Too Much to Handle

In their attempts to give their son a bright future, Janet and Ron often found themselves pressuring young Bruce to adapt to his enforced identity. The pressure at home extended to school, where he could not figure out his place between how he felt and how he was expected to behave.

Reimer was teased by classmates for his masculine gait and standing to pee in the girls’ bathroom, while he was banned from using the boys’ bathroom. When he complained about feeling like a boy, his parents convinced him that it was just a phase. By the time “Brenda” was 13 years old, the piling pressure was too much, and she suffered a mental breakdown.