David Reimer was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba. He was originally named Bruce, and his identical twin was named Brian. At the age of six months, after concern was raised about how both of them urinated, the boys were diagnosed with phimosis. They were referred for circumcision at the age of seven months. On April 27, 1966, a urologist performed the operation using the unconventional method of cauterization, but the procedure did not go as doctors had planned, and Bruce’s penis was burned beyond surgical repair. The doctors chose not to operate on Brian, whose phimosis soon cleared without surgical intervention. The parents, concerned about their son’s prospects for future happiness and sexual function without a penis, took him to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore in early 1967 to see John Money, a psychologist who was developing a reputation as a pioneer in the field of sexual development and gender identity, based on his work with intersex patients. Money was a prominent proponent of the “theory of Gender Neutrality”—that gender identity developed primarily as a result of social learning from early childhood and that it could be changed with the appropriate behavioral interventions. The Reimers had seen Money being interviewed in February 1967 on the Canadian news program This Hour Has Seven Days, during which he discussed his theories about gender. Money and physicians working with young children born with atypical genitalia believed that a penis could not be replaced but that a functional vagina could be constructed surgically. It was also the safest and most conventional pathway to take: Money told the parents it was what would be best for the boy.  Money claimed that David Reimer would be more likely to achieve successful, functional sexual maturation as a girl than as a boy. For Money, a case where identical twin boys were involved where one could be raised as a girl provided a perfect test of his theories.

Money and the Hopkins team persuaded the baby’s parents that sex reassignment surgery would be in David Reimer’s best interest. At the age of 22 months, baby Bruce underwent a bilateral orchidectomy, in which his testes were surgically removed and a rudimentary vulva was fashioned. Bruce was reassigned to be raised as female and given the name Brenda. Psychological support for the reassignment and surgery was provided by John Money, who continued to see Reimer annually for about a decade for consultations and to assess the outcome. This reassignment was considered an especially valid test case of the social learning concept of gender identity for two reasons: First, Reimer’s identical twin brother, Brian, made an ideal control because the brothers shared genes, family environments, and the intrauterine environment. Second, this was reputed to be the first reassignment and reconstruction performed on a male infant who had no abnormality of prenatal or early postnatal sexual differentiation. David Reimer said that Money forced the twins to rehearse sexual acts involving “thrusting movements”, with David playing the bottom role. Reimer said that, as a child, he had to get “down on all fours” with his brother, Brian Reimer, “up behind his butt” with “his crotch against” his “buttocks”. Reimer said that Money forced David, in another sexual position, to have his “legs spread” with Brian on top. Reimer said that Money also forced the children to take their “clothes off” and engage in “genital inspections”. On at “least one occasion”, Reimer said that Money took a photograph of the two children doing these activities. Money’s rationale for these various treatments was his belief that “childhood ‘sexual rehearsal play'” was important for a “healthy adult gender identity”.

For several years, Money reported on David Reimer’s progress as the “John/Joan case”, describing apparently successful female gender development and using this case to support the feasibility of sex reassignment and surgical reconstruction even in non-intersex cases. Money wrote, “The child’s behavior is so clearly that of an active little girl and so different from the boyish ways of her twin brother.” Notes by a former student at Money’s lab state that, during the follow-up visits, which occurred only once a year, Reimer’s parents routinely lied to lab staff about the success of the procedure. The twin brother, Brian, later developed schizophrenia. David Reimer had experienced the visits to Baltimore as traumatic rather than therapeutic, and when Money started pressuring the family to bring him in for surgery during which a vagina would be constructed, the family discontinued the follow-up visits. From 22 months into his teenaged years, Reimer urinated through a hole that surgeons had placed in the abdomen. Estrogen was given during adolescence to induce breast development. His case came to international attention in 1997 when he told his story to Milton Diamond, an academic sexologist who persuaded Reimer to allow him to report the outcome in order to dissuade physicians from treating other infants similarly. Soon after, Reimer went public with his story, and John Colapinto published a widely disseminated and influential account in Rolling Stone magazine in December 1997.

This was later expanded into a full-length book As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, in which Colapinto described how—contrary to Money’s reports—when living as Brenda, David Reimer did not identify as a girl. He was ostracized and bullied by peers (who dubbed him “cavewoman”), and neither frilly dresses (which he was forced to wear during frigid Winnipeg winters), nor female hormones made him feel female. By the age of 13, Reimer was experiencing suicidal depression, and he told his parents he would take his own life if they made him see John Money again. Finally, on March 14, 1980, Reimer’s parents told him the truth about his gender reassignment, following advice from Reimer’s endocrinologist and psychiatrist. At 14, having been informed of his past by his father, Reimer decided to assume a male gender identity, calling himself David. By 1987, Reimer had undergone treatment to reverse the reassignment, including testosterone injections, a double mastectomy, and two phalloplasty operations. On September 22, 1990, he married Jane Fontaine and adopted her three children. In addition to his difficult lifelong relationship with his parents, Reimer had to deal with unemployment and the death of his brother Brian from an overdose of antidepressants on July 1, 2002. On May 2, 2004, his wife Jane told him she wanted to separate. On the morning of May 4, 2004, Reimer drove to a grocery store’s parking lot in his hometown of Winnipeg and took his own life by shooting himself in the head with a sawed-off shotgun. He was 38 years old.