John/Joan - The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t97xfWithout a few unusual people, human behaviour would have remained a mystery - ordinary people whose extraordinary circumstances provided researchers with the exceptions that proved behavioural rules. Claudia Hammond revisits the classic case studies that have advanced psychological research.
Janet and Ron Reimer's twin sons, Bruce and Brian, were born in Winnipeg in Canada in August 1965. All went well until April 1966, when the twins were circumcised. In the process, Bruce suffered a catastrophic injury to his penis. A year later, on the advice of Dr John Money, founder of the Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins University Medical Centre in Baltimore, Bruce became Brenda and the Reimers began to raise their son as a daughter.
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Radio review: Case Study
David Reimer was born a boy, but in a disastrous experiment of gender assignment, was raised as a girl
o Elisabeth Mahoney
o The Guardian, Thursday 19 August 2010
http://www.guardian.co.uk/tv-and-radio/2010/aug/19/case-study-david-reimer-genderThere was a big "eek" moment at the start of Case Study (Radio 4). We heard from the mother of the programme's subject – David Reimer, born a boy but raised as a girl – about the medical catastrophe that led to a disastrous experiment of gender reassignment.
She remembered the call from the hospital where her twin baby sons were due to be circumcised. The first procedure had been a disaster. "The penis had been burned off," she said. Eek. Her speech was slow, slurred almost, and sounded haunted by what she had endured, allowed, in the years that followed. And little wonder: one twin, who continued as a boy, died of a drugs overdose, and Reimer (pictured) killed himself in 2004.
