The Reimer case is a strange one. It sticks around and gets as much air time as it does, because everyone seems to think it specifically confirms their priors. Troons believe is demonstrates that some kind of inborn gender identity exists, while critics like it because of a perceived analogy to contemporary care and because they feel that it demonstrates some evilness at the heart of trooning out children.
None of these things are really true. What Reimer was subject to doesn't really bear any real significance to modern troon 'treatments' and whether the conceptual language was originated by Money is ultimately irrelevant. For one, Money wasn't 'affirming' Reimer so much as he was attempting to condition or 'teach' him to 'be a girl.' You see the problem with Brenda (David's female name) was that she was an extremely boyish girl, the impression you get is that Brenda went way over being a mere 'tomboy. She found herself unable to make friends with girls, was bullied as 'cave woman' and . Interestingly, she did not actually seem to doubt that she was a girl until around the age of 9; this would be late by pediatric troon standards. However, these early doubts don't actually seem to be very organic, the (admittedly unprovable) feeling I have is that it was actually the experiences with Money and the demands for her to a vagina constructed that occurred around this time that actually triggered David's progressive realization.
In fact, in some strange sense Money was right that at least 'gender identity' is substantially, but not totally a matter of socialization. This is seen in the pattern of identification of XY intersex children; gender them as boys and they will almost all remain as boys, gender them as girls and a significant fraction will end up living as men. More conclusively,
this study found that 5/14 hormonally normal boys born with cloacal exstrophy assigned female at birth remained female at follow-up. It is possible that more of them transitioned after the completion of the study (one of them was only 9 years old at follow-up), but it seems that despite all of the children being masculine at least a fraction were nonetheless comfortable being raised as girls. Of the 9 that did transition, four of them assumed their male identities after having been informed of their genetic status which may or may not mean anything, since it could have been proffered by their parents in response to gender-related issues or spontaneously given.
It didn't really work out with David, which is not unsurprising but not knowable a priori. The problem with David was probably just a mixture of chance factors combined with the fact that he seems to have been highly masculine even as a boy. As I said before, Money, ironically, probably shot himself in the foot by attempting to feminize David's behavior since it seems that his efforts helped catalyze David's desire to be a boy. This is analogous to how ethnic minorities with stronger gender norms produce more troons.
After his father tells him what had happened when he was an infant; the destruction of his penis, the decision to raise him as a girl etc., David 'transitions' into a boy at the age of 14, in this capacity he actually finds instant sympathy and quickly becomes somewhat popular as a boy and acquires himself a girlfriend. From here on out, he actually seems to have lived a reasonably happy and fulfilled life for a time. He gets married, raises some step-kids etc.. Unfortunately his brother, Brian fairs much less well, developing severe psychiatric issues before overdosing on anti-depressants. In the two years after Brian's death, it seems that David's life falls apart, he becomes severely depressed (blaming himself for Brian's problems) while also becoming unemployed himself. His wife eventually decides to ask for a divorce and two days later David commits suicide in a car park.
Despite, the tragic ending, I don't think it is possible to meaingfully conclude that it was Money who "really" killed David let alone Brian. David's death - to me at least - seems like a death of despair like any other, and while maybe in his last moments David thought about Money, I don't know that it really mattered. David hadn't seen Money for over 25 years; all the skin-crawling play acting seems remote and frankly irrelevant in the face of the problems facing David at the time of his death. It seems that attributions of blame for David's death are entirely motivated by a desire to make David's ghost serve their ends than it is by any consideration of the facts.
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In the end, the Reimer case shows little of anything. It is a case study within a wider literature demonstrating that gender-related expressive inclinations are strongly influenced by pre-natal factors*. Most probably by exposure to androgens and estrogens. Just like the rest of this literature, it does not provide evidence for the existence of 'gender identity' as an inborn and essentially biological feature of humans. It is at best agnostic on the subject, and realistically I should think that it is weakly opposed to the notion. You cannot separate behavioral dispositions from identity formations, because David was plainly masculine from the age of 2-3 until his death. It is perfectly valid to conclude that the male identity that he assumed at the age of 14 and probably desired from the age of at least 11 was the product of his failure to fit as a girl as opposed to any innate need to be socially oriented or perceived as a boy.
The case doesn't provide much insight for clinicians beyond a general caution against attempting to alter basic behavioral inclinations. Nobody seeks to do such things anymore, and since at least the 1990s this has been the consensus view with respect to gender-related therapy. It should also be noted that David's behavioral inclinations were very likely much stronger than most gender dysphoric or non-conforming children's are. Moreover, his general psychological profile was likely much more discordant with his assigned gender than most such children's are. Finally, if behavior-identity incongruence is acceptable (i.e. "It's OK to like Barbies as a boy!"), which everyone (except the Iranian ayatollahs) claims is the case, then it provides no guidance into whether it is reasonable to "affirm" a child in a cross-sex identity as opposed to help them accept themselves as a non-conforming member of their birth-sex.
And, as a post-script: it has literally no revelance for definitely (birth-sex) gender-conforming degenerates like Mr. Gibes.
*EDIT: I thought I'd elaborate slightly on this point. It is not that pre and peri-natal hormone exposures necessarily determine behavioral preferences for all time or that they can't be modified. Rather, it produces some basal psychological profile that in turn tends to motivate a particular pattern of behavior. Motivation not capacity plays the central role in producing superficial patterns of gendered behavior. You can therefore change those patterns and indeed change them in a way that would not be perceived as coercive by the subject but, only if you can change their motivations.
This is not really saying all that much, and is in fact totally uncontroversial since it is merely explaining that heterosexual troons should exist. The key issue is that altering motivation within a therapeutic context is difficult and probably impossible on any consistent basis if that context doesn't encompass very nearly the subject's entire existence. Hence, why clinicians like Ken Zucker take an approach that focuses on reconciliation and conscious raising as opposed to behavioral modification per se, unless the child exhibits behaviors that would be problematic even in a gender-conforming child.
Moreover, it seems that when this does happen incidentally (as in the case of most troons) it does so for reasons that seem positively dysfunctional, i.e. through sexually-derived obsessions producing some change in affective disposition towards assuming opposite sex roles.
