My first post for Genspect is up, exploring the tragic case of David Reimer and its dark resonances with gender medicine today:
… critics within the field were gaining ground. One of the more responsible physicians featured in Colapinto’s account is Dr. William Reiner, who opposed Money’s approach “in which a sexual identity is imposed on a child through unshakable fiat of physicians, and any doubts or confusions the child may express about the assignment are denied by the caregivers.” In contrast, Reiner argues that medical providers “have to learn to listen to the children themselves… They’re the ones who are going to tell us what is the right thing to do”—a sentiment he echoed in a 2005 interview with the New York Times: “When you hear someone declare with such clarity that they know themselves far better than the experts, it is life changing.”
But today these impassioned arguments against medically unnecessary interventions have been turned upside-down, deployed to argue for experimental medical interventions instead and applied to a wider population of children and young people than ever before. Medical providers then and now talk about following their young patients’ lead. This is one thing in the context of attempting to avoid unnecessary medical interventions and quite another today, when “listening” to young patients is more likely to accelerate interventions than forestall them.
In the 1970s, John Money had to recruit patients one by one, keeping an eye out for medical oddities like David. Now the culture recruits kids into medical experiments around sex and gender. In fact, we’re casting a wider net than ever—targeting not just children with disorders of sexual development or children who’ve suffered terrible accidents but developmentally normal, physically healthy children who’ve been indoctrinated into a fantastical set of beliefs about sex and gender.
The parallels with gender ‘medicine’ today are chilling. There’s the same drive to satisfy adult curiosity about identity development and to test the powers of endocrinologists, surgeons, and psychosocial interventions that include a prohibition on naming uncomfortable realities, no matter how much this confuses and harms children. There are sunk costs and terrible silences and broken families and academic theories permanently inscribed on tender flesh.
Read the rest here.
I wanted to send another reminder about our first book club meetup. You can find out more about our first book (Anne Harrington’s Mind-Fixers) and vote on a date/time to meet up on Zoom here. (Doodle should adjust automatically to your time zone—check the display time zone above the calendar.) I’ve added some new dates between September 14-24, since we weren’t finding a hit earlier in the month. As we’re trying to bridge several time zones, the best bet is a time that’s late evening in UK, early evening east coast, mid-afternoon west coast. We’ll settle on a time and then I’ll create an open thread for book conversations.
Heartbreaking. Adulthood can be spent grieving a painful childhood while trying desperately to figure out why we were treated the way we were. When parents and other adults don't take responsibility for their mistakes, children blame themselves and, as some of us may know, blaming oneself for being treated poorly can become unbearable. I can't articulate how damaging denial and gaslighting in childhood can be. It weighs heavy upon me how many children are used to satisfy adult needs and will bear the scars of that the rest of their lives. I don't think it's hopeless and I have witnessed people heal but I wouldn't wish that experience on anyone. It's one of the reasons I still believe it's incredibly important for adults to examine their own wounds and learn to care for themselves so they don't pass on their wounds to their children or make children responsible for healing their parents.
I think medicalizing children and psychologically manipulating them places an unbearable burden on children's shoulders and while some will "adjust" and pass on their wounding to more children, completely unaware of what they're doing or the harm they're causing, others will live with a sense of "wrongness" that haunts them. If I could say anything to the adults doing this to children, I'd say "Before you rush to 'fix' your kid, heal yourself first."
that poem!