Claim: “Gender was invented” by John Money / Alfred Kinsey

The argument often goes like this¹² (and there are many more³)

The concept of “gender identity” was created by child abuser and pedophile John Money. From the beginning, the gender agenda has been to prey on children.

This argument moralizes the science around gender identity by pointing to the fact that a prominent sexologist in the ’60s had theories about gender and sex. Formally, this is called the genetic fallacy and would be like saying gravity is a bad theory because Isaac Newton was racist.

More key facts

• There have been over fifty years of research since Dr. Money’s incorrect theories. His unethical behavior in conducting surgery on infants and his theories on gender are not longer accepted in the medical and psychological community.
• Neither John Money nor Alfred Kinsey have been alive for over 10 years and have no significant contribution to the current leading medical and scientific consensus that transgender people are the gender they say they are—and they’re not deluded or mentally ill.
• Many historical examples exist to show the existence of trans people decades or centuries before Money’s work³.
• Dr. Money’s controversial work in the 1960’s does not invalidate the idea of gender identity. He popularized the term, as well as the term “sexual orientation” (in place of “sexual preference”.)⁴
• Dr. Money’s experiment disproved aspects of his own belief (that gender identity is malleable). His theories of are closer to those who think that people can change their gender identity³.
• Gender identity and sexual orientation existed before Dr. Money popularized those terms. (Gender reassignment surgery predates both John Money and Alfred Kinsey⁵.)
• There is no evidence that Dr. Money coined the term “gender identity”³.
• He also takes credit for replacing the term “perversion” with “paraphilia”, but nobody seems to be discrediting that word on this basis³.

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