DOCTOR OF SEXOLOGY : written by Constance Holden
(A profile of Dr. John Money)
Source: Psychology Today ; May 88
A Risqilly BBS reprint (203-644-4236)
It is likely that no person has probed so deeply into the
mysteries of sex and sexual identity as John Money, who for 37
years at Johns Hopkins University has done pioneering research in
a field where, for all society's alleged liberation, titters are
still aroused at the notion of "sexology."
Indeed, there still seems something mildly shocking about the way
the man smoothly natters on about micropenises and strangulation
paraphilias in his urbane New Zealand accent.
Money, 67, has a calm, academic manner, but one would never
mistake him for a conformist as he sits in an office adorned with
Third World artifacts, including larger-than-life-size wooden
hunting sculptures from Mali.
An emeritus professor for the past two years, Money still carries
on several research projects on sex-related birth defects,
especially abuse dwarfism, a growth hormone disorder resulting
from child neglect and abuse. He also counsels families of
children with gender disorders and continues to churn out books
the latest being "Gay, Straight, and in Between",more than you
ever wanted to know about homosexuality, which was published in
April. Another recent book "Venuses Penuses", a collection of his
writings ("My publisher said no book has ever had the word
'penis' or 'vagina' in its title," he says so he developed a
hokey Latin-sounding title.)
Money, who immigrated to the United States in 1947, launched his
career at Harvard University with a dissertation on
hermaphroditism and soon afterwards came to John Hopkins to work
with Lawson Wilkins, who had founded the world's first pediatric
endocrine clinic. There Money became the first pediatric
psycoendocrinologist.
He is still one of very few. "It's not been a field with a high
degree of growth potential in it," he says with a sardonicism
that is never far from the surface. You want to know why it's so
hard to get money for sex research?" He brings out a book with
pictures of young monkeys having sexual intercourse and of young
children similarly engaged. "You have just become a criminal by
looking at those pictures of children." In this kind of moral
atmosphere it is difficult to get a levelheaded look at sex.
"It's sort of like physics before the atomic age." The sexual
revolution of the '60's, he says, was really more of a
"reformation". But now we are already in the counterreformation."
In a field as small as his, Money has chalked up many firsts. He
cofounded the Gender Identity Clinic at Hopkins and designed the
first curriculum in sexual medicine for medical students. In
1965, he collaborated with the surgeon on the first sex-change
operation at the university. He introduced the hypothesis (now
widely accepted) that androgen is the libido hormone for both
sexes. He was a pioneer in hormonal treatment to improve self-
control of sex offenders and was the first to explore what he
calls "behavioral cytogenetics" .. the psychological concomitants
of sex chromosome disorders. A greater coiner of terms, Money is
responsible for "gender identity", now a staple term in the
language, and others such as "lovemap" (what you need to get
turned on).
Since sex is intrinsically interesting, one would think that a
lot of what Money has to say would be common knowledge. That men
and women have different sexual turn-ons, for example, because
men's brains, more so than woman's, are wired for visual
stimulation. That pornography is not responsible for sexual
degeneracy since people's lovemaps are pretty much set by the age
of 8. That homosexuality is not a mater of choice.
Money has had an uphill struggle against popular sexual taboos
and misconceptions but also against simplistic notions held by
experts in related fields. First there are the enviornmental
determinists, who have held much of psychology in their grip
since Freud, and now there are the behavioralists. Psychologists
and other social scientists ..... even sex therapists ... have
"a very difficult time dealing with anything that is labeled
biology," Money says. "They don't know how to incorporate it into
their system of thinking." In the 1950's, he says, when he was
publishing papers on the behavioral influence of prenatal sex
hormones, "many people in various branches of the social sciences
were just enraged at the idea that hormones in the bloodstream
before you were born could have a sex differentiating influence
on you." People are starting to come around, but it is slow
going.
Money has also done battle with the physiological deterinists,
with whom he has dealt on cases involving babies with ambiguous
sex organs. These specialists "are totally convinced that the
testicles dictate everything ... and don't want to hear anything
about psychological determinants."
Such reductionists, for example, want to treat cases of babies
born with micropenis (fully formed testicles but vitually no
penis) with male hormones and rear them as male. But, says Money,
each case should be decided individually. While it is possible to
manufacture a functional penis for these people, they can be
successfully reared as heterosexual women with the aid of surgery
and hormone treatment.
Gender, Money emphasizes, is a "multivariate and sequential
process." There are chromosomal sex, gonadal sex, prenatal
hormonal sex, internal genital sex, external genital sex,
pubertal hormonal sex, assigned sex and rearing and gender
identity/role. With all these variables, it's a wonder so many
people manage to develop unequivocal sex organs, much less
routine heterosexuality.
The reasons for going off on the wrong track are far more complex
than portrayed in the nature vs. nurture debate. Indeed, Money
says the correct concept is more like "nature .. critical period
hormonization, when the fetus becomes masculinized or not
masculinized. Masculization of a female fetus (when it is flooded
with an excess of androgen), for example, will result in a
hormonal syndrome that may be manifested both physically and
behaviorally ... in an enlarged clitoris or even a fully formed
penis, and in tomboyishness and lesbianism.
Another critical period is late infancy and earl childhood, when
environmental determinants, including sex rehearsal play and
parental sexual problems, can have a profound and lasting effect
on sexual identity. "One must never forget there's a biology of
learning and memory too," says Money, "and it's just as permanent
as if you've put it in with the genes and chromosomes." He
compares gender identity with native language: The basic
structure enabling language learning is laid down before birth;
the specifics are installed afterwards, through the senses.
This is why homosexuality is so difficult to explain. The
evidence suggests that it can result from prenatal hormonal
events or from early childhood conditioning in a vulnerable
individual. One thing that has been established is that sex-
hormone levels are no different in gays than in straights. If
hormones are responsible for homosexuality they are prenatal
hormones.
The situation is very tricky, as Money illustrates with a film
about a sheep experiment at the veterinary school at Edinburgh
University. The sheep were exposed in utero to implants of
androgen at the precise time when their sex organs had already
been formed but "their brains were still open to being influenced
by androgen." The result ? "One hundred percent perfect lesbian
ewes," who urinated like rams and engaged in mating behavior just
like rams. "These sheep are incredibly important theoretically
because even though they behave like rams, they have only female
hormones coming out of their ovaries. So the female hormone turns
on the brain, but the pattern laid down in the brain is how to
behave like a male."
Of course, it's simpler with four-legged species than with
primates, Money says. "You can't do that with monkeys or humans
because their lovemap isn't finished by the time they are born."
Thus, a homosexual direction could could be established in early
childhood, but not later. Gays talk of "sexual preference," says
Money, but there is no choice.
Money is acquainted with several cases involving "sissy boys" in
which early childhood experiences are likely to tip the balance
toward homosexuality in vulnerable children. In one case a
psychiatrist asked for consultation about his son, who was
becoming a sissy. When the man showed up with his wife, it became
clear at once that "the relationship was one of extreme
antagonism." The father liked to go out at night to hear loud
rock music, which his wife couldn't stand. So he brought the 5-
year-old boy along for companionship. "the question came up to
what I thought the prognosis would be for this little boy, who
really did want to be a girl. I said I am never totally
pessimistic about a child as young as this. And the father looked
at me and said, really shaken, `Why am I feeling so angry with
you for telling me that?' " He then acknowledged it was "probably
something he didn't want to hear."
This was a tremendous insight for Money. "This suddenly gave me
an understanding of why fathers of these sissy boys have not
lived up to their stereotype," which is being disgusted with
their sons for not being more macho. In truth, says Money, it is
almost always the mothers who get alarmed enough about their
sissy son's to seek help. In this case, "the father was getting
an understudy, so to speak, so that this little boy would be a
companion, a replacement for his wife, a little bride." The boy
had figured out that "daddies come home at night because mommies
are there, so if you play the wife, then Daddy won't leave."
In a similar case, the parents of a sissy boy fought all the
time. he underlying cause was the father's reluctance to have
sex. On Money's instructions, they ceased overt hostilities.
"Within a week all the sissy behavior disappeared."
Money likes to talk about tribes in East Melanesia and New Guinea
as illustrative of the amazing and still little-understood
plasticity of the sexual response. It seems that in one village
in East Melanesia all boys go through a period of exclusively
homosexual activity as part of their passage into manhood, from
the age of 9 to 19. After that, they get married and become
heterosexual. One tribe in New Guinea has a similar set-up. "They
have their own folk medical story, which is that a child needs
it's mother's milk to thrive when it's born, and then, to become
a man and a head-hunting warrior he has to have a man's milk." So
part of the ritual of going through puberty is to solicit semen
from other young men. Says Money: "It's tremendously important
that any theory of how people become heterosexual or homosexual
or bisexual be able to account for this phenomenon of cultural
bisexuality."
Money often compares modern attitudes unfavorably with those of
primitive cultures. He attributes most pathological sexual
behavior to society's "antisexual" attitudes. One of the most
damaging of these, in his opinion, is the belief that "childhood
erotic rehearsal" is bad. When monkeys' juvenile sex play is
prevented, they do not grow into normal heterosexuals. The same
is true of other primates.
This attitude, according to Money, plays a large part in the
formation of parahilias, the psyciatric and biomedical word for
sexual perversions. These generally occur when young children,
whose brains are vulnerable for reasons yet unknown, undergo
experiences that make their wiring jump the normal tracks, and
inappropriate stimuli, such as physical pain, get permanently
associated with erotic responses. Men, because of the way their
brains are made, tend to have visual paraphilias ... such as
transvestophilia in which they need to wear women's clothing to
perform sexually. Women are more likely to have "touchy-feely,
masochistic." paraphilias.
Money is one of very few researchers who have done the kind of
detective work necessary to track down the origin of a
paraphilia. One thing all paraphiliacs have in common is the
inability to form a romantic love bond. "I think the basic
theorem of all the paraphilias is that probably from the time of
childhood sexual rehearsal play, lust gets separated from love.
Anything below the belt is lust and punishable, and love,
affection and poetry go above the belt with kissing."
Money believes we have barely progressed from the days when
aberrant sexual behavior was ascribed to demonic possession.
"Everything in sex and sexual medicine is influenced by the fact
that we have sexology .... the science of sex ... which is not
very well developed, and we also have sexosophy [another Money
neologism]. Every society had it's own sexosophy as part of it's
religion millennia before it got down to having any science of
sex." And unlike most other branches of science, where religious
explanations have given way to scientific facts, our "sexosophy"
continues to dictate many of our attitudes.
"We don't believe in demon-possession theories, we've given up
the mid 18th-century idea that you degenerate yourself by losing
your vital fluids. So now we're absolutely certain we know what
causes all this weird sexual behavior: pornography." Anyone who
thinks otherwise need only look at the work of the pornography
commission headed by Attorney General Edwin Meese, which "totally
disregarded" scientific testimony from several witnesses,
including Money. Money says pornography, contrary to persisting
beliefs, is not "contagious" and isn't going to make you do
anything you didn't want to do anyway. "the only kind of
pornography you can like is that which corresponds to your own
lovemap. An example I give in lectures is that I could shut you
up in a room for five hours of coprophilia movies and there's no
chance you'd eat shit sandwiches for breakfast in the morning."
Money has earned the ire of some feminists by insisting that
Women Against Pornography "was one of the biggist catastrophes
that happened to the women's movement... It let the cat out of
the bag that these women really hated men. They put ammunition
into the hands of the archconservatives, who were able to say
with total justification that women are not really equal to men,
they're very weak and sensitive and need to be protected from
men's pornography." (Over the past two years, however, new
women's groups have emerged that support pornography,
particularly pornography for women, Money says.)
Again and again Money reverts to religion, with it's concepts of
sacrifice, guilt, and atonement, as being twisted in with
pathological sexual attitudes and behavior. "It's quite uncanny
how many rapists and lust murderers come from homes that were
rigidly religious and antisexual." He cites one case of child
abuse in which the mother was atoning for her sin by sacrificing
her child: Her sin was that she had been conceived by incest
between her father and her sister. Or take lust murderers. Money
suspects that a common theme in their backrounds is having had
sex forced on them as little boys by older women. Murdering the
sex object is the expiation for the childhood sin.
Money thinks probably all superrighteous moral crusaders are
kinky. In a 1985 book, "The Destroying Angel", Money recounts the
history of antisex crusader John Harvey Kellogg, the originator
of Kellogg's breakfast cereals, which were developed to quell
lust. According to Money's interpretation, it seems Kellogg was a
man who eschewed sex with his wife and got his sexual
gratification from enemas .. known as klismaphilia. "When I see
someone who cares self-righteousness to excess, I just
automatically say if I scratch the surface on this one, I'll find
the sin under there."
Although Money has often written about the need for a "sexual
democracy" characterized by a realistic and unbiased approach to
sexual problems, he won't say just how much taboo is a good idea.
He muses over possible benefits: "What if we did what some of the
tribal peoples do and at least felt good about kids discovering
their sexuality?" But asked if it would be a good idea to
encourage unbridled sexual play among children, he finally says:
"No. Because I don't think our society would know how to do it
yet. They would all fight each other."
Money does have some specific ideas on what to do about AIDS. He
thinks the gays themselfs had the right idea ... before AIDS made
it's appearance ... when they started masturbation clubs that
enable sexual stimulation without body contact. "What we should
be doing as a society is giving very explicit and strongly
positive messages to young people getting ready for puberty on
the positive joys of masturbation ..... not general instruction,
but very explicit teaching."
There is no chance of that in the present moral climate, Money
says. "I just sit here sometimes totally dumbfounded ... I see a
nation sitting around complacently watching itself being
destroyed by AIDS and not really doing very much about it."
Money is seen by many as a bit of an eccentric, in part because
of his general iconoclasm, perhaps in part because he never seems
to tire of talking about sex. But there is abundant testimony to
his stature as a scientist ... including 25 years of continuous
funding from the National Institute of Child Health and Human
Development, and the American Psychological Association's 1985
Distinguished Scientific Award for the Applications of Psychology.
Says Money serenely, "I don't mind being wrong a few times
because I'm right most of the time."