Der „Sissy Boy“-Fall (Kirk Andrew Murphy)

Leserin Atacama wies auf einen sehr interessanten Fall hin, den Fall von Kirk Andrew Murphy, der quasi ein umgekehrter David Reimer Fall ist: Es handelt sich um einen sehr weiblichen Jungen, der umerzogen werden sollte zu einem „härteren“ Mann und dann später Selbstmord begangen hat.

Aus einem Bericht:

Male escort and Baptist minister

„I used to spend so much time thinking, why would he kill himself at the age of 38? It doesn’t make any sense to me,“ said Kirk’s sister, Maris Murphy. „What I now think is I don’t know how he made it that long.“

After Kirk’s death, Maris started a search that would uncover a dark family secret. That secret revealed itself during a phone conversation with her older brother Mark, who mentioned his distrust of any kind of therapy.

„Don’t you remember all that crap we went through at UCLA?“ he asked her. Maris was too young to remember the details, but Mark remembered it vividly as a low point in their lives.

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Wanting a ’normal life‘

Kirk Murphy was a bright 5-year-old boy, growing up near Los Angeles in the 1970s. He was the middle child, with big brother Mark, 8, and little sister Maris, just a baby at 9 months. Their mother, Kaytee Murphy, remembers Kirk’s kind nature, „He was just very intelligent, and a sweet, sweet, child.“ But she was also worried.

„Well, I was becoming a little concerned, I guess, when he was playing with dolls and stuff,“ she said. „Playing with the girls‘ toys, and probably picking up little effeminate, well, like stroking the hair, the long hair and stuff. It just bothered me that maybe he was picking up maybe too many feminine traits.“ She said it bothered her because she wanted Kirk to grow up and have „a normal life.“

Also ein Kind, dass sich von den Geschlechterrollen nicht beeindrucken läßt und eher Verhalten der Rolle des anderen Geschlechtes zeigt. Nach den biologischen Theorien leicht zu erklären, etwa indem in einer kritischen Phase im Mutterleib weniger Testosteron auf das ungeborene Kind eingewirkt hat und daher nicht der „Wachstumsplan“, der typischerweise bei Jungen aktiviert wird verwendet wurde, sondern der für das weibliche Geschlecht. Nach den Gendertheorien hat das Kind einfach die Rollen nicht aufgenommen, warum weiß man nicht.

Es ging dann leider tragisch weiter, er wurde „behandelt“, damit er sich „normal“ entwickelt:

The therapy at UCLA involved a special room with two tables where „Kraig’s“ behavior was monitored, according to the study.

„There was a one-way mirror or one-way window — and some days they would let him choose which table he would go to,“ said Maris, who has read about the experiments.

At one table Kirk could choose between what were considered masculine toys like plastic guns and handcuffs, and what were meant to be feminine toys like dolls and a play crib. At the other table, Kirk could choose between boys‘ clothing and a toy electric razor or items like dress-up jewelry and a wig.

According to the case study, Kaytee Murphy was told to ignore her son when he played with feminine toys and compliment him when he played with masculine toys.

„They pretty much told him he wasn’t right the way that he was, but they never really explained it to him what the issue was. They did it through play,“ Maris said.

See more about Kaytee Murphy’s decision to enroll Kirk

Rekers wrote that Kirk would cry out for attention, even throwing tantrums, but Kaytee Murphy was told to keep going.

Harsh beatings

At home, the punishment for feminine behavior would become more severe. The therapists instructed Kirk’s parents to use poker chips as a system of rewards and punishments.

According to Rekers‘ case study, blue chips were given for masculine behavior and would bring rewards, such as candy. But the red chips, given for effeminate behavior, resulted in „physical punishment by spanking from the father.“

Mark said he was told to participate in the chip reward-and-punishment system as a way to make Kirk feel like the system was OK.

he family said the spankings were severe. Maris remembers „lots of belt incidents.“ She escaped the screaming by going to her bed to „lay in the room with my pillow on my head.“ Later, she would go to Kirk’s bedroom and „lay down and hug him and we would just lay there, and the thing that I remember is that he never even showed anger. He was just numb.“

During one particularly harsh punishment, their mother recalls, her husband „spanked“ Kirk „so hard that he had welts up and down his back and on his buttocks.“

She remembers her son Mark saying, „Cry harder, and he won’t hit so hard.“ She says, „Today, it would be abuse.“

Sometimes Mark would try to protect his brother, to make his beatings less severe.

„I took some of the red chips and I put them on my side,“ said Mark, as tears came to his eyes. But he said the beatings were still frequent.

The number of stacked red chips became a telltale sign about the level of tension in the house. When he returned home each day, Mark often looked for the chips in their easily visible location between the living room and the kitchen.

„You looked and were like, ‚What’s the chip count today? What happened? What changed? How bad is it going to be?‘ And it was always bad. There was whipping every Friday night. There was no way out of it.“

Kirk’s formal clinical treatment lasted 10 months, but the family said some of the treatment techniques and practices lasted longer at home.

Also der Versuch einer Umerziehung mit massiven Eingriffen und dem Versuch über Belohnung und Strafe quasi eine Neukonditionierung zu erreichen. Wenn man sich mittels dieses Experiments gegen die Gendertheorie wendet, dann muss man sich natürlich bewußt machen und zugestehen, dass diese solche Umformungen mittels Gewalt nicht fordert, wobei ich mir auch dort zumindest psychische Abstrafungen für „Mackerverhalten“ vorstellen kann. Dennoch müsste sich die Gendertheorie auch an diesem Fall, genauso wie im Fall David Reimer, Viktor / Viktoria und auch den cloacal extrophy Kindern sowie den Mädchen mit einem hohen Testosteronspiegel in der Studie von Udry oder den Kibbuzerfahrungen fragen, warum die Umerziehungen bei rein sozial begründeten Rollen nicht klappen. Umfassende theoretische Antworten hierauf hat die Gendertheorie aus meiner Sicht nicht entwickelt und sich des Problems auch nicht angenommen, es wird eher so getan, als würde es sich bei David Reimer um einen Einzelfall handeln, der eben auf die Besonderheiten des behandelnden Arztes zurückzuführen sind.

Zu Kirks besonderer hormonellen Vergangenheit auch das Folgende:

She also recalled that when she was pregnant with Kirk, she was on hormone treatments for two months. She wonders why nobody at UCLA thought that was significant. That could be relevant, although the research is very thin.99 She also remembers that her doctor decided to induce labor at nine months so he could go on vacation. “Hindsight is always better,” she said, “but I have always regretted having induced labor. Kirk got off to a bad beginning.”

She also brought up Kirk’s undescended left testicle and the fact that nobody seemed concerned about it. “No one told us if there was anything we could do about it,” she said. “So once again, we were in the dark. She also added a telling anecdote. “Kirk was not comfortable around doctors,” she explained. “He practically ran out of the room when old Doctor Peterson in Hamilton wanted to examine him.”

Gut gegangen ist es jedenfalls nicht:

Kirk Andrew Murphy seemed to have everything to live for.

He put himself through school. He had a successful 8-year career in the Air Force. After the service, he landed a high profile position with an American finance company in India.

But in 2003 at age 38, Kirk Murphy took his own life.

A co-worker found him hanging from the fan of his apartment in New Delhi. His family has struggled for years to understand what happened.

Hier kann man natürlich einwenden, dass ja gar nicht feststeht, dass er aufgrund seiner „Therapie“ Selbstmord begangen hat. Er scheint mit 8 Jahren in der Air Force (als Übersetzer für Chinesisch, wenn ich es richtig verstanden habe) und einer guten Position in einer Firma ja einiges erreicht zu haben. Natürlich kann sein Selbstmord auch gänzlich andere Gründe haben.  Die Familie und Freunde scheinen davon auszugehen, dass die Therapie schuld war:

The cheerful boy Kirk had been before the treatment started vanished, family members recalled.

„It left Kirk just totally stricken with the belief that he was broken, that he was different from everybody else,“ said Maris. „He even ate his lunch in the boy’s bathroom for three years of his high school career, if you want to call it that.“

Kaytee lays the blame for her son’s death more than three decades later squarely on the punishing treatment he endured.

„I blame them for the way his life turned out,“ Kaytee told CNN. „If one person causes another person’s death, I don’t care if it’s 20 or 50 years later, it’s the same as murder in my eyes.“

Die Beschreibung seiner Situation zuletzt war diese:

Kirk seemed to thrive in India, at least by outward appearances. But his old coping patterns soon repeated themselves: he was hiding his struggles. Only this time, he was away from his supportive network of friends. Maris would later learn that he emailed a trusted coworker back in Phoenix that he was having trouble emotionally. “He was saying he was tired,” Maris recalled, “he didn’t like being a gay man in a country that didn’t accept that, he had met someone over there and that was filled with conflict and fear, and he was distraught over all of that. And he was working too much and he felt isolated, and if he wasn’t successful there, he couldn’t handle the failure of it.” Kirk’s coworker in Phoenix did what she could to support him, but that was difficult to do over long distances via email. Meanwhile, Kirk’s emails to Debbie and her partner, the people who probably knew him the best, remained upbeat. There were no hints that Kirk was unhappy. “None whatsoever,” Debbie emphasized. Again, the lessons that Kirk learned at a very young age, that he needed to hide whatever would trouble those closest to him, continued to serve him poorly.

Because India is such a family-centered society, and because most of the people who worked at the New Delhi office were single and came from other cities and villages, the company organized social events and activities for their employees. That December, the company rented a sports complex and organized a day of games and competitions. Kirk’s coworkers would later tell Maris that everyone had a great time that day, including Kirk. They said that he had participated fully in the competitions and was key to his team’s victory in tug-of-war.

The next day was the awards ceremony, but Kirk never showed up. His friends tried calling him on his cell phone, but he didn’t answer. Fearing that something was wrong, they went to his apartment building. They tried banging on the door to his apartment but there was no answer. Then someone looked through a window and saw Kirk. He had hanged himself from a ceiling fan. He was already dead.

Es scheint also als hätte Kirk über die Therapie lediglich gelernt sich zu verstellen, dabei aber auch ein ungutes Verhältnis zu seiner Homosexualität entwickelt, die es ihm nicht erlaubte tiefere Bindungen einzugehen. Letztendlich konnte er sich vielleicht deswegen nicht mehr öffnen und damit auch nicht um die notwendige Hilfe bitten.

Ich vermute, dass dies die Folgen einer Umerziehung weg von dem, was man eigentlich will ist, unabhängig von der eigentlichen Richtung, also sowohl von geschlechtertypischen als auch untypischen Verhalten.