Struggles - Chapter 15

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(In 1972 the insurance company Rich works for has assigned him the task for researching sex reassignment surgery after they received a claim. Will he find anything at Johns Hopkins University?)

Struggles

By

Sherry Ann

Chapter 15

Man and Woman, Boy and Girl

The morning after Rich failed to find any information about sex reassignment at the National Library of Medicine (an assignment from his boss at the insurance company where he worked), he again awoke with the memory of the dream, but this time he could not remember the details, only that it was the same theme; partially dressed in public in bra and panties. The dream, actually a nightmare, was all too frequent now. Rich had hoped the tormenting dreams would go away after he married Brandi, but, of course, they didn't.

Rich again watched Brandi get dressed and apply her makeup. He didn’t just stare but casually observed what she did, and how she did it. Then he showered and finished dressing just as Brandi was leaving. They kissed and she told him he would have better luck this time; he would find something to please his boss. After she left, he started a load of laundry, being sure to include the panties he wore the day before. He returned to Brandi’s top left dresser drawer and found a pair of black lacy ones. Rich quickly changed into them. Soon he was out the door and on his way to Baltimore.

Rich found the main administration building at Johns Hopkins University, parked and made his way to the information desk just inside the entrance.

“Can you direct me to Dr. Money’s office?” Rich asked the older woman in the high necked white blouse, plain straight midcalf skirt and hair in a bun.

“Oh yes.” She answered as she produced a campus map. “Dr. Money is quite well known. He just published a new book.” She volunteered. “Are you a doctor?” She asked Rich who at 28 hardly looked like one.

Rich chuckled. “No I’m investigating an insurance claim. What’s the book about?” He asked making conversation as the woman circled a building on the map.

“I don’t know for sure but it’s something about what makes men and women different, I think.” The matronly woman said almost giggling like a teenager. “Can’t wait for that to be made a movie.” She quipped. “Here is where his office is. You can walk from here.”

“Would the book store have Dr. Money’s book.” Rich wondered aloud.

“Oh yes.” She said as one word like it was a mainstay of her vocabulary. “But the book store is in the other direction, right here.” The woman circled another building on the map.

Rich thanked the woman and walked back out of the building and toward the one circled on the map where the woman indicated Dr. John Money’s office was. He easily found the building and pulled open the door. There it was ‘John Money, PhD., Professor Emeritus, Psychology, Room 301’ prominently displayed on the directory in the lobby. He climbed the two flights of stairs, found room 301 and entered. A young woman was sitting behind a desk with a typewriter and phone. She was obviously a secretary.

“I’m here to see Dr. Money.” Rich announced confidently. He had decided he needed to use this opportunity as best he could. On the drive to Baltimore he thought about how unique this chance was. He knew that Hopkins was just about the only place in the States that did the surgery Ms. Collins had and now he could complete the assignment for Lenny but he could also possibly find out something about himself.

“Do you have an appointment?” The secretary asked.

“No, I don’t but I’m from Indemnity Insurance out of Hartford and just need a few minutes of his time. It’s about a claim.” Rich stated intentionally making it sound like he was from out of town and as if there was an insurance issue that involved Dr. Money. He handed her his business card.

“Oh.” The woman answered. “He is in but has an appointment at 10:30. I don’t know if he can see you now or if you will have to come back.” She added as she picked up the phone and dialed.
Rich listened as the woman explained who he was and what he wanted to the person on the phone.

“I understand. I’ll send him in.” She finished and hung the phone up.

“Dr. Money can give you a few minutes now.” She stood up and escorted Rich through a doorway and into a large office. Two walls of the office were taken with windows and two were lined with bookcases, all filled from floor to ceiling. A large desk was positioned perfectly center to the largest wall with windows behind. The room gave an appearance of confidence and correctness.

As Rich entered the room the man behind the desk did not look up from the papers he was studying until Rich was directly in front of him. Rich was reminded of being in the Army and reporting to some officer. He fought the urge to salute. The man looked to be in his late forties, but had longish hair partially balding in the front and combed over to one side giving an almost comical appearance. His face was free of hair, clean shaven, with almost sad dark eyes. He wore glasses, a turtleneck pullover with a tweed jacket. He was definitely professorial, Rich thought.

After a few moments the man spoke without introduction.

“Sit, sit.” He commanded. Only then did he look up.

“You’re from an insurance company and there’s a claim?” He asked, still not identifying himself.

Rich took Ms. Collier’s file from his briefcase as he answered. “Yes, I’m from Indemnity and we have a claim for sex reassignment surgery. We wanted to learn about why it should be considered medically necessary, or as we at Indemnity like to say, medically reasonable.”

Dr. Money then looked interested. “You have a claim? Not from Hopkins? We’re funded.”

“Right. It’s from a medical center in Atlanta. We just…”

“Atlanta?” He asked but continued before Rich could say anything. "I don’t know anyone doing them in Atlanta.” He then pivoted. “Are you going to pay it? You should really pay for this you know.” He lectured before Rich could finish his sentence.

“We probably will. But I need some information about future claims. We need some guidance. Is there a medical reason it should be covered by health insurance?” Rich asked giving the false impression the company he worked for would actually consider covering sex reassignment surgery.

“Of course there is?” Dr. Money immediately responded. “Why would you not cover it if it is recommended by reputable doctors?” He challenged. “Yes, there are some who view it as experimental, but with proper screening it is necessary.”

Rich felt on the defensive and hesitated. “Well, it is really radical cosmetic surgery that doesn’t treat anything physically wrong with the patient. It is doing surgery to treat a mental condition. My superiors have serious doubts about how reasonable that is, from a medical view; doing surgery just because someone thinks they are different.” Rich didn’t like what he said or how he said it. He thought he had gone too far.

Dr. Money now sat up and pushed the papers he had been reading to the side. Rich felt he was going to get a lesson from a well-known professor from a prestigious university.

“Doubts? Necessity? Reasonable?” He almost barked. “Insurance companies should leave the determination of “necessity” to the professionals.” He began.

“We do.” Rich quickly answered. “That’s why I’m here. We want to understand this so we can, uh well, know what we are doing and separate the legitimate from the uh, crazies. We have to be on firm ground and be able to defend what we don’t pay for, and what we do, for that matter.”

“Of course.” Dr. Money allowed relaxing some. “Crazies, you say. Interesting that you would use that term. You may consider people with gender issues sick, as in mentally ill, completely flawed, but really, these people are just struggling with the way they developed; the way they obtained their gender.”

Dr. Money got up and turned toward the window, then continued. “That probably doesn’t make sense to you.” He turned back and looked straight into Rich’s face. It was a penetrating gaze and Rich felt the imminent doctor was reading his soul, examining his gender.

“In more precise terms, they are individuals who are dealing with malformed or incomplete gender identity. By malformed I mean, for boys mostly, that they were imprinted during a very formative time in their emotional development with a feminine characteristic. And they cannot shake it. For some, they live with it; indulging their proclivities; for others they are compelled beyond their capability to resist to act on it completely, and it is those individuals that should be supported and that you should pay claims for.”

Rich barely heard the last part of what Dr. Money said. Instead he was thinking about that one phrase, ‘obtained their gender’. What did that mean? He had to ask.

“What do you mean ‘obtained their gender’? I thought… well …” he stammered unable to formulate what he was feeling or what he wanted to say.

“Yes, yes. Of course you did. Boys are boys and girls are girls and well, that in a sense is true. But what we have discovered, what I firmly believe, is that we are born gender neutral, mostly. There are those who disagree but I have shown rather definitively that gender is obtained, through socialization mostly, during the early formative life of a baby, the first few months. And by age three, no more, gender is nearly complete and immutable.”

Rich sat transfixed. All the years he had struggled with what was wrong with him; why he was so pulled by girl things and even felt, as a child, like he should have been a girl. He thought of all the times he cried, and now even as a happily married man, how he still could not completely control the feeling. He thought of what he was wearing, the black lacy panties under his men’s suit, while Dr. Money was imparting information that finally made sense to him. He waited for Dr. Money to continue and he did.

“Humans are different than other species. We can show, I have shown, through controlled studies that imprinting of gender occurs during the first few months of life in humans and that imprinting establishes a person’s identity, to varying degrees, as masculine or feminine. Briefly, gender imprinting is the reinforcement of our sex, usually consistent with the sex of our birth. Of course the physiology at birth, either male or female, lays the foundation for the imprinting process. And there are hormonal factors. For most, like you and I, our identity is male because we had male role models to learn from, not to mention female role models to create the sense in our brain of the opposite gender, so we could be, quote unquote, normal men. We also were given gender appropriate toys and dressed in gender appropriate clothes. But for some, again to varying degrees, they are not imprinted in the gender of the physical sex of their birth. Incomplete or even opposite imprinting occurs, perhaps a weak father, or absent one; maybe a dominate feminine mother, or a confident sister. Usually, I think, in these cases, the baby boy, and it’s usually a boy, receives female gender imprinting and is therefore a more feminine male. Sometimes the mother desperately wanted a girl baby and got a boy, and, mostly subconsciously, imprints a feminine gender during those critical first months, or even dresses the little boy baby like a girl thinking it won’t make a difference.”

Rich listened intently, trying to grasp the full meaning, not for his assignment but for himself. He flipped to his note pad and tried to scribble down what Dr. Money was saying. He couldn’t help but think about his mother, did she somehow do some girl imprinting, he wondered. Then a memory of Mary, his older sister popped into his head. If anything imprinted Rich with unshakable girl feelings it was Mary, who desperately wanted a baby sister, not a brother, when Rich was born. He had heard his mother talk about that. Rich felt as if Dr. Money knew him, understood that his older dominate and undeterred sister had to have played a huge part in the feelings he now had that he could not control or shake.

“And in a few cases, like the person you have a claim for, and some in our program, the opposite gender imprinting during those first months of life is so complete, even though they have been living an otherwise normal male life for many years, uh well, that the only treatment, to avoid complete mental incapacitation and suicide, is to make them physically consistent with the primary gender with which they were imprinted.” Dr. Money paused briefly then added defensively. “Psychotherapy doesn’t work on those severely affected so if we can’t change the mind to conform to the body, we change the body to conform to the mind.”

Dr. Money then picked up the papers he was reading when Rich entered the office, put them in a briefcase and turned towards the door.

“It’s all in my new book. Well most of it is. I’m working with a promising case; twin boys, one who had a tragic mishap shortly after birth during circumcision. The penis was lost so the parents, under my guidance, are raising one twin as a girl, carefully reinforcing female imprinting, and the other as a boy. So far, it is going very well but time will tell.” Dr. Money stopped talking, losing himself in the prospects of his theory being validated.

“But I must go. I hope this helped. Read my book. It should convince your company to cover this when recommended.” He turned and was out the door leaving Rich standing in front of the now empty desk. He put Mr. Collier’s file and his notes in his briefcase and exited the office suite, thanking the secretary as he left.

Rich found himself outside sitting on a bench watching all the Johns Hopkins students come and go from classes. He felt so isolated, so removed from everyone around him. He tried to process all that Dr. Money had said. He felt like crying but held back. At first Rich didn’t want to believe that what he heard was an explanation for himself. He had convinced himself, and his wife, that he had some sort of mild fetish. They both could accept that. Having a sexual fetish about wearing some female item, like the panties he was now wearing, meant that he was still a man, perhaps even more so. Dr. Money’s explanation meant, or could mean, that Rich wasn’t totally male, but was partially female, having been imprinted, yes that was the word the doctor used, imprinted to some degree with a female gender.

Rich felt the crushing realization that it was more likely that he was imprinted with some of both and that his sister did it. He couldn’t remember the first two or three years but there was that picture in the album his mother had. Everyone thought it was just cute; Mary having a tea party with her two brothers and a teddy bear. Except that in the picture three year old Rich was wearing a dress. Rich was almost angry. If there was one picture and the Bromely children were playing in the yard and Rich was wearing a dress, then it probably wasn’t an isolated event, and well, if it wasn’t exactly approved by an adult, most likely the mother, she allowed Mary to dress her brother in girls clothes. Someone had to have taken that picture.

There was only the one picture and there were plenty others where Rich was clearly in boy mode. There were no pictures of Rich’s brother Gary ever wearing a dress and well, there was no doubt about the gender Gary, Rich’s older brother, was imprinted with. For Rich imprinting would explain the pull to girl things that he could not shake and the confusion he constantly felt. It would explain what he knew in his heart; that the pull to wanting to wear female clothes, or be like a girl, was not at all sexual. There was no sexual impulse that morning when he slipped on the panties and he felt none now. He did feel good about them though but he couldn’t explain why.

Rich sat there thinking about this and realized Dr. Money was probably right. He was one of those men who felt somewhat female. He allowed that he was probably better for it, a better husband, a better man and yes, he would be a better father. Rich’s mood improved. He vowed to get the book, Dr. Money’s book; and he vowed to explain all this to Brandi, and with the book to back up the explanation, they could manage this problem together. Rich didn’t have to feel he had some deviate weird sick fetish anymore. There was a reasonable explanation; one doctors understood. He told himself he could be ok with it now and even indulge it some without having to link it to sex. And possibly Brandi might be understanding; might actually help him.

Rich got up and followed the map to the university book store. He found Dr. Money’s book, with the brown cover and caricatures of a man, a woman, a boy and a girl on the cover arranged in four squares inside a larger square. While he waited to purchase the book Rich’s thoughts came back to the assignment. How could he present what Dr. Money had told him, and what the book probably explained? It wasn’t exactly what Lenny was looking for and Rich knew he couldn’t put Dr. Money’s argument, that it was acceptable to change the body to match the mind, forward. But it did give him an idea. He would write the report they wanted. He would write not just about the surgery but about the mind. He would tell them that some men, a few, have imperfectly formed gender and that they suffer, to varying degree because of it. But he would stress that the consensus in the medical community is that the procedure was not just experimental but was widely felt to be mutilation even if he himself didn’t see it that way. Rich saw himself as a man with a man’s body but the reverse did not repulse him.

Rich would also tell them, the men who ran the company he worked for, that it would cause Indemnity Insurance more grief, not to mention money, to allow claims for such radical surgery, even for the most troubled. 1972 was an election year and the politics wouldn’t support it. There was also the values question he would note. America was deeply religious and to suggest including benefits for something that would be widely viewed as immoral and sinful could, and likely would, alienate many voters and by extension, their Members of Congress. No, for his career, and his life, Richard Bromely would explain how toxic and awful sex reassignment surgery was and that it should never be included in any reputable health benefits policy.

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Comments

Interesting. Dr. Money did

Interesting. Dr. Money did no-one any favors with his treatment of the twins, especially the boy turned girl. As I recall, 'she' committed suicide later in life, and was followed by 'her' brother several years later. Very tragic indeed for the entire family, even thought the Mother and Father were trying to do their best for both their children.

John Money

Yes, it's amazing that Rich with his struggles, his confusion and his ignorance, finds some solace in the whacky (in the context of what we know now) theory of John Money about the formation of gender. But it might have actually helped Rich. At least Money seems to have given him some level of acceptance about the unrelenting pull to the feminine. Money however was never really discredited for all of the damage he did, especially to the twins. So many were hurt.

Sherry Ann