View article

Judith Butler’s central tenet is that the hegemonic power of heteronormativity produces all forms of the body, sex, and gender. In “Doing Justice to Someone,” her rereading of the David Reimer case (the so-called John/Joan case brought to popular attention by journalist John Colapinto in the book As Nature Made Him), Butler builds upon the view put forth in her earlier Gender Trouble and Bodies that Matter that all gender is an imitation for which there is no original. David, one of twins, had his penis irreparably damaged in a circumcision accident. His parents, following the advice of psycho-endocrinologist John Money, were persuaded to raise the child as a girl. Over the next fifteen years, Money was to write up the case as support for his theory that gender was socially constructed rather than biologically innate. Another scientist of sexuality, Milton Diamond, eventually showed that Money’s claim of success was …