthday when Linda first put her in a dress.
It was a pretty, lacy little dress, Linda recalls.
She was ripping at it, trying to tear it off.
She doesnt want to be a girl.
But then I thought, Well, maybe I can teach her to want to be a girl.
Maybe I can train her so that she wants to be a girl.'
Linda and Frank did their best to do just that.
But when Joan also clamored for a razor, Frank refused.
I told her that girls dont shave, Frank recalls.
I told her girls dont have to.
Linda offered to put makeup on her.
But Joan didnt want to wear makeup.
I remember saying, Oh, can I shave, too?'
John says of this incident, which forms his earliest childhood memory.
My dad said, No, no.
You go with your mother.
I started crying, Why cant I shave, too?'
I recognized Joan as my sister, Kevin says, but she never, ever acted the part.
Never used it for what it was bought for.
She played with my toys; Tinkertoys, dump trucks.
Toys like this sewing machine she got just sat.
As children, their physical differences were, if less pronounced, equally deceptive.
She walked like a guy.
Enrolled in Girl Scouts, Joan was miserable.
I kept thinking of the fun stuff my brother was doing in Cubs.
Linda and Frank were troubled by Joans masculine behavior.
Instead, Frank and Linda seized on those moments when Joans behavior could be construed as stereotypically feminine.
And she could be sort of feminine, sometimes, Linda says, when she wanted to hey me.
Shed be less rough, keep herself clean and tidy, and help a little bit in the kitchen.
Meanwhile, Linda comforted herself by thinking of her daughter as a tomboy.
Maybe it could work.
Kevin didnt question his sisters boyish ways until they went off to school.
Joan was not at all like that.
At that time, Joan had voiced the ambition to be a garbage man.
Shed say, Easy job, good pay,' Kevin recalls.
She was six or seven years old.
I thought it was kinda bizarre my sister a garbage man?
Well, thats Joan being a tomboy, Linda told him.
I accepted that, Kevin says and shrugs.
That was not an explanation Joans schoolmates were prepared to accept.
Upon entering kindergarten, she became the object of instant ridicule from classmates, both male and female.
As youd walk by, theyd start giggling, John remembers.
Not one, but almost the whole class.
Itd be like that every day.
The whole school would make fun of you about one thing or another.
They were cruel, says Kevin, who witnessed his sisters humiliation at school.
It wasnt a weekly thing.
Or a monthly thing.
This was a daily thing.
Theyd call her names, ignore her, not involve her in the groups.
It started the first day of kindergarten, Linda says.
Even the teacher didnt accept her.
The teachers knew there was something different.
By then, Joan also knew that there was something different about her.
But she didnt know what.
And everyone is telling you that youre a girl.
But you say to yourself, I dontfeellike a girl.
So you figure, Well, theres something wrong here.
Joans personal difficulties were obvious in her functioning in the classroom.
When the school threatened to hold Joan back, Linda complained to Dr. Money.
But her problems only got worse.
One thing that really amazes me is that she is so feminine, Linda is quoted as saying.
Ive never seen a little girl so neat and tidy as she can be when she wants to be.
No mention was made of the problems Joan had been having in school.
It was the hallmark case, says Dr. William Reiner, a child psychologist at Johns Hopkins.
The undisputed success of the twins case legitimized the practice of infant sex reassignment globally, says Reiner.
Globally, he puts the figure at perhaps 1,000 per year.
[Doctors] were very influenced by the twin experience, he says.
They were saying they took this normal boy and changed him over to a girl.
I mean, what is your response to that?
This case was used to reinforce the fact that you could really doanything.
But I didnt have any proof at the time, Diamond says.
I didnt have anything except a theoretical argument to challenge the case.
It made us feel like we were aliens.
There was something not adding up, Kevin says.
We knew that at a very early age.
But we didnt make the connection.
Dr. Money would ask me, Do you ever dream of having sex with women?'
Hed say, Do you ever get an erection?
And the same with Joan.
Do you think about this?
Pornography, he believed, was ideal for this purpose.
He would show us pictures of kids, boys and girls, with no clothes on, Kevin says.
During these visits, the twins discovered that Money had two sides to his personality.
One when mom and dad werent around, Kevin says, and another when they were.
When their parents were present, they say, Money was avuncular, mild-spoken.
But alone with the children, he could be irritable or worse.
Especially when they defied him.
The children were particularly resistant to Moneys request that they remove their clothes and inspect each others genitals.
All young primates explore their own and each others genitals … and that includes human children everywhere …
The only thing wrong about these activities is not to enjoy them.
But to resist Moneys requests was to provoke his ire.
I remember getting yelled at by Money because I was defiant, John says.
He told me to take my clothes off, and I just did not do it.
I just stood there.
And he screamed, Now!
I thought he was going to give me a whupping.
So I took my clothes off and stood there, shaking.
In a separate conversation with me, Kevin recalls that same incident.
Take your clothes off now!'
As early as age eight, Joan began to resist going to Baltimore.
For Dr. Money, there was now an urgent need for Joan to prepare for this operation.
There was only one problem: Joan was determined not to have the surgery ever.
He was somebody I wanted to be, John says today, reflecting on this childhood fantasy.
She quietly told Dr. Money that she did not want to have the surgery.
But the psychologist did not seem to want to hear this.
Instead, Dr. Money would once again break out his cache of photographs of naked women.
He would focus Joans gaze on the labia, vulva, clitoris.
Cant you see that youre different?
Thats why you need the surgery.
Joan, frightened but adamant, would simply refuse to lift her eyes.
Dont you want to be a normal girl?
Dr. Money would ask repeatedly.
Dont you want to be anormalgirl?
Dr. Money also continued to probe for the content of Joans sexual fantasies.
She tried to keep this information secret from the psychologist, and she believed herself successful.
But, according to Frank and Linda, she was wrong.
Joan had said, A girl.'
Frank recalls that Dr. Money wanted to know how they felt about raising a lesbian.
Nor would they ever conjecture.
That same year, Money published yet another account of Joans successful metamorphosis.
Joans interests are strongly masculine, a teacher wrote in her report.
From his very first meeting with Joan, Sigmundson was struck by the childs appearance.
There was nothing feminine about her.
Despite all efforts, Joan continued to hold out against surgery.
Like vaginal surgery, the prospect of developing a female figure struck Joan as nightmarish.
Whats this medicine for?
I said, I dont wanna wear a bra!'
I threw a fit.
It was around this time that Dr. Money authored another update on the twins.
The report would appear in a 1978 journal.
Once again, the outlook was sunny.
It would prove to be the last time Joan would ever consent to go to Baltimore.
She fled in panic.
Money then described how one of his students followed Joan to help her recover her composure.
They walked, saying little, for about a mile.
In concluding his oddly elliptical-sounding account of these events, Dr. Money referred to the student as a woman.
What he did not mention was that the woman had begun life as a man.
She was a male-to-female transsexual one of many readily available from the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic.
When the person spoke, it was in a breathy, artificially high-pitched voice.
Joan sat immobile, silent, apparently listening.
Today, John cannot remember bolting from the room.
I remember running, John says.
Thats all.Joan ran, blindly, until she reached a set of stairs, which she dashed up.
She emerged onto a rooftop, where she tried to hide.
But the transsexual had followed only increasing Joans panic.
BUT DR. MONEY was, it seemed, not inclined to lose contact with this unique patient so easily.
He said he would like to drop by the house and see the Thiessens.
On a gray day in mid-March 1979, Money arrived at their doorstep carrying only a single knapsack.
The twins, aware of Moneys arrival, disappeared into the basement and refused to come upstairs.
The adults engaged in small talk.
Money had said that he was catching a flight later in the day.
But both Frank and Linda noticed that he was showing no symptoms of being in a hurry.
He reminisced about his childhood in New Zealand.
Finally, Dr. Money announced that he had missed his flight.
To their surprise, the eminent psychologist from Johns Hopkins accepted the offer.
so that accommodate their unexpected house guest, the Thiessens phoned out for a bucket of chicken.
The children continued to hide in the basement.
We didnt want to come up, Kevin recalls.
We were forced into it.
They said, Come up, so we came up.
I wound up being Mr.
Polite, John says, recalling the stiff encounter.
Kevin remembers that Dr. Money asked general questions about how the twins were doing in school.
Kevin asked how Dr. Money liked their city and how long he was staying.
Then, Kevin says, we wanted to go.
It was the last that the family and Dr. Money would ever see of each other.
But to the close observer, it was Joans mental state that would have drawn particular scrutiny and pity.
Her hair was unwashed, uncombed and matted.
I was at that age where you rebel, John says.
I got so sick to death of doing what everyone wanted me to do.
If I wanted to wear my hair in a mess, I wore it in a mess.
I wore my own clothes the way I wanted to.
And Joan had more private ways of rebelling.
For years she had tried to adhere to this stricture on her bodily function.
If no one was around, Id stand up, John recalls.
It was no big deal; it waseasierfor me to do that.
Just stand up and go.
I figured, what difference did it make?
But it made a difference to her peers.
That fall, Joan had transferred to a technical high school, where she enrolled in an appliance-repair course.
There she was quickly dubbed Cavewoman and Sasquatch and was openly told, Youre a boy.
The girls barred her from using their bathroom.
She tried sneaking into the boys room but was kicked out and threatened with a knifing if she returned.
With nowhere else to go, Joan was reduced to urinating in a back alley.
By December, she simply refused to go to school.
By now, it was impossible for the local treatment team to ignore the obvious.
Among those who believed that Joan would never submit to vaginal surgery was Dr.
But now, even he began to waver.
Early on I had… pushed for early surgery, he wrote in a letter to Dr. McK.
Ultimately, Joan forced the endocrinologist to come down off the fence.
During an appointment in his office, Joan refused to remove her hospital gown for a breast exam.
The doctor asked again.
The standoff lasted 20 minutes.
It comes to a point in your life where you say, Ive had enough,‘John says.
Theres a limit for everybody.
This was my limit.
But Dr. W. had reached his limit, too.
Do you want to be a girl or not?
She raised her head and bellowed into his face:No!
The doctor left his office for a moment, then returned.
OK, he said.
you’ve got the option to get dressed and go home.
IT WAS FRANKS CUSTOM TO PICK UP Joan in the car after her weekly sessions with the psychiatrist.
The afternoon of March 14, 1980, was no exception.
Immediately, Joan was suspicious.
I was thinking: Is mother dying?
Are you guys getting a divorce?
Is everything OK with Kevin?’
No, no, Frank said to Joans nervous questioning.
He just started explaining, step by step, everything that had happened to me, John says.
It was the first time, Linda says, that John ever saw his father cry.
Joan herself remained dry-eyed, staring straight ahead through the windshield, the ice-cream cone melting in her hand.
She didnt cry or anything, Frank says almost two decades after this extraordinary encounter between father and child.
She just sat there, listening, real quiet.
I guess she was so fascinated with this unbelievable tale that I was telling her.
Today, John says that the revelations awoke many emotions within him anger, disbelief, amazement.
But he says that one emotion overrode all the others.
I was relieved, he says, blinking rapidly, his voice charged.
Suddenly it all made sense why I felt the way I did.
I wasnt some sort of weirdo.
Joan did have a question for her father.
JOANS DECISION TO UNDERGO A SEX change was immediate.
That fall, he had his breasts surgically excised; the following summer, a rudimentary peniswas constructed.
The operation was completed one month prior to his 16th birthday.
Socially, John says, it proved relatively easy to effect the change to his true status.
Still, John did take the precaution of lying low for several months in his parents basement.
Watching TV, thats all I did, says John.
I wasnt really happy; I wasnt really sad.
How do you evenstartdating?
John says, recalling this period of his life.
Youre in such an embarrassing situation.
He really wants to die.
Then I said, No, no, I cant let him die.
I have to have a go at save him.'
They lifted him and rushed him to the hospital, where his stomach was pumped.
On his release a week later, he tried it again.
This time, Kevin saved him.
John withdrew from the world.
I despised myself; I hated myself, he says.
I hated how my life turned out.
I was frustrated and angry, and I didnt know who I was angry at.
I got so terribly lonely, John says.
I decided to do something Id never done before.
I wound up praying to God.
I said, You know, Ive had such a terrible life.
Two months later, Kevin and his wife introduced John to a young woman they had met.
I kept trusting them then it was, Youre pregnant?
Im out of here.'
She says that Johns condition did not make a difference to her.
It probably would have if I didnt already have kids.
If hes good to me and the kids, thats all that matters.'
The two immediately hit it off.
She liked Johns old-fashioned gallantry.
He still sends me flowers and writes me notes, she says.
How many people have that after nine years together?
John fell in love with what he calls her true heart.
Less than a year after they started going out, John asked her to marry him.
In the past, Sigmundson himself had toyed with the idea of publishing the true outcome of Johns case.
But he hadnt done it and for a very simple reason.
I was shit-scared of John Money, he admits.
He was the big guy.
I didnt know what it would do to my career.
So he would put the idea out of his head.
Diamonds annual ad was an awkward reminder.
A couple of times, hed almost answered it.
But hed always resisted the urge.
Diamond, however, was not one to give up so easily.
Diamond is the author of more than a hundred journal articles and eight books on sexuality.
I said, Well, I havent really got the time and the energy …
So Mickey kept on badgering me a little bit.
He at first refused to participate.
That was good enough for John.
It took nearly two years for Diamond and Sigmundson to find a publisher for their paper.
We were turned down by all these journals that said it was too controversial, says Sigmundson.
The New England Journal,American Psychiatric,American Pediatric.
We knew we were going to be pissing a lot of people off.
They were not wrong.
But Dr. Melvin Grumbach, theeminence griseof pediatric endocrinology, offers a more measured response.
I think Diamond does have a case, he says.
I think testosterone in utero and an XY-chromosome constitutiondoesdo things to you.
But the question is: Is itinvariable?
I really lose track of all my patients after young adulthood, he says.
Such a study was, finally, launched at the Johns Hopkins medical center in June 1995.
Two have spontaneously (without being told of their XY male-chromosome status) switched back to being boys.
They say, I am a boy.'
Further studies done by others in the early 1990s support this finding.
The finding suggests that male homosexuality may have a genetic origin.
Because its quite clear that the vast majority of boys born with functioning testicles have masculine brains.
We have to learn to listen to the children themselves, Reiner says.
Theyre the ones who are going to tell us what is the right thing to do.
I met John for the first time in New York City in June 1997.
His decision was based on his desire to warn people about the perils of infant sex reassignment.
But a formidable sense of humor also clearly played a role in Johns ability to rise above his sufferings.
Hes the fat,oldElvis.
But the strongest impression I was left with after that first meeting was of Johns intense, unequivocal masculinity.
With this coverage, another set of voices in the debate began to be heard.
These are the voices of those intersexes born after the publication of Moneys 1955 protocols.
After three days of deliberation, the doctors assigned Chase as a boy.
She was christened Charlie.
Her name was changed from Charlie to Cheryl, and her phallus was amputated.
Also like John, she grew up confused about her gender.
As a preadolescent, she recognized that her erotic orientation was toward females.
At 19, Chase understood that shed been subjected to a clitoridectomy.
It took three years for her to find a doctor who would show Chase her medical records.
They have never met, but Trieas story bears striking parallels to his.
Have you ever fucked somebody?
she remembers Dr. Money asking.
Wouldnt you like to fuck somebody?
She also describes how Dr. Money showed her a pornographic movie.
He wanted to know who I identified with in this movie, she says.
Chase says that such procedures are equally invasive.
And Chase strongly endorses Diamond and Sigmundsons new recommendation against operating on newborns with ambiguous genitalia.
The medical establishment, she says, has shunned ISNA.
They have refused to speak to her.
In a conversation with me, he addressed ISNAs complaints.
Gearhart insists that advances in medicine render ISNAs concerns obsolete.
So most of [these babies] had their clitoris or their penis amputated.
But the surgeons didnt know any better.
Gearhart says that modern microsurgery retains sensation.
And if sensation is important to orgasm, he says, then we retain orgasm.
Chase says she understands why the medical establishment has resisted listening to ISNA.
So she does not expect doctors like Gearhart to change their views unless forced.
But its going to take a while to create that context.
Right now, we cant sue, because its standard practice and parents give permission.
Other large changes will have to take place.
A different kind of support system has to start getting built, Fausto-Sterling says.
At the moment there is no ongoing counseling done by people skilled in psychosexual development.
The practical questions are very real: What do I do when it comes to undressing in gym?
How do I intervene with the school system?
Theres a different infrastructure that has to get built and put into place.
I think its the responsibility of the medical profession to do it.
His latest book, calledPrinciples of Developmental Sexology, came out this year.
But he did speak with me briefly on the phone in early November, after six months of appeals.
Its part of the antifeminist movement, he said.
He also hinted that the Diamond-Sigmundson paper had a hidden agenda.
There is no reason I should have been excluded from the follow-up, was there?
Someone had a knife in my back.
But its not uncommon in science.
The minute you stick your head up above the grass, theres a gunman ready to shoot you.
(Diamond insists that there was nothing personal in his decision to publish the outcome of Johns case.)
As a younger man, his fantasies, he admits, ran to violence.
Whats done, John says, is done.
He refuses to dwell on a past that he cannot change.
In their paper, Diamond and Sigmundson describe John as a forward-looking person.
In conversation, Diamond calls him a true hero.
He has even mustered the emotional maturity to tell his eldest child about his painful history.
And he prefers to focus on the positive changes that have resulted from his speaking out in public.
You put a roof over your familys head.
Youre a good father.
Things like that add up much more to being a man than just bang bang bang sex.
I guess John Money would consider my childrens biological fathers to be real men.
But they didnt stick around to raise the children.
That, to me, is a man.
