THE CASE OF JOHN/JOAN
(continued from previous page)

His story has shaken to its foundations the edifice constructed on John Money’s theories from the 1950s. And it has exposed a central flaw in a theory that has held sway for most of the 20th century. It was Sigmund Freud who first stated that a child’s healthy psychological development as a boy or a girl rests largely on the presence, or absence, of the penis – the notion central to Money’s theory of sexual development and the ultimate reason that John Thiessen was converted to girlhood in the first place. It is a notion that, today, has also been called into question by neurobiological research that, in the sexual realm, is leading scientists toward the conclusion that, as Dr. Reiner puts it, “the most important sex organ is not the genitals; it’s the brain.”

John Thiessen puts it another way when he speaks of his pride in his role as husband, father and sole breadwinner in the family that he never believed he would be lucky enough to have. “From what I’ve been taught by my father,” he says, “what makes you a man is: You treat your wife well. You put a roof over your family’s head. You’re a good father. Things like that add up much more to being a man than just bang bang bang – sex. I guess John Money would consider my children’s biological fathers to be real men. But they didn’t stick around to raise the children. I did. That, to me, is a man.”

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