#DoingJustice DavidReimer Gender

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Reflection Two, “Doing Justice to Someone: Sex Reassignment and Allegories of Transsexuality”

Gender is the cultural meaning we attach to our biological sex which is not always true. Judith Butler argues that “Gender reality is performative which means quite simply that it is real only to the extent that it is performed”. Which entails that gender is wider than just a biological state but is something that will also be acted upon as expression. While reading this article I could not help but to become sympathetic towards David Reimer. He endured such a catastrophic event that tormented his ability of free will and self expression. David Reimer is widely known through the Joan/John case. At such a young age David was stripped of his true identity when a botched operation took place. Evidently in a sense David became a lab rat for a scientific study. Each time I read this article I can’t help but to blame both Dr.Money and his parents for not actually thinking through the affects this may have caused for him in the long run. The fact that his opposite gender was forced upon him for so many years although he was uncomfortable with himself sickens me, he did not understand what was going on and why he went through what he did even though none of it was at his fault. “The very criterion by which we judge a person to be a gendered being, a criterion that posits coherent gender as a presupposition of humanness, is not only one which, justly or unjustly, governs the recognizability of the human, but one that informs the ways we do or do not recognize ourselves at the level of feeling, desire, and the body, at the moments before the mirror, in the moments before the window, in the times that one turns to psychologists, to psychiatrists, to medical and legal professionals to negotiate what may well feel like the unrecognizability of one’s gender and, hence, the unrecognizability of one’s personhood” Dr. Money manipulated David’s family and their situation to benefit his unethical theories. This article helped me realize that gender is more than “biological” and social normality but that sex is considered an ascribed status and gender is an achieved status. People don’t always necessarily identify for what may be “biologically” written for them although in this case David did. All in all, you can not force someone to act upon what they do not rightfully identify their self as because society does not deem it as “normal”. It’s not right to try to impose someone to configure their way of life. It’s heartbreaking that David’s life did not have a better outcome.