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Devendra Singh vs. transgender people

Devendra Singh was an Indian-American evolutionary psychologist who held harmful and biased views about sex and gender minorities.

Background

Singh was born January 12, 1938 in Urai, India. Singh earned a master’s degree in philosophy at Agra University before earning a doctorate in psychology at Ohio State University in 1966. Following positions at Wright State University and North Dakota State University, Singh began teaching at University of Texas at Austin in 1969.

Singh is best known for research about waist-to-hip ratio in women, which Singh claimed has evolutionary significance.

Singh was married to Barbara Singh (1943–2022) and had three children. Singh died on May 18, 2010.

Views on sex and gender minorities

In 2000 Scott M. Strong, Singh, and Patrick K. Randall published an article that claimed “a ‘high feminine’ subtype of gay males had greater body dissatisfaction than ‘less feminine’ subtypes had.”

Singh appeared with a number of anti-trans activists on the series The Sex Files in an episode titled “Homosexuality.”

  • Why are some people gay? That’s the $64,000 question – at least in the scientific community. Is it something genetically predetermined? Or does environment have an impact on whether an individual turns out to be gay or lesbian? These questions are beginning to be probed in ways that might finally be leading to an answer, and the Sex Files has interviewed the foremost authorities on the topic to uncover some of those scientific clues: 
  • Dr. Devendra Singh, University of Texas psychologist specializing in the evolutionary significance of human physical attractiveness 
  • Dr. Ken Zucker, head of the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic at the University of Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry 
  • Dr. Ray Blanchard, head of the Clinical Sexology program at the University of Toronto’s Clarke Institute of Psychiatry 
  • Dr. Michael Bailey, professor of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois and specialist in the genetics and environment of sexual orientation 
  • Dr. Marc Breedlove, professor of psychology* specialising in the sexual differentiation of the brain.

Singh was also a mentor to J. Michael Bailey’s son Drew Bailey.

References

University of Texas (May 21, 2010). Psychology Professor Devendra Singh Dies. https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/news/psychology-professor-devendra-singh-dies

Exploration Production (November 20, 2000). S02 E08: Homosexuality. The Sex Files

Strong SM, Singh D, Randall PK (2000). Childhood Gender Nonconformity and Body Dissatisfaction in Gay and Heterosexual Men. Sex Roles https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007126814910

Obituary (2010). Devendra Singh https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/statesman/name/devendra-singh-obituary?id=23339973

[Obituary] (April 16, 2022). Barbara Gay Boggess Singh. Austin American-Statesman https://www.statesman.com/obituaries/p0204794

Resources

University of Texas, Austin Psychology (liberalarts.utexas.edu/psychology)

  • Devendra Singh [archive]
  • http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/faculty/singh/singh.html
  • Devendra Singh remembered [archive] https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/psychology/research-faculty/emeriti-in-memoriam/devendra-singh-remembered.html

Wikipedia (en.wikipedia.org)

* The original episode guide described Dr. Breedlove as a “professor of psychology at UCLA.” Dr. Breedlove noted in 2008 “I am not, and have never been, a professor of psychology or of anything else at UCLA.” Breedlove earned his Ph.D. at UCLA but taught at UC Berkeley before taking an appointment at Michigan State.