In the summer of 1965 at a hospital in Winnipeg in Canada, Janet Reimer gave birth to identical twins, Bruce and Brian.

A  few  months  after  birth,  both  twins  developed  urinary  difficulties  which  is  why doctors recommended doing a circumcision in order to solve the problem, a practice still common in North America, but the operation turned disastrous for Bruce. By then, the medical team had used an unconventional technique of cauterization with an electric burning device that accidentally destroyed Bruce's penis with no possibility that it could be surgically reconstructed.

During the following months, the Reimer family consulted with numerous medical specialists, but none offered them hope, Bruce seemed to be doomed to live the rest of his life lacking the male genital organ.

One night, the Reimers learned of a psychologist John Money of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, who was convinced that children could be educated to become girls, this psychologist defended the idea that it was education and the surrounding environment which determines the gender identity of children, rather than default prenatal biological factors. Money claimed that everyone is born gender-neutral and it take’s direction and shape as we grow towards the identity of woman or man. Money believed that gender roles are social configurations.

Amid the desperation for wanting to help his son, the Reimers decided to have a consultation with John Money in Baltimore, in the absence of better alternatives offered by other doctors who they had previously consulted.

Bruce  was  the  perfect  candidate  to  John  Money  he  would  confirm  his  theories  on  the development of gender identity,  and  immediately  agreed  to  take  care  of  the  child.  Money persuaded his parents to allow Bruce to have sex reassignment surgery, at the age of 21 months Bruce was admitted to a clinic in which the testes were removed but a vagina was not created, his parents were instructed Bruce to be told he was female and to refer to him as Brenda.

Parents were given strict instructions by Money, that they do not speak to anyone about it, that no one speak the truth to the child about what happened, and above all, that he should never know he was not a girl.

Janet Reimer did everything she could to raise Bruce as a female, dressed him like a female, treated him like a female, taught him how to apply make up like women behave, and so on. At the same time, "Brenda" was to go once a year to receive therapy from Money in the company of his twin brother, in order to keep track of the "therapy" applied to the little child.

Years later John Money published an article asserting that the experiment carried out with "Brenda" had been a resounding success, "the child's behavior is so distinctly feminine like a little girl of her age, which differs completely different from behavior of his twin brother Brian". The case became widely known in medical circles worldwide as the "John / Joan Case." The full report of the case in his book Man & Woman, Boy & Girl (John Money, 1972) was influential in the current medical treatment at the time.

However, John Money had concealed and misrepresented many facts, refusing to acknowledge the evidence that everything had gone wrong from the start. Bruce hated dressing like a girl, tore his clothes, never managed to learn to walk like a girl, always walked like a male, he hated long hair, broke all the dolls that would be given to him and did not like to do any of the activities of biological females.

Bruce's experiences at school were horrible, he was constantly treated like a freak, insulted and humiliated, in the words of a former classmate: "Brenda was seen as a freak, an androgynous, was receiving all sorts of insults daily from classmates, unlike us who would gather in groups and discuss with the boys but never wish to fight with them, Brenda would argue with them and used to leave school with scratches and wounds of those fights held with the other boys."

In the words of his own twin brother, Brian: "the only difference between my brother Bruce and me is that he had long hair while mine was short. In everything else we were equal."

Every time Bruce (Brenda) attended therapy sessions with Money, he would be exposed to sexually explicit images, for Money he considered it a critical part of the "therapy", according to Money's theories on sex reassignment. Bruce recounted years later: "Money would yell at me, he told me to take my clothes off and I did not want. I stayed still, and he was screaming: I was scared to get beaten up so I ended naked and stayed still, trembling with panic."

Among the darkest memories of the child, after years of complete inability to talk about it, is the fact that Money would "get he and his brother on all fours on the sofa in his office, forcing his brother Brian to stand behind him. His crotch would rub Brenda's backside which Money called "sexual arousal".

Brenda's mother, Janet said: "I tried to do everything I could with all my efforts to convince Brenda he was female but that did not happen, it was impossible, he always felt a boy."

Bruce (Brenda) was subjected to hormonal medication with estrogen until puberty despite serious doubts by his parents about the success of this treatment. By early adolescence, Brenda began to develop a male voice, broad shoulders and neck muscles and a marked male attractive look, nonetheless Money pressured the family for to have a surgical intervention to create a vagina for Brenda.

But Bruce revealed in protest to that decision saying he did not need surgery and threatened with suicide if he was again forced to travel to Baltimore for consultation with Money. At that time Bruce had already attempted suicide three times, his last attempt with an overdose of pills had left him in a coma.

That was when his father decided to tell the truth about everything that had happened since he was born. At that time, Bruce was 15 and reacted with anger toward the doctor who had destroyed his genitals when he was a baby and his only thoughts were to go back to the hospital and seek the doctor and shoot him in the head , which he never finished, internalizing his anger causing deep and constant depression.

Bruce immediately started referring himself as a boy, discontinued using the name Brenda and adopted a new name, David. He cut his hair and began to dress and behave like a male again, undergoing a mastectomy to remove the breasts that had been developed with the hormonal medication before and swore never again see John Money.

Dr. Milton Diamond, professor of anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawaii, was interested in this case since the publication of the first report of Money in his book in 1972, but his requests for information were continually rejected by the team of Money,  though  he  managed  to  contact  a  psychiatrist  who  had  treated  Bruce  in  previous  years,  Dr.  Keith Sigmundson, who eventually was persuaded by Diamond to tell the whole truth about how the process had developed confessing he and Money had distorted all the facts of the case, and finally exposing the reality of the process in an article published by both Diamond and Sigmundson in 1997 in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine.

Milton Diamond managed to contact David and make him see how important it was that his case became public to prevent what happened to him to never be repeated with other children. David agreed and in 2000 the author John Colapinto published his true story in the book As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl. It was a whirlwind of media exposure the case of David through the United States and Canada.

While that coincided with the publication by the Johns Hopkins Children's Center of two studies that concluded that there is prenatal exposure to male hormones which makes babies develop a masculine identity and physically as boys. These studies seriously questioned the practice of reassigning babies as girls, involving the collapse of the gender theory built by education or the environment.

The case of David Reimer reached such an impact in the medical community that dramatically accelerated the decline of the practice of these sexual reassignment surgeries in infants with genital malformations of all kinds over the past decade, including cases of total loss of sexual organ in childhood.

While this failure of John Money has broken down completely the theory that gender identity is formed through education and learning, or can be configured socially.

David managed to rebuild his genitals through several surgeries and marry and be the adoptive father of three children. Possessed the financial security that he had made by sales of the book published by John Colapinto who handed him fifty percent of the proceeds. Had managed to find some serenity, peace and stability with himself and his life, or at least it seemed.

His brother Brian had died of an overdose of antidepressants a few years earlier, he suffered from schizophrenia and could never lead a normal life because of the disease. The loss of his brother deeply affected David, who never stopped regularly visiting the place where his brother had been buried to leave him flowers and notes.

David went on with his life as best as he could, despite the loss of his brother and other negative events that affected him at the time, such as the loss of his job or the loss of a major financial investment. But it was the request for separation from his wife that he could not bear.

The same day his wife asked him for the separation, David went to a parking lot near where he lived and shot himself in the head inside his car. His body was found two days later.

David Reimer committed suicide on May 4, 2004, at the age of 38 years.

"My mother and my father wanted this therapy worked for me could be happy. It's what every parent wants for their children. But I could not be happy for my parents. I had to be myself. You can not be someone you are not.
You have to be yourself. "

- David Reimer