US Policy on Sex Designation Changes Expands Without Uniform Biological Criteria

Crandall documents the Reimer experiment where Bruce Reimer was reassigned female after a 1965 circumcision accident under Dr. John Money, with follow-up data later showing rejection of the assignment and reversion to male identity by 1979. Primary medical records and Money's retracted claims reveal the blank-slate hypothesis failed under longitudinal observation. State and institutional actors have since altered birth certificate sex markers in multiple US jurisdictions without requiring sterility or chromosomal criteria, creating divergent legal standards from race or age designations that remain fixed by statute. The Reimer outcome and subsequent European reviews of youth transitions, including Sweden's 2022 policy shift restricting puberty blockers, illustrate measurable divergence between early claims of reversibility and recorded desistance rates above 60 percent in pre-2000 cohorts.