Is Rand's take on gender roles in romance part of Objectivism?

By Wendy McElroy
web posted May 31, 2004

...a theory that still impacts children across North America: that sexual identity comes from nurture not nature and, so, can be entirely determined by proper social conditioning.

In 1966, Reimer’s mother took her 8-month-old identical twins to a local doctor in Winnipeg, Canada, for circumcision. The procedure went badly for Bruce
...
they took their mutilated son
...
finally arriving at the door of medical psychologist Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore.

Money was out to prove a theory that would subsequently bring him fame and fortune. He maintained that Bruce was young enough to be successfully raised as a girl because gender was not determined by DNA but by environment. For Money, Bruce was a perfect candidate for the experiment because his identical twin brother would act as a control for the experiment.

At that time, surgery to reassign gender had never been performed on a boy born with normal genitalia. Bruce’s testicles were removed, and he underwent 12 years of social and hormonal treatment to become "Brenda."

"Joan" at age 13

The transformation became internationally renowned as "the John/Joan case." Dr. Money’s research was offered as proof positive that sexual identity was learned behavior. He declared, "The child's behaviour is so clearly that of an active little girl and so different from the boyish ways of her twin brother."

Every textbook on gender included Money’s experiment and grants poured into his pocket. Doctors began to surgically "reassign" the gender of babies born with ambiguous genitals. Feminists declared human beings to be "psychosexually neutral" at birth and campaigned to change everything from children’s stories to the curricula of schools in order to change the gender identity being taught to children. Money’s research supported their contention that patriarchal conditioning, not nature, was entirely responsible for women’s roles in society.

Behind the scenes, Reimer's mother told Money that Brenda ripped off dresses, rejected dolls, insisted on standing up to urinate, and asked to shave like her father. Nevertheless, Money’s 1972 book Man and Woman, Boy and Girl declared the experiment to be a success.

Indeed, Money urged the Reimers to complete the gender experiment on the pubescent Brenda by having a vagina surgically constructed. When she threatened to commit suicide rather than undergo more treatment by Money, the Reimers revealed the truth. Brenda adopted the name David and began to live as a man.

Of his childhood, David later stated: "It was like brainwashing … I’d give just about anything to go to a hypnotist to black out my whole past. Because it’s torture. What they did to you in the body is sometimes not near as bad as what they did to you in the mind with the psychological warfare in your head."

For years, David remained silent while Money’s version of the research was applauded by feminists and continued to influence public policy on gender. Then, in 1997, biologist Milton Diamond and psychiatrist Keith Sigmundson published a report in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine, which exposed the John/Joan case as a failure and fraud. To the extent that the case proved anything, it proved the opposite of what Money claimed. John/Joan suggested that maleness developed in the womb; gender could not be reassigned through medical and social conditioning.

Money’s response? The report was "part of the anti-feminist movement."

In 2000, Rolling Stone journalist John Colapinto published "As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl." The book created a sensation by popularizing the findings of the Diamond-Sigmundson report.

Shortly thereafter, the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center released two scientific studies that indicated "prenatal exposure to normal male hormones alone dictates male gender identity in normal XY male babies, even if they are born without a penis." If true, this utterly discredits the medical practice of reassigning the gender of babies.

The studies came too late for David Reimer. Although he endured four reconstructive surgeries to reverse Money’s experiment and to rebuild his penis, David was unable to overcome a tortured past. After several setbacks in his personal life, David committed suicide at the age of 38. It was the last of several attempts to die that dated back to his teenage years.

Although Money’s research has been widely discredited, the belief that sexual identity is socially constructed still deeply impacts our culture. A good first step toward reversing the damage this belief can inflict is to reclaim a word usage that has been virtually abandoned. We should use the word "sex" and reject the word "gender" when discussing sexual identity.

Together with the results of a 3rd study demonstrating that work-related altruism is thought to be less optional for women than for men, these results suggest that gender-stereotypic prescriptions regarding how men and women should behave result in different evaluative reactions to the same altruistic behavior, depending on the performer's sex.

... humans are characterized by extensive paternal investment, and thus men's tending is predicted and observed in some stressful contexts. Second, the dynamics of women's befriending suggest an evolutionary elaboration of the mechanisms that support reciprocal altruism. Third, coalitional male-male competition indicates that men's befriending is a predicted component of their fight-or-flight response. Finally, men's tending should result in the evolution of female-female competition over this form of parental investment.

Although differences in pain sensitivity between women and men are partly attributable to social conditioning and to psychosocial factors, many laboratory studies of humans have described sex differences in sensitivity to noxious stimuli, suggesting that biological mechanisms underlie such differences. In addition, sex hormones influence pain sensitivity; pain threshold and pain tolerance in women vary with the stage of the menstrual cycle. Imaging studies of the brain have shown differences between men and women in the spatial pattern and intensity of response to acute pain.

Women responded more quickly to local targets while men did not differentially respond to hierarchical stimuli. ERP data indicated that women had P100 responses that were selectively lateralized to the left hemisphere in response to local targets and N150 responses that were smaller for global targets. They also had P300 responses that were greater following local stimuli. The physiological data demonstrate that male-female performance differences arise from biologically based differences in hemispheric asymmetry.

Increase in the rate of background acoustic scanner noise caused increased activation in auditory and language relevant cortex of the dominant hemisphere in men compared with women where no such change in activation was observed.

It is suggested that the verbal creative thinking in men is based mostly on "insight" strategy whereas women additionally involve the "intellectual" strategy.

The findings suggest that men and women may use different strategies to solve similar problems--e.g. men may use a more holistic, gestalt-type strategy, and women may use a more analytic, verbally-mediated strategy. Such differences could reflect asymmetric, gender-related differences in the neurobiology of left and right VMPC sectors.

Most women are not radical feminists, thankfully, and most are not ready to file sexual harrassment charges against a coworker for a side-ways glance or an off-color joke.

The vast majority of women, I believe, share Rand's attitude regarding male sexual superiority.

Women want a decisive, commanding presence in their potential sexual partners. They're looking for strength and confidence, and do not want or respect a weak, vacillating, indecisive guy.

Men often complain that "nice guys finish last," and that women prefer guys that treat them badly.

According to collectivists, people are like clay that can be molded, coerced and twisted to fit anyone's social agenda.

All sexual differences can be abolished by arbitrary fiat, just as all differences of talent, motivation and ability can. All we have to do is pass a law or impose a social stigma, and the differences will vanish into thin air. After all, wishing can make it so, can't it?