But if his acquaintances considered Money’s tips to be science fiction, they just weren’t prepared to say-so publicly. His records discussing his concept turned into popular in his career, providing not only to propel him to help you international renown while the an effective sex specialist in addition to in order to rates their arise the fresh hierarchy on Johns Hopkins, in which he ascended from secretary in order to member professor away from medical psychology, practise their concept regarding kid sexual invention so you can years regarding medical children. Because of the 1965, the year of John and Kevin Thiessen’s birth, Money’s profile are virtually unassailable. He had for more than a decade been head from Hopkins’ Psychohormonal Lookup Tool (their infirmary for the treatment of and 
you can training intersex babies), in which he try quickly to help co-located Hopkins’ pioneering Gender Identity Clinic – a beneficial coup you to helped secure him a credibility, claims John Hampson, as the «the latest national authority on sex problems.»
Money’s concept you to definitely babies was psychosexually simple try both unorthodox and up against the current climate from research, which for decades got considering brand new important role regarding chromosomes and hormonal during the deciding intimate conclusion
There was, although not, a minumum of one specialist who was prepared to concern Currency. He had been a young graduate college student in the University out of Ohio. The fresh kid regarding striving Ukrainian-Jewish immigrant moms and dads, Milton Diamond, exactly who household members call Mickey, grew up from the Bronx, in which he had sidestepped membership throughout the local highway gangs for living out-of a student. Since the an enthusiastic undergraduate majoring for the biophysics from the City College or university of new York, Diamond became fascinated by the fresh new character regarding hormonal on the womb and their possible role when you look at the determining somebody’s gender title and sexual positioning. Inside the later 20s, because a graduate college student for the endocrinology at the Kansas, the guy used creature lookup about them, injecting expecting guinea pigs and rats with assorted hormonal cocktails so you’re able to see how pre-beginning occurrences manage apply to after intimate behavior. The data into the Diamond’s research suggested a link between this new hormones that bathe a building fetus’s head and you will nervous system and its particular later sexual performing. It had been as a way to improve money to have his went on browse you to Diamond removed a grant on the National Research Basis Committee getting Browse during the Troubles out of Sex a loan application you to requisite the distribution from a report report.
Diamond’s criticism appeared in The Quarterly Post on Biology into the 1965. Marshaling proof of biology, therapy, psychiatry, anthropology and you will endocrinology so you’re able to argue that sex term are hardwired on the mind around off conception, the brand new paper is actually an enthusiastic audacious complications so you’re able to Money’s authority (particularly originating from an unidentified graduate scholar within College of Kansas). Very first handling the idea about the psychosexual independence out-of intersexes, Diamond pointed out that like someone experience «a hereditary otherwise hormones imbalance» regarding the uterus. Diamond debated that even in the event intersexuals was steered into the that intercourse or perhaps the almost every other since infants, this is never facts that rearing is more influential than biology. This may only signify the new structure within their thoughts got gone through, in utero, a keen ambiguity from sexual distinction similar to that of this new muscle within their vagina.
Basically, intersexes has an enthusiastic inherent, neurological ability to go one another means – a potential, Diamond hastened to indicate, you to naturally regular college students indeed would not show
Also a scientist less narrow-skinned than simply John Money could have been stung by relaxed, relentless reasoning of Diamond’s assault – hence, close to the prevent, raised the most elementary, Technology 101 objection to the extensive enjoy from Money’s theory from psychosexual malleability within the regular people. «To help with [such as for example a good] concept,» Diamond blogged, «we are served with zero illustration of a frequent individual lookin as an enthusiastic unequivocal men and being reared successfully given that an excellent lady.»