An Old Timey Podcast - 125: The Reimer Twins Unmask Dr. Money (Part 2)

Episode Date: October 14, 2026

As soon as David Reimer learned the truth, he knew what he wanted to do. He began presenting as a man. He got a new name. He started testosterone therapy. He underwent surgery. But just when it looked like he had a shot at a normal life, he discovered that Dr. John Money had been writing about him for years. Dr. Money had falsely presented David as proof that we are all born gender neutral, and that parents could choose their child’s gender identity, provided they did it early enough. David knew that what had happened to him was now happening to children all over the world. He decided to put a stop to it.Remember, kids, history hoes always cite their sources! For this episode, Kristin pulled from: “The True Story of John/Joan,” by John Colapinto for Rolling Stone An episode of PBS NOVA, “Sex: Unknown”“Intersex,” The Cleveland Clinic“It’s Intersex Awareness Day. Here Are 5 Myths We Need to Shatter,” Amnesty International"John William Money, 84, Sexual Identity Researcher, Dies," by Benedict Carey for The New York Times."Milton Diamond, Sexologist and Advocate for Intersex Babies, Dies at 90" by Clary Risen for The New York Times.“David Reimer, 38, Subject of the John/Joan Case, Dies” Associated Press“Dr. Money and the Boy with No Penis,” BBC“What were the real reasons behind David Reimer’s suicide?” by John Colapinto for Slate Are you enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Then please leave us a 5-star rating and review wherever you listen to podcasts!Are you *really* enjoying An Old Timey Podcast? Well, calm down, history ho! You can get more of us on Patreon at patreon.com/oldtimeypodcast. At the $5 level, you’ll get a monthly bonus episode (with video!), access to our 90’s style chat room, plus the entire back catalog of bonus episodes from Kristin’s previous podcast, Let’s Go To Court.

Hear ye, hear ye. You are listening to an old-timey podcast. I'm Kristen Caruso. And I'm Normie C. And on this episode, David Reimer discovers the truth that had been hidden from him all of his life. Kristen, please tell me part two has a happy ending. Look, Norm, I don't know what to tell you. If you thought part one was bad, hold on to you.

I was about to say something terrible. Why do I always want to say hold on to your butthole? Like that's an insane thing to say I realize that Because you're always losing yours No constantly Hold on to your hat There we go

Hold on to your hat This episode is somehow Even worse than the first episode And that's the advertisement For this podcast Every episode gets worse I was really hoping David would get

Some sort of compensation Like brand new car Money isn't everything What, Norm? A brand new car. Norm, what car? This is the situation. Your penis is burned off of your body.

You are raised a girl, getting all these surgeries, lied to it. What car would make you go, all right, not bad? You know a car. A Toyota Yaris. A Toyota Yaris, baby. People. Norm at one point in time drove a Toyota Yaris. He loved that thing.

Loved it. You got into a very small accident. very minor. That thing folded like an accordion. It's true. It's true. But man, I love that little car. Got great mileage. It was so cute. You could have just

okay. You lived to tell the tale. And we have told many tales on this small, sexy, independent podcast, Kristen. And if you would like to hear exclusive bonus episodes, please consider subscribing to us at Patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. Where for just $5 a month, you get

access to our entire back catalog of bonus episodes with full video, I might add. Kristen? Why did you say that so sassy? As if people are accusing you of not putting the full video up there. You know, people see me as non-threatening. I'm going to get sassy in these ads. Yeah, absolutely.

Guess how many YouTube members we have now? Okay, okay. I'm, you know what? It's been more than a week since we last recorded, right? I'm going to shoot for the stars, okay? Are we prepared? 30. We've got 30.

Oh, you really shot for the stars there. We have 20, Kristen. Oh, shit. That's really... Okay, you know what? Yeah, welcome. Welcome to the 20 people who are members

on our YouTube channel. Hello. Hello. We are officially going to cater our next event from Olive Garden, probably. Wow. But if you really want to step up

your game, please consider supporting this at the $10 level, the pig butter investor tier where you get early ad-free episodes of this podcast. You get to play trivia, and you get our exclusive segment at the end of each episode,

which is called The Slop. And what are we talking about this week, Kristen? Okay, folks, have you watched the docu-series Killer Story on Max? I think it's so stupid. Are they calling it HBO? It was HBO documentary. Dear God, yeah, they need to stop calling it Max. Anyhow, that's beside the point.

We're going to talk about Killer Story. Yeah, it was very interesting. And it's semi-local to us. Yeah, it is kind of. Mm-hmm. So head on over to patreon.com slash old-timey podcast to sign up. And with that, Kristen, please conclude this horrible, horrible story for us. Yeah. Okay, gang, here we go.

Oh, by the way, Norm said he wants me to stop drinking on the podcast. I realize that sounds like alcohol. No, he's just talking about my numerous beverages, which are somehow part of my personality. And I complained about it on our most recent bonus episode, and the people are on my side. They are. Slurp away. Really? One person commented on myself.

Okay, so one person is supporting you. That's all we need. That's all we need. Okay, right off the top, trigger warning for plenty of talk about suicide. Oh. Yeah, there's going to be a lot. So take care. And skip to the Lou My Darling if you want to do a different episode. We've got light topics, I swear.

Previously, on an old-timey podcast. Janet and Ron Rimer took their infinite. twin boys, David and Brian, to the hospital to be circumcised. But during David's circumcision, his penis was burned off. Experts had little to offer the distraught young parents. But then they saw a man on TV, Dr. John Money. He was a renowned sexologist. He'd gotten his PhD from Harvard, where he'd studied intersexuality, and he'd just helped open Johns Hopkins University's first ever gender identity clinic. That night, Dr. Money shared his theory that parents could choose their child's gender identity, provided that they made the change early enough in the child's life, gave them the right

surgeries, and really committed to the bit. Out of desperation, the rhymers met with Dr. Money, and in time, their identical twin boys became Dr. Munny's unwitting guinea pigs. David was put through surgery to remove his testicles and constructive vagina. He was raised as a girl, given estrogen, pressured into more surgery. But it wasn't a fit. David always knew deep down that he was a boy, and since none of the adults in his life would tell him the truth, David struggled socially and emotionally. By the time he reached puberty, David rebelled against any attempts to feminize him. He rebelled against the visits to that creepy doctor in Baltimore. All the while, Dr. Money published books and studies about the twins, always claiming,

that his little experiment had gone perfectly. One was the quintessential feminine girl, and the other a rough and tumble boy. They were doing great. But that couldn't have been further from the truth. Finally, after years of doctors always keeping David in the dark about his own medical history, one psychiatrist decided that enough was enough. It was time for 15-year-old David to know the truth. In this week's episode, the truth comes out. It was March 14th, 1980. David had just finished a session with his psychiatrist when his dad, Ron, told him that he wanted to take him out for ice cream. David was immediately worried. He sensed that something was up, but they got their ice cream. And it was there, with the ice cream, that for the first

time in his life, an adult actually leveled with David about everything that had been done to him. the levels of deception, the reasons for the estrogen pills, the push for surgery for all those visits to Dr. Money. Ron cried as he told his son what they'd done. But David didn't cry. He sat there, listening. He stared at the dashboard. His eyes glazed over. The ice cream melted and dripped, making a mess. He didn't even seem to notice it. He was too preoccupied by all the emotions hitting him all at once. There were so many of them. anger, shock, grief. But the biggest thing he felt, the sensation so much stronger than all the others, was relief.

David thought to himself, I'm not insane. Because until that point, that's what he thought of himself. He thought that he must be crazy. Absolutely. You feel this way inside and everyone is telling, no, no, that's not right. That's not right. You have this, like, gut feeling. This is gaslighting on an unimaginable level.

Yeah. When you've literally had, people have given you surgery and you don't even know it. Yeah. Everything's a lie. He was relieved to know that there was a reason he'd never felt like a girl. There was a reason for the trips to the doctor. The explanation was horrible, but knowing it was so much better than being left in the dark to struggle. Meanwhile, back home, David's mom, Janet, was breaking the news.

to David's twin brother, Brian. Brian didn't take it as well as David did. For him, there was no relief, just outrage and shock. And at first, a fair amount of denial. Which, that seems like the most normal reaction to me. It's so unbelievable. Yeah, you wouldn't believe it at first. Well, even just the people who, you know,

I feel like some people know this story, some people are hearing it for the first time. And yeah, I still remember where I was when I heard about it for the first time. It is wild that this was done to somebody, that this was done to a kid. Yeah. And then you find out it's happened to a lot of kids.

And they were identical twins. I'm guessing they were very close. Yeah. In a way, it was done to him, too. He had been part of these terrible trips to see Dr. Money. Do you think the parents were also trying very hard to convince Brian that he had a twin sister? Of course. Yeah.

Of course. So he was gaslit too, yeah. Yeah, he was lied to. It was a strange dichotomy. The information that was so difficult for Brian to hear had been so freeing for David. With the news now out in the open, David told his dad, OK, I don't want to be a girl. I want to be a boy. And Ron asked, are you sure?

And David said, yeah, I'm sure. David had spent his whole life being told what he was, being pressured to be something he wasn't. and now that the lie had fallen away, he could not wait to be the person he was meant to be all along. He settled on a new name for himself. David. He stopped taking estrogen. He had surgery to remove the breasts that had grown from the estrogen.

He demanded testosterone therapy. When he was 15, he had falloplasty surgery to construct a penis. It was the first of many painful surgeries. Wow, when he was 15. Yeah. That still seems young to me. Eh. But again, disclaimer, I am not a medical doctor.

Although I did just go to the doctor. Oh, well, that says something. Annual checkup, you know. Mm-hmm. He still dealt with anger, of course. He still grappled with immense trauma. And so did the rest of the Reimer family. Janet and Ron felt horrible for what they'd done.

Horrible for their decisions. Horrible for ever trusting Dr. Money. They apologized to David. And he was very understanding. He seemed to get that their intentions had been pure. They'd only ever wanted the best for him. Ooh, that's tough. It's very big of David to be so understanding.

Yeah. I just can't imagine how emotional they must have been when they finally told the twins the truth. This just had to be horrible on all of them. And, you know, maybe he did go through bouts of being angry with his parents. I feel like that would be natural. Sure. But, you know, overall, he kept telling them that he knew that they wanted the best for him and that they loved him.

There is something about, like, intent. Like, we did this because we love you and we thought it would help you. Right. It's not like they were like, wahaha, let's do experiments on our son. Right. Not like Dr. John Money. Right. They had no idea that they were taking such a massive risk.

David laid low for a while, but eventually he began getting out of the house more. It was a funny thing to be out in the world again for what had to feel like the first time. One of his new friends looked back on that time and said, it wasn't that David was ever a shy person. He was something different at that time. He was withdrawn. He was scared of people. Now that David was presenting as a guy, he began to find the social acceptance that he'd always craved.

That's not to say that his life became magically perfect, but it did get a hell of a lot better. He became an attractive young man. Ooh. I know, isn't that kind of lucky? All of a sudden you're a hottie. Which meant he got attention from the ladies. The ladies. Now, Norm, you know all about getting attention from ladies.

You want to give some insight here about what that's like as a teenage boy? You should not be asking me these questions. I did not get any attention. Getting that attention was great, but also a little bit awkward. For one thing, he was a teenager. But the much bigger issue was that he felt like things could only progress so far physically. Right. At some point, he'd have to explain what he'd been through,

explain that his penis didn't function the way he wanted it to gosh I was even thinking like even if you were like you know what I'm not going to tell them the whole story I'm going to make up some little lie what little lie could you even make up so he has a phalloplasty

but he couldn't feel he didn't have sensitivity right yeah I mean this sucks but like honestly I think the truth of what originally happened is the best thing to say

to say I had to get circumcised when I was a newborn and it went horribly wrong. I think that's a very vulnerable thing for a teenage boy to say. I know. I mean, yeah, definitely. Yeah. But like, yeah, I don't know what else you would say. Yeah. And I honestly, looking back when I was a teenage boy, I'm thinking I would just try to avoid that situation at all costs.

Yeah. Especially, like, if that had happened to me, I would just know. put myself in that situation. What if you were so hot that the ladies came to you? I'd say you can look, but you can't touch. It did reach that point with someone. When he was 18, he started dating a girl and things were going well. But when he opened up to her about what had happened to him, she told a few people.

And within a few days, it seemed like everyone in town knew this deeply private, deeply traumatic secret. Oh, that sucks. It's awful. And honestly, you know, there's part of me that gets a little mad at her, but also she's a teenage girl, too. Yeah, if she's going to tell her friends. Yeah, and I, and maybe not even in a gossipy way, but just in a like, oh my gosh, this

is the new information I have. I'm grappling with this. You tell one or two friends, and then it just gets out. Yeah. It was all too much for David. He'd just gotten some semblance of a life, and now it felt like it was gone. In his despair, that event was just trauma on top of trauma, on top of trauma, and David attempted to die by suicide. Janet and Ron discovered him unconscious.

They rushed him to the hospital, and David made another attempt a week later. Janet and Ron felt horrible for him. He had suffered so much. It seemed like his entire life was just suffering. In those dark days, David took solace in the woods. He wanted to be alone, to be away from other people. Looking back, he said he was so angry, angry at everything. He hated himself.

He hated how his life had turned out. But something in him kept pushing, kept dreaming, dreaming for the life he wanted. When he was 21, he had another fall. Pelloplasty. This one allowed him to feel sensation in his penis. He'd be able to have penetrative sex if he wanted to. But he was still shy, still afraid. By that point, his brother Brian had gotten married. He'd become a dad. That was what David wanted to. He prayed for it. But he'd kind of come to believe that he'd never be able to get that. But then one day, Brian and his wife introduced David to a friend named Jane. Jane had three children, and boy howdy she had been through the ringer with men,

but she noticed right away that David was different, different in a good way. He loved her. He loved her kids. And within a year of dating, they got married. Wow. David got a job in a factory. They bought a house. He adopted her three children. He was 25. And although his life might not have looked, you know, super remarkable to an outsider, it was. was incredible to him. I mean, to find love is probably a big deal for him. And I wonder when all of this first happened, if that was a huge factor for Janet and Ron thinking what kind of life will he have. You know, people especially at that time placed so much importance on you've got to get married, you've got to have kids. And if you're thinking our child can't have any of that,

is it possible you're thinking they couldn't have a life at all? But it's funny, by that point, David had known the truth about himself for 10 years, but he still didn't know the full scope of it. He didn't know the extent to which Dr. Money had written about him and Brian as some big success story, proving once and for all that it's totally fine to perform surgery on an infant's genitals and choose their gender for them, just for funsies, not because it's medically necessary. You can choose. Before they turn two, you can choose what gender you want your baby to be. I'm glad you remembered all the true facts from last week's episode. David didn't know that the horrible things that had been done to him were now being done to infants all over the world, thanks in part to Dr. Money's bullshit claim that he had grown up to be a successful woman.

David also didn't know that Dr. Money's longtime academic nemesis, a guy named Dr. Milton Diamond, had been on to Dr. Money's bullshit from the start. In fact, when Dr. Money started writing about the twins, these twins who were successfully raised as a feminine girl and a masculine boy, Dr. Diamond had been very vocal about the fact that he sure would like to meet those twins and talk to them himself. Yes, team up. Yeah. The ultimate tag team duo right here. Are you excited about Dr. Diamond? In fact, Dr. Diamond had printed an ad in the American Psychiatric Society,

journal every year asking whoever was treating the twins that Dr. Money kept talking about to please reach out. I love this. This is like some serious levels of like pettiness in spite that I'm loving. Say more. Say more. I know you. I know you love peddiness.

Like he hates Dr. Money so much. So much. So much. He is advertising to get revenge on him basically. Yeah, okay, I'm going to want more information on your thoughts on revenge in a bit. Okay. Because some people, and this kisses me off, some people were like, oh, well, you can't talk to Dr. Diamond about that because, you know, he's just got an axe to grind against Dr. Money.

So? So? So what? Hell yeah, he has an ax to grind. So what? Because this guy's pedaling bullshit. Exactly. What's wrong about being openly petty and openly angry with someone who's, who's done?

doing bad stuff. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with it at all. But somehow it's like, oh, you look angry and that's the problem. We don't like it. We on an old-timey podcast are petty bitches, both of us. Dr. Keith Sigmansson had been the head of psychiatry at the child guidance clinic, where David had once been a patient. Dr. Sigmansson had seen those ads every year. And, you know, sometimes he thought about responding, but he was too afraid of what Dr. Money would do, to his career if he ever came forward with the truth. Dr. Money has some influence in power. Sure.

But you know it's more valuable than money? What? Diamonds. Okay. Diamonds are forever. No, for real. What are your thoughts on this? On Dr. Siegmanson being like, I was afraid of Dr. Money.

Yeah. I think it's just an excuse. I feel like I'm being very uncharitable, possibly. I think this is utter bullshit and I think you should lose your license. Whoa. I think that if you witness this kind of child abuse, because to me that's what this is, this is abuse. If you are that close to it and you don't report it and you have that much power, gone. Well, report it.

I mean, this is a guy with an ad saying, hey, if you treated this. No, no, no, I'm not talking about report it to Dr. Diamond. I'm talking about, like, you need to sound the alarm yourself. Oh, I thought you were upset that he didn't respond to Dr. Diamond's ad right away. No, I'm saying it shouldn't have taken an ad. It should have been you witness the effects of this treatment on this child. And you should say something. Yes.

Yeah. And I know we talked about the last episode that Dr. Money was kind of the head honcho in this field. Yeah. So, like, who would Dr. Sigmansson even, like, report this to? I don't know, but if he's the head of psychiatry at this place, I'm sure he would know a few people he could call. Got connections. You've got more connections than a child does and a child's being abused. But he was treating David, right?

He oversaw the treatment team, yeah. Okay. Did Dr. Sigmansen work with Dr. Money? So Dr. Money, you know, created this plan. And of course, it included, you know, there was a surgeon who did the surgery. There was an endocrinologist for hormones. There was psychiatry elements. You know, there were all these people.

And everyone was following Dr. Money's plan. Mm-hmm. And I think especially if you're in the psychiatry area of that and you are seeing firsthand that the reality of this kid's life is terrible. And also, hmm, weird. it's not matching up with the bullshit that Dr. Money is spouting. Yeah. I think you have a moral and ethical and frankly, you know, academic medical obligation to start squawking the truth.

So basically you think he should be a whistleblower. Yes. Okay. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah. Okay. Took me a while to get there. But yeah.

I agree. Yeah. I agree. If he was evaluating David and said, whoa, this is like psychologically damaging to this patient. He, yeah, think he had an obligation to say something, sure. So, you know, Dr. Siemanson, you know, he's a big weenie boy, but Dr. Diamond wasn't one to give up. And finally, in the spring of 1991, he managed to find one of the psychiatrists who treated David. And that woman put Dr. Diamond in touch with Keith Sigminson.

Before long, the two of them were on an awkward phone call together. With Dr. Diamond being like, hey, we really need to do a follow-up on what actually happened to the twins, and whether this experiment was truly a success, because if it wasn't, then that's a huge problem that needs to be reported, because everything that Dr. Money has been saying about the twins has been used for years to justify this treatment in other patients. Yes, this is affecting other people now.

But, you know, Dr. Sigmundson was a little worried that Dr. Diamond was only interested in reporting about what actually became of the twins because he had an axe to grind with his longtime rival, Dr. Money. Oh, my God. I know. We've already talked about it. how we think this is bullshit um could hurt my feelings you could have dr money's feelings

good lord it was true that there was actually some really hot academic gossip about these two and so i'm going to spill a little tea here um okay apparently years earlier in 1973 they'd both been at the international symposium on gender identity and dr money spotted dr diamond and yelled Mickey Diamond, I hate your guts! And everyone knew what he was mad about because Dr. Diamond had been so vocal about his belief that Dr. Money was a big creepy weirdo. He needed to stop advocating for, you know,

essentially cosmetic surgery on babies, genitals. We're all there. Right. Anyway, apparently Dr. Money like ran over, got in Dr. Diamond's face and was all mad. And then Dr. Diamond, in response, said something super chill and cool, like, the data isn't there.

Ooh. And then Dr. Money punched him. Woo! He threw hands. Well, now here's the thing. Okay. People say he punched him. But when asked, Dr. Diamond said something interesting.

He didn't say he didn't punch me. He said, I don't remember being punched. What do you make of that? Is it like he was so weak? I didn't even feel it. That's how I take it. I remember when my sister and I would get in a fight, I'd be like, that didn't even hurt.

And the worst was when I had a tear. That didn't even hurt. That's what I think this is. I need some fan fiction from this. I know. I want barrel-chested Dr. Diamond. Why is it always a barrel-chested with you? His shirt rips as he suplexes Dr. John Money into the ground.

And the audience cheers. I love academic beef where, like, the hot comeback is the data isn't there. The data isn't there. And then a woman feints, oh, Dr. Diamond. But he catches her with his barrel chest. Yeah, just rests right on his big old chest. Anyway, so everyone knew that they had beef. And there was a popular belief that, you know,

maybe Dr. Diamond was just some nut with an axe to grind because we're all having so much fun giving cosmetic surgery to infants. Classic J-Hawker behavior. He went to KU, right? He did. Yeah. But finally, at long last, Dr. Sigmundsen was like, okay, I suppose that I, a grown man, will do a mildly brave thing. I will put you in touch with David.

I'm sorry, he's on my list. I will do a mildly brave thing. I mean, he becomes a good guy in this. Like the least thing he could, least he could do. Thank you. You know? Initially, David didn't want anything to do with Dr. Diamond. But Dr. Diamond, who by that point was a professor at the University of Hawaii, flew out to David.

He sat down with him. He laid it all out. Here's everything that Dr. Money has written about you. Here's the impact. Around the world, roughly five children every day are being put through what you were put through. Holy shit. Five a day? This is nuts.

Well, it's 2% of the population or so. So that's like, you know, two people out of 100. Damn. It's wild. David was shocked and deeply troubled by that revelation. Although he was settling into his new normal life, the thought of anyone else going through what he went through was just awful. And although there was so much to fear about going public, he decided that it was the only way forward. Someone needed to speak out on behalf of all of those intersex children.

And whose voice could be more powerful than his to show that, in fact, he had not proven Dr. Money's theory correct. In fact, he'd done the opposite. So, beginning in 1994, David and his wife, Jane, and his mom, Janet, agreed to do several interviews with Doctors Diamond and Sigmansson. They agreed to share their story, you know, under pseudonyms. Sure. Ultimately, after about a year of work,

the doctors had written a groundbreaking paper, disproving everything that Dr. Money had ever said about David Reimer. This just sounds like a hit piece, Christen. Norm! Oh, it's like Dr. Money is in the room with me. This is a witch hunt, Your Honor. Yeah, I did something terrible, and now people found out, and it's a witch hunt. By the way, I feel like this is totally normal in academia for someone to present a theory

and someone to write a paper opposing the theory. Isn't this totally normal? This is totally normal. And if Dr. Money hadn't been such a baby-backed bitch, that's not a thing. thing. Is it? Did I make up a thing? Babyback bitch? No, that's an insult. Okay. All right. That's not a new one. If he hadn't been such a little babyback bitch, then think where we could be. It's just so immature that he can't accept that his theory is incorrect. He can't even look at the actual data because... I mean, this is what he's known for. He's world renowned for this and now someone's

threatening to take it away from him. The thing is, he was renowned. for a lot of aspects of gender identity. You know, this wasn't his only thing. Yeah, but he's like, he's like king of the castle, right? Yeah. Yeah. Doesn't matter how small it is to him. Someone's trying to take it from him.

Yeah. David Reimer was proof that even when everyone around a child is trying to convince them that they're a girl, if that child's gender identity is that of a boy, then that can't be changed. And in fact, it's pretty fucked up to try to change it. So Dr. Diamond's point was that, hey, what happened to David is messed up, but it's equally messed up to do this to intersex children. And we talked about intersexuality last week.

Someone whose intersex is born with sex characteristics that don't fit into typically male or female patterns, not fitting into the binary. And his point is, there's nothing wrong with that. there should be room for that on the spectrum of human sexuality. And we should not be forcing people into unnecessary surgeries before they're even old enough to consent. His point was simply that if a child is born with atypical genitals and a doctor surgically refashions that infant's genitals into a penis or a vagina and then you raise that kid in accordance with that choice, you're still making a gamble. because when someone is an infant, you have no way of knowing what their gender identity is. You got to wait that shit out.

What Dr. Diamond and, yeah, sure, Dr. Seaminson were saying in that paper should not have been controversial. And yet it kind of was. By that point, doctors had spent like 30 years engaging in plastic surgery for babies, genitals. I want to stop saying that. It's disgusting. Plus, Dr. Money was still a big, important boy in his field. nobody wanted to go against all that, especially not for a bunch of babies. Babies have so much power.

So instead, let's all defend that weird sexologist who thinks it's cool to show pornography to children. We'd hate for anything to happen to him. I'm so fed up with this. I think it's bad enough when someone is doing something awful, especially to a kid. But then to know that there are other adults around and there's this reluctance. to do anything. There are these medical journals that are reluctant to publish this paper that has been so well researched.

It's just, it's infuriating. Yeah. I can't imagine living with yourself when you're like, I'll side with the grown man who we all know is lying. And, you know, too bad for these infants.

That does, that's horrible. It took Dr. Diamond two years to find a journal that was willing to publish that paper. Two years. Mm-hmm. He's got data from the subject and journals don't want to publish this. Are they afraid of Dr. Money, too?

It was killed. I think they're afraid of that. But also, it's funny. To me, what he's saying is not explosive. It's obvious. But, you know, they're telling doctors essentially, hey, you know, this thing we're doing every day. It's actually potentially horrible. Not just a little bad, not just, oh, we goofed or, oh, in some cases, we.

should do it. It's horrible. It needs to stop right now. And I think maybe that was just skilie. What if the problem was Dr. Diamond was a terrible writer? As in too boring because have you read academic stuff? My God, snooze. I have read lots of academic stuff. You have a much higher threshold for boring academic work than I do. You're like, this was actually really fascinating. Now it had 200 pages of context I love it. I will put that shit down. I know you will.

That's where all the good info is, though. Oh, my, no. No. Yeah, that's where you get the nitty-gritty. Everything's written in passive voice. Who farted, you know? We love it. In March of 1997, the paper finally came out.

In the American Medical Association's archives of adolescent and pediatric medicine, could they have gotten a shorter title? No, they couldn't. And my oh me, Norm, when word got out, it didn't just get picked up by all the nerds and eggheads. Normal folks read about it, too. It made the front page of the New York Times. As it should, because it's a pretty crazy story. It's wild.

Yeah. It's wild. And you know what? A beautiful thing happened as a result of that coverage. People started asking questions. You know, doctors had been performing these surgeries for decades. Mm-hmm. And they were frankly kind of defensive about it.

They believed they'd done the right thing. And in fairness, you know, if you're following the guidelines that have been put out for you, it would be very upsetting to feel like, oh my gosh, have I done something horrible to someone? I was just following orders. No, it's not like that. Well, you know, I think of the Hippocratic Oath, do no harm. Yeah. And I think maybe doctors really grappled with, okay, this new data is showing that, oh, I was doing harm to a patient.

And, you know, it's got to be a lot to think about, you know. Well, and Dr. Munny's whole point had been there's nothing more harmful than not being able to fall into one box or the other, male or female, cleanly. It's very harmful. To fall into the box or to be in the middle or what do you say? Dr. Money is 100% right. Oh, God. We need to be chopping off baby's genitals. Oh, gosh.

It's just crazy saying it out loud. Yes. What was wrong with this man, truly? And part of me is like, well, well, it was a different time and we didn't understand. But no, Dr. Diamond was there the whole time. And he was like, this is nuts. You know what? Here's what I'll say to that, because I'm thinking about, oh, we didn't know, we didn't know.

And actually my next paragraph goes into this. No one had bothered to do any kind of long-term follow-up study with any of these patients. That is crazy to me. That's the thing. So that's the thing. It's one thing, you know, you think you're doing the right thing. You hope you're doing the right thing. Why on earth was this not studied?

Why didn't anyone follow up with these kids? My work here is done. Yeah. I mean, that's essentially what it was. Well, you know, the gender identity gate closes it too. Bing, bang, boom, no need for a follow-up. Right. You've made your selection.

Yeah. And the menu closes. Uh-huh. And that's who you're playing as the rest of your life. Did you ever wish you were a girl? No. Oh, my gosh. Did you wish you were a boy?

You know what I always wished for, and I was so envious. Freud calls this penis envy, I'm sure. I thought it must be so cool, like the coolest thing on earth to pee standing up. I was so jealous of that. So jealous. It's not that cool. No, and that's what I've heard from everybody. It's like, oh, no, actually, sometimes I just sit down on the toilet.

It's like, God, if I were a boy, I'd stand to pee every time. Who sings that if I were a boy? Beyonce. Are those the lyrics? Yeah, those are the exact lyrics. Here's the thing, peeing, standing up, is handy when you're out hiking. Yeah. That's probably the number one.

Boy, I'm most jealous on a road trip, on a hike. Yeah. Yeah, you can just kind of piss wherever. Sure. But it is true that, like, Pian standing up at a toilet, it kind of makes a mess. Splishy splashes everywhere. It's better to just sit down. Really is.

You know what this feels like? What? This feels like if you got a nice big cupcake and I got a really small, shitty one. You're like, you know what? That one's actually better. The one that you got, I wish I had yours. I didn't say anything about that. I'm just telling you as somebody with a penis, these are my experiences.

These are my confessions. Wait, who's saying that? R. Kelly. Oh, goddamn. No. Speaking of peeing. Speaking of terrible men. Jesus Christ.

Okay, this episode just gets worse. Yeah, I'm sorry. Okay, so meanwhile, new research in the field suggested that. that in all likelihood, our gender identity and even our sexuality are probably not things that we're choosing. They're not things that we're influenced to choose. Instead, they are hardwired into us right from the jump. No, nope, nope, nope, nope. Nope, nope.

No, Kristen. Yep. Two years old. Uh-huh. The gender select screen comes in your room. Choose your gender. It happened to all of us. And, you know, for the life of me, I can't figure out why all those Southern kids chose to be

gay. They must have thought it looked fun. And sometimes we have a misclick, like, oh, I didn't mean to select that. And then that's when you're trans. Yeah. Okay. There you go. Explained by Norm. Yes. Medical professional, who recently went to the doctor. Man who recently went to the doctor says this. Trans studies. David's bravery in coming forward and sharing his story made a real difference. He'd used to used a pseudonym, but that story of a boy who'd been so traumatized by this treatment and was now advocating for it to stop entirely, dovetailed with the work of the Intersex Society of North

America, which had been founded just a few years earlier by Cheryl Chase. Ooh, dovetailed. Good woodworking term, Kristen. I feel like I'm using some high dollar words here. Dovetailed. Cheryl had been driven to create that advocacy group by her own horrific. experience. She'd been born in 1956, and her genitals had been atypical. For the first three days of her life, doctors debated on whether she should be a boy or a girl. They decided she'd be a boy. But a year and a half later, her parents took her to some other doctors who decided that actually the first doctors had been wrong. She was a girl now. So the doctors are deciding. Yeah. Cool. Can we wait

this out? No, that would be terrible. It's like people that try to cook something without preheat in the oven. You've got to wait. Yes, these are equally bad things. They performed surgery on her genitals. Just like David Reimer, Cheryl had been kept in the dark about all of this, all of her own medical history. And just like David, she always grew up knowing that something was wrong.

What was with all the doctor's appointments? What was with all the surgery? she spent her entire adolescence confused. Finally, when she was 19, she discovered some version of the truth, but it took another three years before she could finally find a doctor who was willing to give her access to her own medical records. Her own records? I cannot even imagine.

It's like you're not being treated like a real human being. Like you never have agency. You never get to decide anything. It's horrible. Because you were born with atypical genitals? Yeah. Who gives a shit? Yeah.

I mean, besides every doctor in this story. Hey, we're standing Dr. Diamond. Oh, that's true. That's true. It was only then that she found out that she'd been born intersex, that she'd had ovarian and testicular tissue. And the reason that now, as an adult, she couldn't achieve orgasm, was because her clitoris had been removed when she was a baby. Oh! Yeah.

Cheryl was incredibly angry about the deception and began finding other people who'd been subjected to the same treatment and in 1993 she'd created the Intersex Society of North America Cheryl sounds fascinating I feel like she could be her own episode Anyway future topic future topic oh oh shit okay hang on hang on Yes Ooh okay you know what I'm about to bust with all these good ideas

Wow we really need a running list of all of our future topic. I know, I know. Well, this podcast will never end. Never end. So they began advocating for things that should not have been seen as radical. They wanted the medical community to stop performing unnecessary, oftentimes irreversible surgeries on babies. We'll think about it.

Thank you for your feedback. They wanted the medical community to stop treating intersex bodies like a problem. and for everyone to stop being so alarmed when someone just doesn't fit into the binary. It's not that big a deal. People listened some to David, but there was a reluctance to listen to intersex people. The pushback from the medical community was basically like, hey, don't worry about it. We've actually gotten better at these surgeries. That's the problem, right, that we were kind of bad at the surgeries.

We were a little rusty. We've been practicing. Been doing two a days. Oh, my God. Good Lord. But the person people really wanted to hear from was Dr. Money. Yeah. What did Dr. Money have to say now that the truth had come out about what he'd always called the John slash Joan case?

For a while, Dr. Money refused to comment because he was busy washing his hair. Because he's getting spanked. He should be. Yeah. Good grief. Then he said he couldn't comment because of confidentiality laws. Bull, dude, you've been writing about this shit for years using pseudonyms. What, you all of a sudden can't talk about it now?

It's super convenient, isn't it? Oh, I'd love to talk, but actually I care so much about this patient whose life I ruined that I can't. It would be wrong. It would be fucked up, actually. Give me a break. But John Colapinto, the reporter from Rolling Stone who wrote the groundbreaking article about David, did eventually get a hold of Dr. Money for his article. And oh, we are not prepared for this.

This interview was a doozy. First off, you know, Dr. Money refused to speak directly about David Reimer. But he said he stood by everything. He'd written about David. He said he hadn't reported on the outcome of David's case. Because when David was a teenager, he'd refused to come back to Johns Hopkins. So how could poor little Dr. Money be expected to know that David had, you know, reopened the gender identity gate, you know?

Weird. Weird. I won't inquire myself at all. I will wait for David to reach out to me. Mm-hmm. Give me a break. Gee, I wonder why, Dr. Money. Yeah. I wonder why he didn't reach out again.

Right. Dr. Money was not the least bit willing to reflect on what he'd done. He said that the media was only reporting on this story because, and I quote, it's part of the anti-feminist movement. They say math. Sorry to interrupt. No, it's, yeah. Anti-feminist movement.

It's part of the anti-feminist movement. They say masculinity and femininity are built into the genes, so women should get back to the mattress and the kitchen. The mattress? I've never heard that before. I hate this man. I hate this man so much. Well, he sounds like a feminist, Kristen.

Yeah. Yeah, he sure does sound like that. Maybe we were wrong about Dr. Money. Yeah, he claims to be a real friend to the women, LGBT, all of us, you know. I love women. I forced an infant to become one. That was an amazing

joke. He also implied, and you clocked this, that Dr. Diamond was just out to get him. He said, quote, someone had a knife in my back, but it's not uncommon in science. The minute you stick your head up above the grass,

there's a gunman ready to shoot you down. What hurts the most? I'm sorry I was so good at my job and everyone was jealous of me. It's having so much to say. Watching you walk away. Then the hits keep coming. He wholeheartedly rejected Dr. Diamond and Dr. Sigmansonson's recommendation that doctors and parents delay surgery for intersex children until the intersex children are old enough to make the decision for himself. Why did Dr. Money reject that suggestion, you ask?

Because as he put it, and again, I am quoting, you cannot be an it. Hmm. So he's not down with the pronouns. This motherfucker. So, yeah, he's all about like, yeah, you have to fit into the binary, right? Yes. Yeah. Because if you don't, you might be messed up.

Yeah. This guy sucks. Give David the choice. That's the main point. Yeah. Is you forced this infant into a gender that that infant couldn't even make a decision on. And now you've got these infants who are now adults or now in adolescence. And they can tell you this was wrong.

Yeah. This didn't fit for me. Yes. And that is so much more damaging than, I don't know. going by one gender and then going by another or just being like they, them. I'm sure back in the 60s or 70s, I don't know. You go by one gender, you want to switch. I don't know.

You move down the road 30 minutes. No one will know. Sure. John Kalapinto then asked him about one of his books, which was still in print. He asked, hey, you know, when the next edition comes out, don't you think you should revise it? Because that book still paints David Reimer as a success story. Right. What do you think Dr. Money said?

Ooh. Think hard. Okay. I have a few options here. Okay. Oh, the next edition has already made it to print. It's too late to change it. Okay.

How about, oh, well, there needs to be more data before I can revise this. You're being way too professional. Oh. Did you just say go F yourself? Like, what did Dr. Money say? He said, in answer to the question, Should you revise the next edition before it comes out? Dr. Money said, quote, I'll be dead by then.

Whoa, very dramatic. Oh, God. A flippant baby. Emotionally immature. No joke. I'll be dead by then. I'll be dead by then. Oh, so dramatic.

It was a big shift. suddenly Dr. Money was shying away from the spotlight, but David wasn't, got braver and braver, more willing to share his story. It's not that he wanted the spotlight, but he understood the power of his story. When the BBC came to him, wanting to do a documentary on his experience, he wanted to do it. He understood that he and his brother had been used by Dr. Money to put out a false, incredibly harmful narrative that had been used to justify unnecessary surgery and remarkable levels of deception on thousands of intersex children. But it was a difficult thing.

If David went public, if he dropped the pseudonym, that meant that he was essentially putting his twin brother Brian in the spotlight as well. They'd already been through so damn much. But David told Brian, we have to stop Dr. Money. He's ruined our lives. We can't let him ruin anymore. Brian understood that their story needed to be told and that it would help other people.

And he wanted to do that. So he did. But Brian also needed help himself. The revelation years earlier that the person he'd been told all his life was his sister had in fact always been his brother and that the doctor who'd orchestrated this whole thing had been writing about them

and talking about them as some kind of success story had been too much. Janet said that Brian wasn't the same after he was told the truth. He struggled. I am thinking about Brian had to go see Dr. Money too, right? Yes. And he had to take his clothes off. Yes.

He had to look at pornography. Yes. So he's traumatized as well. And I think it's important that we remember that. Yeah. He was photographed together with, I mean, they were put in sexual situations together, sexual positions together. It's horrible.

Dr. Money denies all that, but we'll get into that in a minute because yes, he absolutely experienced a lot of trauma. In time, Brian developed schizophrenia, a severe brain disorder characterized by losing touch with reality. Symptoms of schizophrenia

usually appear in young adulthood, sometimes in your teenage years. And the cause is unknown, but experts think it's attributable to a person's genetics, their brain chemistry, and environmental factors. So even though David and Brian were both struggling, they agreed to take part in the BBC documentary.

And they were remarkably open. David talked not just about how confusing and harmful it had been to be told he was a girl when he knew deep down inside that he was a boy, but he also spoke up about what he and Brian experienced at the hands of Dr. Money. He talked about how Dr. Money was sweet in front of their parents, but aggressive and abusive when they weren't around. He talked about how he'd ordered them to get naked, how he'd photographed them naked.

Brian talked about the experiments they were made to do. He said, quote, going into sexual positions with no clothes on, taking pictures of us, how degrading for seven-year-olds. Brian was particularly up front in his allegations of sexual abuse. He named specific positions that Dr. Money had instructed them to get into,

He said that Dr. Money referred to this as, quote, sexual rehearsal play. Because, you know, you've got to rehearse your gender. Which I'm thinking, if it's so easy to switch it, then why do you need to rehearse it? Yeah. Dr. Money refused to participate in that documentary. What? Yeah, I know. But he still somehow had his defenders.

A fellow professor, Professor Richard Green, agreed to take part in the documentary. And he said that he had asked Dr. Money about the sexual abuse. stuff and that Dr. Money said that the twins were just misremembering. Well, that settles it. Yeah. This man has been said to have made remarks that were kind of like pro pedophilia, pro-incest. Dr. Money? Yeah, yeah.

But yeah, I'm sure the twins are misremembering. It's interesting how he's given a chance to defend his groundbreaking research and he doesn't have the nuts to do it. Yeah. It's because he chopped him off to make a vagina. Very good, Kristen. Thank you. That documentary aired in 2000. The following year, PBS aired an episode about David and Brian titled Sex Unknown. Also in 2000, David and his family worked with John Colapinto, that reporter from the Rolling Stone article, on a book titled, As Nature Made Him, the boy who was raised a girl.

David went on Oprah. He and Brian had both bravely put themselves out there, but they still grappled with unimaginable demons. In the summer of 2002, Brian died by suicide, and David took his brother's death really hard. Some sources said that he felt partially responsible, which is just awful. I think people often get confused about suicide

and think that, oh, maybe it's this one thing that happened, and I think at the time there was this idea that, oh, you know, it was going public and that's what, you know, drove him to this. But suicide is a complicated issue and there are a number of factors. Yeah, I think it's pretty rare where it's like this one thing caused this thing. Yeah, it's never that. It's very complex. There's a lot of stuff going on. David visited Brian's grave multiple times a week to bring flowers.

to sit and talk. He was deep in his own battle with his mental health. John Calapinto later said that at that point in time, David likely had a lot of money. They'd split the book profits 50-50. He said that David had also gotten an influx of cash from a movie deal with Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings. What?

Yeah, I mean, obviously that movie was never made. Wow. Maybe David did have money. Maybe he didn't. Friends said that David always seemed short on cash. and it has been reported that he got conned by a guy who said he had an investment opportunity and just ran off with the money. Around that time, David lost his job. He was 38 years old, couldn't seem to find another one, and his marriage began to crumble.

His wife, Jane, was at the end of a rope. Their marriage had not been easy. She told David she loved him, said she didn't want to divorce him, but she did want a separation. Again, I want to mention that suicide is really complex. It's not about a single event. It's a combination of factors. It's not the direct result of something happening. It's so many things.

On May 4, 2004, David Reimer died by suicide. He was 38 years old. Janet and Ron had lost both their sons in the span of two years. They were grief-stricken, but also angered by Dr. Munny's continued silence in the wake of both of their son's deaths. In a follow-up interview with the BBC, Ron Reimer said that he would like to challenge Dr. Money to be man enough, to admit publicly, or even just to himself, that he'd made a horrible mistake. He'd been trying to make medical history, but he admit that he had made a mistake. The answer to that question, at least publicly and probably privately, was no.

They didn't blame Dr. Money entirely for their son's deaths. And for what it's worth, I don't either. but I will say that I understand why, given their history, they might have been reluctant to seek help. And that's tragic because suicide is preventable. There's good help available. There's therapy. There's medication. There's 988 Lifeline where you can call or text or chat day or night every day of the year.

And it's awful that their lives ended this way. Dr. John Money died two years later in 2006. He was 84. His obituary in the New York Times touted his influence in the field of sexology, and of course touched on his most infamous case. According to the article, his colleagues said that Dr. Money had been mortified by the case, and that as a rule, he never discussed it. Oh, how convenient. Yeah. Also, mortified, that's interesting.

Embarrassed? Yeah. Not remorseful. Yeah. That mortification made sense, though. Until the truth came out, Dr. Money had always been seen and always seen himself as a defender of sexual liberation. He was against social taboos. He was pro-LGBQIA. The works, he was so libertarian, baby. But in speaking out, David Reimer unmasked Dr. Money for who he truly was.

He wasn't the free-loving, open person he'd purported himself to be. In fact, he had been rigid. He'd played God. He hadn't listened. He had been, in my words, an abuser. But in Dr. Money's obituary, he had a defender once again in the form of a former colleague, Dr. Richard Green, Emeritus Professor at the University of California. He said, quote, given what the field knew at the time, money made the right call about what to do. It's easy in hindsight to say it was wrong, but I would have done the same thing. Really? You would have lied about your research? He purported them to be a success story when they clearly were not. Yeah, well, and he told Janet and Ron, oh yeah, I do this all the time. Yeah, they said he very much indicated that this was something that had been done multiple times before to babies born with, you know, who did fit into the binary. Yeah, cool. But also, I don't believe anything he said about intersex kids either.

I feel like if you're going to lie wildly about one group, why not another? For the rest of his career, Dr. Diamond continued to advocate for the idea that identity cannot be forced upon a person and that intersex people have a place on the spectrum of human sexuality. Dr. Diamond died in 2024. He was 90 years old. These days, a number of major medical organizations and human rights groups, including the World Health Organization, the United States, nations, the American Academy of Family Physicians, and the American Academy of Pediatrics have all come forward recommending that non-emergency, irreversible surgeries on intersex children

be deferred until those children are old enough to give informed consent. What a concept. And yet, these non-consensual cosmetic surgeries are still happening, both in the United States and in other parts of the world. They're just hopefully becoming less common. And on that note, I'd like to wrap up with a quote from David Reimer. He said, Mom and Dad wanted this to work, so I would be happy. That's every parent's dream for their child. But I couldn't be happy for my parents. I had to be happy for me. You can't be something that you're not. You have to be you. You have to be you. Well said. That's the story. Kristen, that was heartbreaking. Yeah, it really is. I really struggled with this one. I guess I wonder the toll it took

on David and Brian to go public. I'm sure it was massive. You have to be super vulnerable with the entire world. Yeah. Here's the thing. I feel like in today's society, some news story will come out. And three days later, everyone has forgotten about it. Yeah. Because we're just constantly fed information It was all the time. But back when they went public with this, it was probably pretty big, pretty controversial, and it stuck with people. Yeah.

I also think, and I had something in this in the script, and I took it out because I didn't want it, you know, to be taken the wrong way. Obviously, you know, they talked about sexual abuse. And that's hard for anyone to talk about. But I think there's something about this time period and being heterosexual men talking about essentially being abused at the hands of a man, I don't think that that was that common to talk about openly then.

And I feel like that was just an added layer of vulnerability. I'm really grateful that they came forward because I think in a lot of ways, like sometimes for bad stuff to stop happening, it's not enough to read statistics. It really helps us to have a human story. Yes. And that is so helpful. But I do wonder, what toll does that take on the person who's telling their story?

A huge toll. Yeah. But they undoubtedly saved lives. Oh, I think they did. I think they absolutely did. What they did was, I think, made a huge impact. Mm-hmm. And way more than just publishing an academic research paper, you know.

Yeah. Coming forward with their story was very impactful. And I think it got, you know, by that point, intersex people were really talking a lot and they had to work so hard. But I do wonder how much it helped to have someone like David Reimer who saying, here's my experience. it was horrible. Mm-hmm. And it's not fair that people would be more willing to listen to him than they would be to listen to someone who was born with atypical genitals,

but maybe that's the way it was. Yeah. Excellent story, Kristen. Thank you. Very sad. I promise next week will be more uplifting, because how could it not be? We want cobras running loose in Missouri towns again.

Okay. I'm taking the note. I like it. feel-good story like that. Well, with that, should we get into the slop segment? Let's do it. Well, this slop got a little extra sloppy, didn't it? It did. It did, but I liked it.

Folks, we just wrapped up a slop segment. We talked about the three-part HBO documentary series, a killer story, and then I talked about a couple documentaries I watched last weekend. If you want to figure out what they were. Oh, intriguing. And I highly recommend both of them join the Pig Butter Investor. You're at $10, and you can hear all about it. All right, Kristen, let's wrap it up.

You know what they say about history hoes? We always cite our sources. That's right. For this episode, I got my information from John Calapinto's Rolling Stone article, The True Story of John slash Joan, an episode of PBS Nova titled Sex Unknown, plus Amnesty International, the Cleveland Clinic, the New York Times, and more. Check the show notes for a full list of our sources. That's all for this episode.

Thank you for listening to an old-timey podcast. Please give us a five-star review wherever you listen to podcasts. And while you're at it, subscribe. Support us on Patreon at patreon.com slash old-timey podcast. Join the Reddit community, R slash Old Timey Podcast. Follow us on Facebook and YouTube and Instagram at Old Timey Podcast. You can also follow us individually. On Instagram, I'm at Kristen Pitts-Keruso and he's at Gaming Historian.

And until next time, Tudaloo, Tata, and Cheerio. Where is the button? Oh, here it is. Bye. Bye. See ya. See ya.