Boy raised as a girl suffered final indignity

Globe and Mail ^ | 05/11/2004 | GRAEME SMITH

[kaylar]

WINNIPEG -- Most of David Reimer's tragedies have been well-documented: how his penis was burned off during a botched circumcision, how doctors tried surgery and hormones to make him a girl and how the experiment went horribly wrong.

But only his friends knew the 38-year-old Winnipegger was agonizing over yet another personal catastrophe in the months before he committed suicide last week.

Mr. Reimer was distraught after losing at least $65,000 in an investment scheme last year, friends say. "He was crying on my shoulder, because he said they're not worth the paper they're written on," one said.

The Manitoba Securities Commission issued a warning in November about Gary Perch, who ran the shop where Mr. Reimer worked.

"Gary Perch has been soliciting money from the public to invest in his Winnipeg-based pro golf shop," the statement said. "If you have invested your money with him, your money may be at risk."

Mr. Reimer's wife recently hired a lawyer to recover about $65,000 that seems to have gone missing, said author John Colapinto, whose book about Mr. Reimer's bizarre medical ordeal made him famous.

"What an absolute horror," Mr. Colapinto said. "One has to wonder if this didn't contribute to his despair."

Mr. Colapinto had believed that Mr. Reimer was financially comfortable, because he gave him half the proceeds from his book As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised A Girl.

"David made a wad of money on the book and movie options," Mr. Colapinto said.

But people who knew Mr. Reimer from his days at the Transcona Golf Club in the eastern suburbs of Winnipeg said the boyish handyman was often short of cash.

The club kept him busy washing windows, changing light bulbs and scrubbing the bathrooms, they said, but he often talked about hunting for a weekend job to supplement his income.

"He didn't have money to feed the family," said Brian Andrews, a member of the golf club's board of directors.

"So what the members did was we put together $800, I think it was, for food."

Mary Mogg, 64, remembers giving him leftovers after she finished her shift at the clubhouse.

"He'd have a pot of soup if we made it, and at the end of the day he'd take it home," she said. "I think he appreciated it."

The indignity of poverty was just one of many cruelties Mr. Reimer endured.

The trouble started eight months after he was born in 1965, when he went for a routine circumcision at a hospital in Winnipeg.

The regular surgeon wasn't available that day, so a general practitioner tried the operation herself. Something went wrong while she was using an electric cauterizing machine, which produced a puff of smoke around Mr. Reimer's genitals.

"I heard a sound," said a witness quoted in Mr. Colapinto's book, "just like steak being seared."

The boy's penis was so badly burned that it dried up and fell off. His family eventually asked for advice from John Money, a well-known sex researcher at Johns Hopkins University hospital in Baltimore, Md.

Dr. Money had theorized that gender depends on how a child grows up rather than genetic coding, and the burned child with a twin brother offered a chance to prove it.

The doctor oversaw a series of procedures that cut away the boy's remaining genitalia and gave him female hormones. His parents started calling him Brenda.

But Mr. Reimer never felt comfortable being female, and when he learned about the accident at age 15 he rebelled against the experiment and began acting like a young man.

He renamed himself David, after the Bible story, and began more surgery to remove his breasts and create an artificial penis from muscle and cartilage.

For years, he quietly tried to live a normal life in Winnipeg. He worked a series of menial jobs and got married to a woman named Jane.

His hobbies included fishing, camping, antiques and collecting old coins.

"He absolutely loved Elvis," his eulogy stated.

When he went public with his story in the mid-90s, it forced sexologists to re-evaluate their practices, said Ken Zucker, psychologist-in-chief at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto.

"His legacy is that his case has encouraged a lot more research," Dr. Zucker said.

Mr. Reimer committed suicide May 4. His family has not released the cause of death.

At his funeral yesterday, his father, Ron, just shook his head when asked whether he wanted to talk. His mother, Janet, leaned forward with tears in her eyes and whispered: "He was a hero. He showed the doctors. He was a worldwide hero."

[kaylar]

I assume they mean they aren't releasing the means he used-shotgun, overdose,or other method. Apparently his brother overdosed two years ago on the drugs he took to deal with his schizoprenia, and there is good reason to believe it was not an accidental overdose. RIP David and Brian Reimer. :-(

[SoCal Pubbie]

"this is a systematic form of abuse that needs to end."

That is a ridiculous statement and leads me to discount anything you write on the subject.

[RipSawyer]

It may not be necessary that you be wrong but you are nonetheless WRONG! I will never lighten up on this question!

[Ignatz]

I think circumcision is a barbarian practice

The procedure was performed on me shortly after birth, and I couldn't walk for nearly a year!

[cyborg]

hehehe

[RipSawyer]

"Genesis 17:11
You are to undergo circumcision, and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you."

What if it said you are to have the tip of your nose cut off flat? Wouldn't that be more readily noticeable as a sign of a covenant? Would you still defend it? What if I start a cult tomorrow and swear that God commanded me to have all the little boys big toes cut off?

You may have guessed by now that I refuse to believe that my creator actually demanded this practice, regardless of what someone may have written thousands of years ago.

[RipSawyer]

It was NOT performed on me, and I walked by the age of ten months. So there ;0)

[cyborg]

Even if a person cites religious texts for validating circumcision, unless one is a Jew then why is everyone else having this procedure done? Reigious Jews and Muslims have been practicising this for thousands of years.

[RipSawyer]

You pose an interesting question, I suspect that the answer lies in the all too common willingness to insist that "my religion is revealed by God and all others are false". Seems that all too few are ever able to realize that the other fellow feels the same way about his religion. I have a hard time understanding this because I have never felt that God was telling me that I should condemn everyone who believes differently than I do. I suppose something must be lacking in my makeup and I am sure that there are plenty on this forum who will rush to tell me that I am right about that. Oh, well, one of the benefits of being a Rip Sawyer is having a thick skin.

[cyborg]

I don't really care if Jews and Muslims practice circumcision. It's the majority of the population that does it so the little boy could 'look just like daddy' that makes me wonder.

[VOA]

bump

[Bloody Sam Roberts]

Such tragedy and suffering. We should all look at our own blessings and thank the Lord for every sunrise given to us.

[RipSawyer]

On second thought I realized that I had probably responded to the question you did NOT ask. Let me try to respond to your real question. Somewhere along the way it became the prevailing view that there was some medical reason for the practice when, in reality, there is none. It is as if all infants had their appendix removed to prevent appendicitis, actually that might make more sense as the appendix is possibly a less useful organ than the foreskin.
As you have probably observed, once something becomes a tradition it is harder to change than something that is actually mandated by civil law, it requires real courage to stand up against it. As for looking like Daddy, it would require real courage to try to explain to your son that you were mutilated out of ignorance but you refused to allow the same to be done to him.
As for the religious covenant, it could not possibly be a sign of a covenant made by the infant who is far too young and helpless to make any covenant. When people start having this done of their own volition at an age when they are able to understand it, then I will take their covenant seriously, until then it is a convenient excuse for child abuse.

[kaylar]

I hope this is just an antiJewish canard, but I've heard tales that the routine circumcision of American men was begun at the behest of a few influential Jewish doctors, who stated publicly that it was an aid to hygiene and a good antimasturbation remedy. Privately, they admitted to trusted friends and associates that they wanted to make it impossible to distinguish Jews and gentiles physically, in case pogroms ever started up in the USA! Seems a little farfetched , but so goes the story. I believe that routine circumcision began in the late 19th century as a means of (supposedly) preventing masturbation, which people back then thought to blame for a variety of physical and mental ailments.

[John O]

Somewhere along the way it became the prevailing view that there was some medical reason for the practice when, in reality, there is none

From cyborgs linked article:

Pollock cites medical research that shows circumcision virtually eliminates the risk of penile cancer, reduces the risk of urinary tract infection 12-fold and reduces sexual dysfunction later in life in older men. It also reduces the transmission of diseases to female partners.

‘They Resent Their Parents’

Perhaps the most significant research is that of Dr. Stephen Moses in Winnipeg, Manitoba, who says a male who is circumcised is up to 9.6 times less likely to contract AIDS.

Looks like science says there is a reason.

If you don't want your kids circumcised then don't have it done.

[valkyrieanne]

You know of TWO boys who suffered this !?!?! It must be far more common than people realize-though hopefully a case as extreme as David's-total loss of the penis-is rare, at least.

Both women I knew had their sons routinely circumcised by an ob/gyn right after birth. Both times the doctors took off too much of the foreskin, and the boys were heavily scarred, so that it caused twisting of the organ. One had reconstructive surgery done on her son when the boy was about two years old; I lost track of the other lady and don't know what happened to her son.

I didn't want to give the impression the boys *lost* their male organs.

Later, a urologist told me that it is not all that rare for OBs to take too much of the skin. He didn't go into detail, but apparently it's because of the difference in the way ob/gyns do the surgery right after birth, vs. the way urologists do it.

[valkyrieanne]

You know of TWO boys who suffered this !?!?! It must be far more common than people realize-though hopefully a case as extreme as David's-total loss of the penis-is rare, at least.

Both women I knew had their sons routinely circumcised by an ob/gyn right after birth. Both times the doctors took off too much of the foreskin, and the boys were heavily scarred, so that it caused twisting of the organ. One had reconstructive surgery done on her son when the boy was about two years old; I lost track of the other lady and don't know what happened to her son.

I didn't want to give the impression the boys *lost* their male organs.

Later, a urologist told me that it is not all that rare for OBs to take too much of the skin. He didn't go into detail, but apparently it's because of the difference in the way ob/gyns do the surgery right after birth, vs. the way urologists do it.

[68 grunt]

... a urologist told me that it is not all that rare for OBs to take too much of the skin ...

A little known fact, in most chop jobs take more skin is taken than is left. Circumcision is a bizarre, archaic and barbaric ritual which should stop.

[RipSawyer]

I don't usually bother responding to such flawed reason but I have strong convictions on this one.

1. Even if it virtually eliminates penile cancer, so what? Penile cancer is so prevalent I have never known of a case of it. This is patently absurd as a justification.

2. It is impossible to reduce anything 12 fold. You can increase it 12 fold but you cannot reduce it 12 fold, if you reduce it 1 fold it is gone completely, this is mathematically impossible.

3. Reducing sexual disfunction later in life for older men is justification for mutilating the sex organs of infant boys? Other studies show that it reduces the sexual sensitivity of young men, I suppose that is justified because it somehow helps out when you are older? By the way I am about to turn 60, am uncircumcised and I don't seem to have any problem.

4. Reduces transmission of disease to females? I fail to see how this could be possible unless uncircumcised males fail to clean themselves properly. Failure to properly clean an organ in the future is no justification for prior removal of said organ.

5. Another mathematical impossibility, nothing is 9.6 times less likely. If it is 1 time less likely then it has become impossible.

6. "Looks like science says there is a reason". So far you have utterly failed to do anything other than make me more convinced.

[RipSawyer]

"Circumcision is a bizarre, archaic and barbaric ritual which should stop."

Thank you, I could not possibly agree more with your brief, clear and concise statement. Please read my post no. 59 in response to John O.