Tiger Devore | |
|---|---|
| Born | Howard Devore 1958 |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation(s) | Clinical psychologist and sex therapist |
| Known for | Intersex activist and educator |
| Television | Oprah (1984)[1] |
| Website | www |
Tiger Devore, previously known asHoward Devore andTiger Howard Devore, is an American clinical psychologist, sex therapist, and spokesperson onintersex issues.[2] He was a member of the defunctIntersex Society of North America.[3] HistorianAlice Dreger credits him with starting the work of the intersex movement.[4]
Tiger Devore was born with severehypospadias and has experienced over 20 surgeries and four full reconstructions. He says that, "all the surgeries I suffered up to age 19 were unnecessary failures."[5][6]
Devore has a PhD in clinical psychology and works as a sex therapist, activist and educator with over 30 years of experience in advocacy for intersex people and others who are sexually different from the mainstream.[7] Devore has worked in research clinics at theJohns Hopkins Hospital Medical School, and the Human Sexuality Program atUCLA. During his time at Johns Hopkins University, he worked with the sexologistJohn Money.[8][4] He has also worked forNIH as a crisis counsellor and worked with imprisoned sex offenders.[7]
Alice Dreger describes how Devore, through his work at Johns Hopkins University and as an "out gay man in the 1970s-1980s in America" developed an awareness about "the clinical abuse of sexual minorities".[4] He began to work as an educator and appeared on theOprah show in 1984, considered to be the first television appearance by an intersex person talking about lived experiences.[1] Dreger describes howCheryl Chase was referred to him in November 1992, how Devore "taught her about the value of mutual support groups", and how, in 1993, Chase announced the establishment of theIntersex Society of North America (ISNA).[4] Dreger states that:
Devore contributed to ISNA and to the intersex rights movement the outline of what a reformed clinical system would look like: Intersex children would be given preliminary gender assignments as boys and girls (recognizing that all gender assignment is preliminary and does not require surgery); hormonal and surgical interventions would be limited to those that were needed to treat clear and present medical problems, with all elective interventions waiting until patients could consent for themselves; intersex children and adults (and their loved ones) would be provided professional, non-shaming psychosocial support and peer support.[4]
Dreger states that, despite the expertise offered by Devore and Chase at that time, "reporters and producers generally counted Devore and Laurent only as intersex subjects, while I counted as a supposedly objective expert".[4] She states that these reforms still remain to be implemented in 2018.[4] Devore continues to argue in favor of fully informed consent by intersex people to genital surgeries.[6][9] He states:
I am tired of the perpetration of great harms against infants and babies with perfectly healthy genitals that happen to look different from what the doctors think is standard. Intersex genitalia are not unhealthy, they just look different than some ideal of male or female genitalia. The experiment to reshape intersex genitals early in a child's life has failed. People should have the right to determine if they want reshaped genitals or not, when they are old enough to decide for themselves. That's informed consent; when the person them self has the information necessary to decide if they want a treatment of any kind, or not.[7]
Devore has also argued against the use ofdisorders of sex development, as a term that is "more scientific," and "more medical," but also more treatable, and more of astigma.[10] In a statement in November 2015, Devore called for an end to unnecessary surgeries and "recognition of the rights of the child to bodily integrity and self determination", stating "that medicine and the research community continue to co-opt patient advocates in order to silence them by giving us the impression that we had access to influencing medical practice and research."[11]
He is a board member, and former president, of the Hypospadias and Epispadias Association, and a former member of the defunct Intersex Society of North America.[12][13][3]
Devore has been an educator and media spokesperson on intersex issues since 1984 when he appeared onOprah.[3] He has appeared in documentaries forDiscovery Channel (2000),[14]PBS,National Geographic Channel television, theBritish Broadcasting Corporation, and the award-winning short movieXXXY byStanford University.[15][16][17] Devore is also interviewed in the 2012 documentaryIntersexion. In 2013, he was interviewed byTime Magazine on the then-new German birth certificate laws, and called for a global ban on "normalizing surgeries."[18] Devore was interviewed on the Howard Stern Show on July 28, 1999.[19]
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