John Money

John Money - Quick Facts

Profile Overview of John Money

John William Money (8 July 1921 – 7 July 2006) was a New Zealand American psychologist, sexologist and professor at Johns Hopkins University known for his research on human sexual behavior and gender.

This profile of John Money covers Early Life and Family Background, Career and Rise to Fame, Sex offenders, Sex reassignment of David Reimer and Transgender people and the Johns Hopkins gender clinic.

Money researched paraphilia, including pedophilia, and pioneered the use of drug treatment to extinguish the libido of sex offenders. He advanced the use of new terminology in sex research, coining the terms gender role and sexual orientation. Despite popular belief, Money did not coin the term gender identity.

Money was a proponent of genital surgeries for children with intersex conditions, based on his belief that gender was malleable during the first two years of life and that raising a child outside the male–female binary was harmful. The practice proved controversial when many intersex people later rejected the gender assigned to them. Money also applied the protocol to David Reimer, who lost his penis in a botched circumcision, and advised his parents to raise him as a girl. Reimer struggled to adapt, exhibiting masculine behavior in childhood, and reverted to living as a male when he became aware of the treatment. He later died by suicide following his twin brother's suicide.

Money believed that transgender people had an idée fixe, and established the Johns Hopkins Gender Identity Clinic in 1965. Money screened adult patients for two years prior to granting them a medical transition, and believed sex roles should be de-stereotyped, so that masculine women would be less likely to desire transition. His views have been criticized by transgender scholars and activists.

Today, Money is a subject of academic scrutiny among psychologists, ethicists, and intersex rights activists for his handling of the Reimer case, and his views continue to generate significant controversy. Money was defended by his colleague Richard Green, who believed Money aimed to help rather than "experiment" on Reimer, and operated under accepted medical knowledge of the time. Money's writing has been translated into many languages and includes around 2,000 articles, books, chapters and reviews. He received around 65 honors, awards and degrees in his lifetime.

Early Life and Family Background of John Money

Money was born in Morrinsville, New Zealand, to a Christian fundamentalist family of English and Welsh descent. His parents were members of the Plymouth Brethren Christian Church. He attended Hutt Valley High School and initially studied psychology at Victoria University of Wellington, graduating with a double master's degree in psychology and education in 1944. He was a junior member of the psychology faculty at the University of Otago in Dunedin.

Author Janet Frame attended some of Money's classes at the University of Otago, as part of her teacher training. Frame was attracted to Money, and eager to please him. In October 1945, after Frame wrote an essay mentioning her thoughts of suicide, Money convinced Frame to enter the psychiatric ward at Dunedin Hospital, where she was misdiagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia. Frame then spent eight years in psychiatric institutions, during which she was subjected to electroshock and insulin shock therapy. Frame narrowly missed being lobotomized. In Frame's autobiography, An Angel at My Table, Money is referred to as John Forrest.

Career and Rise to Fame of John Money

In 1947, at the age of 26, Money emigrated to the United States to study at the Psychiatric Institute of the University of Pittsburgh. In 1948, he became a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, and earned his PhD in 1952.

Money became a professor of pediatrics and medical psychology at Johns Hopkins University, where he worked from 1952 until his death.

Money proposed and developed several theories related to the topics of gender identity and gender roles, and coined terms like gender role and lovemap. He popularized the term paraphilia (appearing in the DSM-III, which would later replace perversions) and introduced the term sexual orientation in place of sexual preference, arguing that attraction is not necessarily a matter of free choice. Although often misattributed to him, Money did not coin the term 'gender identity'.

In 1960 and 1961, he co-authored two papers with Richard Green. Believing that gender identity was malleable within the first two years of life, Money advocated for the surgical "normalization" of the genitalia of intersex infants.

Sex offenders

Money pioneered the use of drug treatment for sex offenders to extinguish their sex drives. According to a 1987 paper, he employed the drug Depo-Provera (medroxyprogesterone acetate) for use on sex offenders at Johns Hopkins beginning in 1966. The practice later spread in the United States and Europe.

Sex reassignment of David Reimer

In 1966, a botched circumcision left eight-month-old Reimer without a penis. Money persuaded the baby's parents that sex reassignment surgery would be in Reimer's best interest. At the age of 22 months, Reimer underwent an orchiectomy, in which his testicles were surgically removed. He was reassigned to be raised as female and his name changed from Bruce to Brenda. Money further recommended hormone treatment, to which the parents agreed. Money then recommended a surgical procedure to create an artificial vagina, which the parents refused. Money published several papers reporting the reassignment as successful. David Reimer was raised under the "optimum gender rearing model" which was the common model for sex and gender socialization/medicalization for intersex youth. The model was heavily criticized for being sexist, and for assigning an arbitrary gender binary.

According to John Colapinto's biography of David Reimer, when Reimer and his twin Brian were six years old, Money showed the brothers pornography and instructed the two to rehearse sexual acts. Money instructed David position himself on all fours, and Brian was told to "come up behind and place his crotch against buttocks". Money also forced Reimer, in another sexual position, to have his "legs spread" with Brian on top. Reimer alleged that on "at least one occasion" Money took a photograph of the two children performing these acts. Colapinto speculated that Money's rationale for his treatment of the children was his belief that "childhood 'sexual rehearsal play' at thrusting movements and copulation" was important for a "healthy adult gender identity". Money was reportedly angered when they resisted. The Reimers recalled that Money was mild-mannered around their parents, but ill-tempered when alone with them. They also alleged that Money made the two children undergo "genital inspections"; when they resisted inspecting each other's genitals, Money got aggressive. Reimer says, "He told me to take my clothes off, and I just did not do it. I just stood there. And he screamed, 'Now!' Louder than that. I thought he was going to give me a whupping. So I took my clothes off and stood there shaking."

At 14 years old and in extreme psychological agony, David Reimer was told the truth by his parents. He chose to begin calling himself David, and he underwent surgical procedures to revert the feminising bodily modifications.

Source: adapted from Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money), text available under CC BY-SA 4.0.