Film-maker Sir Peter Jackson is reportedly considering making a movie based on the experience of a Canadian man who a New Zealand doctor tried unsuccessfully to turn into a woman.
After a botched circumcision operation in the mid-1960s, psychologist
and sexologist John Money, with the approval of then-seven month old David Reimer's parents, tried to convert the boy into a girl through
gender realignment surgery. The parents then raised their son as a girl
who they called Brenda.
However, his re-built physiognomy was at variance with his natural gender and he never identified as a girl. At age 15 Reimer, increasingly experiencing extreme psychological trauma, transitioned to living as a male. He died suddenly in 2005 at age 38.
Jackson has told the Sunday Star Times he is inclined to make another New Zealand-themed or -linked movie soon. His last was Heavenly Creatures in 1994, a movie which carried undertones of sexuality issues. He describes Money as "the doctor who was the cause of that family's misery."
