The thing is, this story you mention isn’t a situation of trans health care; this is a situation of actual child abuse. The parents literally forced a gender identity onto their child who seems to have otherwise been cisgender. It’s not all that different from what conservative parents will often do with their actual trans children.

If anything, this story shows the harms that come by denying gender-affirming care to children. That child was not a girl, and denying him of his identity caused irreparable damage. All because the parents were too scared to tell their child that the doctor fucked up the circumcision.

An experiment was performed on an unknowing child by raising him as a girl, following his botched circumcision, with disastrous results.

How is this relevant to the issue of transgender health care? Sounds like a pretty good study of why infant circumcision is bad but it doesn’t seem like an example of trans health care causing harm.

This is not a pioneering study done in the field, jfc. This isn’t a transgender story, this is a story of abuse. Did you read the article? Did you do any research into this at all? Did you at least read his biography? Because I have. To summarize: David was born a cisgendered man whose doctors botched his circumcision so badly he needed reconstructive surgery. His parents consulted a sexologist they saw on TV (the now disgraced John Money), and he convinced the parents to give David a sex change. Not for David’s benefit mind you, but because the sexologist wanted to make a name for himself based on his theories on gender being easily malleable (and he briefly did, until the truth came out). A lot of gross messed up stuff happened, like the sexologist would make David roleplay sex with his twin brother I shit you not. He would make them watch hetero porn with him. And then he would make them get into sexual positions and make them playact sex together. He also took photos (and I think video) of these two children simulating sex.

So to summarize real quick, the pedo-sexologist who committed acts of psychological, medical and sexual abuse on these children, is your “pioneering study” guy. Let me guess, you thought that John Money was a success and that he proved his theory that gender identity is easily manipulated? I’ve seen this exact anti-trans disinformation twist before, along with thinking David was trans (he wasn’t) and pointing out David’s “trans suicide”. You should be more suspicious of your sources for information. By the 90s we already knew John Moneys work with David was useless. And the disinfo machine loves to leave out a very important fact: Davids brother Brian killed himself two years before David took his own life. I guess the suicide of the depressed cisgendered brother who never transitioned muddies the trans-suicide agenda being pushed.

Whenever I see his story pop up, the terfs (and the unfortunately misinformed) end up erroneously thinking this is a story of a trans kid who killed themself. Disinfo will say this story proves that you can manipulate someone into believing they’re a different gender then they know themselves to be. And look! Disinfo swears theres reputable science papers by John Money to back this up! ha.

David was a straight, cisgendered man. His story is not a transgender story. It’s many other things; a story of child abuse, medical abuse, psychological abuse and sexual abuse. It’s the a story of a cisgendered person experiencing gender dysphoria and not understanding why. To me, what his story really shows us is that a persons personal sense of gender is an innate and pervasive thing; a complex combination of mind and body that persists; no matter how much abuse you throw at it. Because even though David was raised to believe he was a woman; had his role as a woman constantly being reinforced by his entire world, had everyone in his life telling him he was a woman, he still knew he was a man and deeply struggled to understand why he felt that way.

further reading/citations:

the 1997 medical paper & review of Moneys work that, along with Davids testimony, began to shed light on this: http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1997-sex-reassignment.html

Davids biography: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl by John Colapinto

a more detailed and damning article from 2017: https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/david-reimer-and-john-money-gender-reassignment-controversy-johnjoan-case

a very disturbing amount of detail of what happened for those that can handle it: https://www.simplypsychology.org/david-reimer.html

and finally wikipedia for those that hate fancy links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money#Sex_reassignment_of_David_Reimer

Of course there are individuals who regret it. There are individuals who regret any decision one can possibly make in life. But it’s worth noting that, statistically, the regret rates for gender affirming surgeries are among the lowest of any medical intervention done anywhere in the world, by a large margin.

I know you’ve heard their stories, because there are people with very specific agendas who are dedicated to weaponizing their stories. But it’s useful to remember that the plural of “anecdote” is not “data”.

I have seen so many talks by and interviews with people who claim to have deconverted from evolution. They all claim pretty similar stuff. Sometimes eeriely similar. Often they talk about being angry. Then they’ll go on to claim that they directed that anger at god, that that was why they bought into the ‘lie’ of evolution and that all atheiests are just like they were, angry at god. It’s funny how closely what they talk about resembles the strawman young earth creationists believe about atheiests and secularists and all those things those people wish where true about us.

I find this very strange because with such large numbers involved on both sides there should , purely statisticly speaking, be a reasonably decent pool of converts each way just down to chance and circumstance. Yet they keep resorting to pushing people who don’t remotely understand the mindset of the groups they claimed they once were part of. Despite that they keep troting them out like they’re a prized bull.

I have seen incel channels full of interviews with random people on the street where they were pushing a narrative of rampent misandry. Interview after interview of women chippily admiting to very hateful stuff about men on camera without an ounce of shame. But of course they wouldn’t have shame they were answering very carefully crafted hypotheticals that they thought were asked in good faith. A few decptive edits to remove their reasonable response’s context and all of a sudden the incels have justification for their anger. The interviews get shared around and around by people who have already decided where they stand but want vindication for their bigotry. ‘Look how common that hate for men is’ they cry, clearly showing how rarely they talk to other people.

I have listened to talks by people who have claimed to have seen the edge of the world or have claimed to have the alien corpses kept at Roswell. I have read statements by someone claiming that they went to a cancer ward, convinced the doctors to inject all the patients with their essential oils which cured everyone of their cancer. I have listened to interviews with anti vaxers claiming to have personally seen wards full of ‘vaccine causalties’ that’s being covered up somehow.

Have some people switched from accepting evolution to young earth creationism? It has to have happened at some point. Are their some misandrists out there? There has to be. Are they anywhere near as prevelant as either of those two groups pretend? Absolutely not. They have a vested interest in pushing the idea that both those things are far more common than they are. Interviews are just ancedotes and no matter how many ancedotes you horde they will never coalesce into evidence.

Do some transgender people regret transitioning? It has to have happened at least once just based off numbers alone Are there a lot? No there aren’t. To an actually surprising degree. But that surprising degree shouldn’t actually be that surprsining; You see before all the irreversible medical procedures there is a bunch of indepth psychological evaluations aimed at filtering out people who would regret it later. We’ve actually gotten pretty good at that. Not that it’s that hard there tends to be some strong and obvious indicators. So I will pose a hypothetical of my own; Even if there was a lot of regretful trangender folk is the answer to ban trans health care altogether or invest in better evaluations and better understanding of it?