In my adventures around YouTube, I discovered a very interesting, several-month-old series by Anderson Cooper about the “Sissy Boy Experiment.”
Back in the seventies, Kirk Murphy was a five-year-old boy who was thought to be too “feminine” and likely to become gay. His parents took him to government-funded experimental therapy featuring George Rekers, who later turned out to be non-straight himself. In the therapy, he was ignored by his mother unless he played with masculine toys and showed masculine behavior. At home, he was given red poker chips when he did “feminine” things, and his father beat him with a belt when he collected several red chips. (Sometimes his brother stole Kirk’s chips and took the beating.) Eventually, Kirk learned to repress his natural behavior and stop being himself; the therapy was judged a success.
Kirk Murphy took his own life when he was thirty-eight years old.
Rekers’s research continues to be cited by homophobes and those who claim to be able to cure homosexuality around the world.
male-doing-female -> male doing feminine activities, or dressing in women’s clothing
@Jim Part of the “studying is unmasculine” and what you say in the post above, relate to the idea that women are noble, ladies, and men are lowly crass servants who get their hands dirty. And a diversion from this on the male-doing-female is seen as someone pretending to be a noble when they’re not, or trying to ridicule nobility. See the hatred of drag by certain feminists. And men don’t “defend the frontier” as much, because there’s not much of a social privilege in being considered a lowly worker who has to prove himself worthy and useful at all… Read more »
@f Given what I read so far reaching page 4. It’s evident that she has some sort of selective memory that puts her in a good light. She was the one to call the ACLU, mainly because of one incident where Kirk and his cousin pretended to have long hair with pillows. Guess what? My very cis, very heterosexual brother (who is now almost 27) did this with me, too (with towels, after a bath). It was all play. It meant nothing at all. Neither for me, nor for him. I was trans before I had long hair (and even… Read more »
@DDH “More concrete examples like this would be very helpful!” I got to thinking last night… – Grilling meat – Home-brewing beer … and I’m still looking for more. Both of those activities used to be plain old housewife work. I got to thinking more about this. One issue is directionality of these changes. we all recognize that these genderings of actiivites is pretyy much unidirectional – girls cna do a lot of boyish things without being thought unfeminne where boys can’t do the same . But that is new. Girls used to get all kinds of shit for climbing… Read more »
Schala, the report really is shocking. I have to warn you the guy’s mom is still completely lacking in insight at the end of it, and is mostly kind of mad at the psychologists for failing to fix her son’s homosexuality. It’s awful.
Ah Schala… you are so full of awesome. I wish you were a lesbian. ^_^
Oh and yeah, thinking outside the box? Always did, always will do, and it’s a big point of pride, because my not being a mindless sheep who does stuff unquestionably and without questioning is a big point of pride. And apparently freakishly rare (I’d have hoped it would be like, the normal state of things, 90% of people…but nope).
Funny but I do have some repetitive physical behavior that often happens outside my knowing or actively doing, and no one ever called it stimming. I saw a shrink, said I probably was asperger (had read DSM stuff about it), and she said that no, I couldn’t possibly be, because I was too lucid, not having whole body uncontrollable movements, etc. Basically, dismissed without any good reason. And I find this is freakishly common amongst therapists. Or I was just really unlucky. You know, I met two shrinks who said I couldn’t be trans? And now I’ve taken estrogen for… Read more »
Because the psychology is flawed. We still have tons of people today asserting that vaccines cause ASDs, when that’s been disproven and the original author of the vaccine-Autism study has come out and said it’s based on faulty data. Perhaps it’s different in Canada, but I know down here and the ASD people I know, it isn’t considered a valid treatment. But hey, I’m a stimmer myself (inattentive ADD o’er here) – it’s simply just a matter of someone saying “Hey, your foot drumming is making the table vibrate, mind turning it down”? Since I’m usually not aware of my… Read more »
Then why is it still pretty much universally used to make autistic kids ‘normal’? And that’s trying to remove behavior judged bad subjectively (not objectively) like stimming and “not making eye-contact”.
@ Skidd
“And among animal trainers, it’s pretty much a given that negative reinforcement DOESN’T WORK.”
Hmm…
I can’t fathom people being told “stop this behavior, or you get an electric shock”, and living in that hellish prison…and your parents fucking paying for it. This would be one fucking good reason to suicide. It’s interesting to think about, for me as an animal behaviorist – classic operant conditioning, much like a skinner box at work here. Except it’s negative reinforcement. Taking away an aversive stimulus when there’s wanted behavior. The rat only gets relief from shocks when he pushes the lever. …And among animal trainers, it’s pretty much a given that negative reinforcement DOESN’T WORK. It makes… Read more »
I’m also just as outrage by behavioral therapy on autistic kids, and doubly so as an aspie myself.
I can’t fathom people being told “stop this behavior, or you get an electric shock”, and living in that hellish prison…and your parents fucking paying for it. This would be one fucking good reason to suicide.
I read part of the Box Turtle Bulletin, and already I’m steaming. I also tend to hate any mention of behavioral therapy, because it’s plainly coercive brainwashing. And if that’s an oxymoron, I’m sorry. Behavioral therapy to make people act ‘more normal’, because that’s ‘the moral thing to do’. This makes me sick to my stomach that some people actually really believed it, reasonable people you could meet in your everyday life, not Fred Phelps. People who saw UCLA stuff about homosexuality as bad and decided “yes, save my son!”, God what did they smoke???????? My sense of justice is… Read more »
Jim: Aha! and here’s an example for you where the shift is curently in progress – studious behavior. It used to be that only boys were formally educated for the most part, and book learning was a m ale monopoly. Now one of the problems people have identified in the boy crisis is that study is seen as demasculinizing.
Jim, great example. Gender behavior is in flux, which I have finally figured out is why I don’t understand what a lot of the young people are talking about. More concrete examples like this would be very helpful!
“Mm. I think you need to unpack what you mean by “male or female” in that statement.”
Knowledge of which biological category fits you better, hormonally, physically and socially (which doesn’t mean gender role, at all, only being correctly identified – validated).
“Something that often bugs me about these “gender: nature-vs-nurture” type discussions (apart from the obvious fact that the answer to any nature-v-nurture discussion is frequently “a mixture of both, duh”) is that there seems to be some kind of weird thing going on where… it’s almost like everyone is assumed to either believe that we are all robots biologically programmed at birth to enact a particular gender role, by presence or absence of a Y chromosome, or oppositely that we are born blank slates waiting for society to stamp a gender onto us. Neither of these things are true.” It’s… Read more »
Mm. I think you need to unpack what you mean by “male or female” in that statement.
“So, while some people take the Reimer case to show that “males” are “naturally, innately” inclined to behave a particular way. I think this is wrong, and that the Reimer case demonstrates that David Reimer was inclined to behave a particular way, despite the genital mutilation the poor kid suffered. This shows that some factors in his personality were innate, predetermined — but doesn’t reflect on “males” generally.” One thing though is that identification as male or female, on a deep unconscious but knowable level, is biological. And being told all the time that you are not, can be very… Read more »
Something that often bugs me about these “gender: nature-vs-nurture” type discussions (apart from the obvious fact that the answer to any nature-v-nurture discussion is frequently “a mixture of both, duh”) is that there seems to be some kind of weird thing going on where… it’s almost like everyone is assumed to either believe that we are all robots biologically programmed at birth to enact a particular gender role, by presence or absence of a Y chromosome, or oppositely that we are born blank slates waiting for society to stamp a gender onto us. Neither of these things are true. I… Read more »
“Hmm, so gender is a construct, but everyone needs to be oriented toward a BIOLOGICALLY acceptable gender role?”
Yeah, same as Storm, the kid whom parents won’t tell people what sex the kid is. People went off the rails on “but, but, the kid has to learn or they’ll be in societal deficit later on!”
Dr Ivar Lovaas, also part of the Sissy Boy Experiment deal, is considered an authority on autistic kids.
He’s also really bad news.
Jim, it’s interesting to see that Jim Money, at least as of the mid-60s, propagated both gender-as-construct and the idea that part of successful childraising consists of,
orienting [the child], from birth, to his biologically and culturally acceptable gender role
See here: http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/what-are-little-boys-made-of2
Hmm, so gender is a construct, but everyone needs to be oriented toward a BIOLOGICALLY acceptable gender role?
“the entire notion of gender, except for anatomical differences – was a purely socially defined construct. ”
And where have we heard that shit before? Although I must say, to their very great credit, every feminist who has said that in my hearing, when I pointed to her that parallel, she reacted with horror and disgust and started to re-evaluate the position.
Box Turtle Bulletin did a huge series of investigative reports on this case: http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/what-are-little-boys-made-of-main
It really is detailed, well-researched, and absolutely heartbreaking to read. So proceed with caution if you find this kind of thing triggering.