The Phall-O-meter was developed by Kiira Triea based on a concept by professor of psychology
Suzanne Kessler. Kessler summarized the range of medically acceptable infant penis and clitoris sizes in the book
Lessons from the Intersexed. Kessler states that normative tables for clitoral length appeared in the late 1980s, while normative tables for penis length appeared more than forty years before that. She combined those standard tables to demonstrate an "intermediate area of phallic length that neither females nor males are permitted to have", that is, a
clitoris larger than 9mm or a
penis shorter than 25mm. In her 2000 book
Sexing the Body,
Anne Fausto-Sterling describes how members of the intersex rights movement had developed a "phall-o-meter". Fausto-Sterling notes that, despite the existence of normative tables, clinicians' practices are more subjective: "doctors may use only their personal impressions to decide" on an appropriate clitoris size. Similarly, in a paper presented to the American Sociological Association in 2003, Sharon Preves cites Melissa Hendricks, writing in the Johns Hopkins Magazine, November 1993 on subjective clinical norms and their relationship to surgical management: Copies of the Phall-O-Meter are now held by the
Wellcome Library in London, and the
Smithsonian Institution. ==Related concepts==