Editing Gender identity (section)

==== Case of David Reimer and contrasting case ====
{{further|Nature versus nurture}}
A well-known example in the nature-versus-nurture debate is the case of [[David Reimer]], born in 1965, otherwise known as "John/Joan". As a baby, Reimer went through a faulty circumcision, losing his male genitalia. Psychologist [[John Money]] advised Reimer's parents to raise him as a girl. John Money was instrumental in the early research of gender identity, though he used the term ''gender role''.<ref>{{cite book|vauthors=Zucker KJ|url=https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781402043130|title=Ethics and Intersex|date=2006|publisher=Springer Netherlands|isbn=978-1-4020-4313-0|veditors=Sytsma SE|page=167|language=en|access-date=14 January 2020|archive-date=8 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308133040/https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781402043130|url-status=live}}</ref> He disagreed with the previous school of thought that gender was determined solely by biology. He argued that infants are born a blank slate and a parent could be able to decide their babies' gender.<ref name=":1">{{cite web|title=NOVA {{!}} Transcripts {{!}} Sex: Unknown {{!}} PBS|url=https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2813gender.html|access-date=7 December 2018|website=www.pbs.org|archive-date=11 October 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20111011043248/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/transcripts/2813gender.html|url-status=live}}</ref> In Money's opinion, if the parent confidently raised their child as the opposite sex from earlier than age two, the child would believe that they were born that sex and act accordingly.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book| vauthors = Colapinto J |title=[[As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl]]|date=2006|publisher=HarperCollins|isbn=978-0061120565|edition=1st Harper Perennial|location=New York|oclc=71012749|author-link=John Colapinto|pages=19–20}}</ref> Money believed that nurture could override nature.<ref name=":1" />

Reimer underwent [[sex reassignment surgery]] at seventeen months and grew up as a girl, dressing in girl clothes and surrounded by girl toys. In the early 1970s, Money reported that Reimer's [[Sex assignment|sex reassignment]] to female was a success, influencing the academic consensus toward the nurture hypothesis, and for the following 30 years, it became standard medical practice to reassign [[intersex]] infants and male infants with [[micropenis]]es to female.<ref name=":1" />

After Reimer tried to commit suicide at age 13, he was told that he had been born with male genitalia. Reimer stopped seeing Money, and underwent surgery to remove his breasts and reconstruct his genitals.<ref>{{cite book |title=Abnormal Psychology |vauthors=Nolen-Hoeksema S |date=2014 |publisher=McGraw-Hill |isbn=978-1-308-21150-3 |edition=6 |page=368}}<!--|access-date=5 December 2014--></ref> In 1997, sexologist [[Milton Diamond]] published a follow-up, revealing that Reimer had rejected his female reassignment, and arguing against the blank slate hypothesis and infant sex reassignment in general.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Diamond |first1=Milton |last2=Sigmundson |first2=H. Keith |date=1 March 1997 |title=Sex Reassignment at Birth: Long-term Review and Clinical Implications |journal=Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine |volume=151 |issue=3 |pages=298–304 |doi=10.1001/archpedi.1997.02170400084015 |pmid=9080940 }}</ref>

Diamond was a longtime opponent of Money's theories. Diamond had contributed to research involving pregnant rats that showed hormones played a major role in the behavior of different sexes.<ref name=":0" />{{Page needed|date=August 2021}} The researchers in the lab would inject the pregnant rat with testosterone, which would then find its way to the baby's bloodstream.<ref name=":1" /> The females that were born had genitalia that looked like male genitalia. The females in the litter also behaved like male rats and would even try to mount other female rats, proving that biology played a major role in animal behavior.<ref name=":0" />{{Page needed|date=August 2021}}

One criticism of the Reimer case is that Reimer lost his penis at the age of eight months and underwent sex reassignment surgery at seventeen months, which possibly meant that Reimer had already been influenced by his socialization as a boy. Bradley et al. (1998) report the contrasting case of a 26-year-old woman with XY chromosomes whose penis was lost and who underwent sex reassignment surgery between two and seven months of age (substantially earlier than Reimer), whose parents were also more committed to raising their child as a girl than Reimer's, and who remained a woman into adulthood. She reported that she had been somewhat tomboyish during childhood, enjoying stereotypically masculine childhood toys and interests, although her childhood friends were girls. While she was [[bisexual]], having had relationships with both men and women, she found women more sexually attractive and they featured more in her fantasies. Her job at the time of the study was a blue-collar occupation that was practiced almost exclusively by men.<ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Bradley SJ, Oliver GD, Chernick AB, Zucker KJ | title = Experiment of nurture: ablatio penis at 2 months, sex reassignment at 7 months, and a psychosexual follow-up in young adulthood | journal = Pediatrics | volume = 102 | issue = 1 | pages = e9 | date = July 1998 | pmid = 9651461 | doi = 10.1542/peds.102.1.e9 | quote = The present case report is a long-term psychosexual follow-up on a second case of ablatio penis in a 46 XY male. | doi-access = free }}</ref> Griet Vandermassen argues that since these are the only two cases being documented in scientific literature, this makes it difficult to draw any firm conclusions from them about the origins of gender identity, particularly given the two cases reached different conclusions. However, Vandermassen also argued that transgender people support the idea of gender identity as being biologically rooted, as they do not identify with their anatomical sex despite being raised and their behaviour reinforced according to their anatomical sex.<ref>{{cite book | vauthors = Vandermassen G |title=Who's Afraid of Charles Darwin?: Debating Feminism and Evolutionary Theory. |date=2005 |publisher=Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |location=Lanham |isbn=978-1-4616-4707-2 | pages = 112–113 }}</ref>