Last month, a Canadian research team released a statement to “make explicit” the proper implications of their recent analyses on affirming health care for trans people. The group’s reviews were commissioned by the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), an SPLC-designated anti-LGBT hate group.
SEGM is openly opposed to health care for trans people and is the largest hub of anti-trans pseudoscience in academic medicine. Their insistence on “evidence-based gender medicine” is merely a dogwhistle to cast aspersions on trans people’s health care. SEGM’s alternative to medical transition is exploratory psychotherapy (AKA conversion therapy).
As such, SEGM is propping up the pseudo-intellectual political consensus that trans people should not exist. Next week, SEGM will convene in Berlin for their third annual conference. The topic of the four day meeting is “Youth Gender Distress” and will feature a keynote lecture by gender critical transphobe Kathleen Stock.
SEGM’s anti-trans animosity was clear from its start in 2020. That December, the group applauded the decision in Bell v. Tavistock where the Court of Appeals for England and Wales required trans people under 16 to obtain a court order before receiving health care.
In 2021 the Canadian research team entered a formal agreement with SEGM to produce medical reviews: “[T]he organization appeared to us as non-trans, cis-gender researchers to be legitimately evidence-based.”
Following publication of the commissioned pieces, SEGM touted the researchers’ conclusion that the evidence for trans health care is low certainty. In a statement released by McMaster University, five of the original authors (a majority) left their thoughts crystal clear:
Following fundamental principles of humane medical practice, clinicians have an obligation to care for those in need, often in the context of shared decision making. It is unconscionable to forbid clinicians from delivering gender-affirming care.... The high respect for autonomy becomes particularly important when the certainty of the evidence is low or very low. In such circumstances, clinicians should work with patients to ensure that care reflects the experience, goals, and priorities of those needing care – that is, their values and preferences.
The agreement between the researchers and SEGM ended in 2024. The team published at least 3 skeptical reviews on “gender affirming hormone therapy for individuals with gender dysphoria aged <26 years,” “puberty blockers for gender dysphoria in youth,” and “mastectomy for individuals with gender dysphoria younger than 26 years.”
According to funding disclosures from the researchers to the publishing journals, individual researchers did not receive direct financial compensation from SEGM. However, McMaster University did receive the SEGM money, making it available to the research team to pay salaries and other research costs. The total value of the agreement was not reported.
According to an investigation by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), in 2021 SEGM received money from four known sources: charitable giving funds at Fidelity, Vanguard, and PayPal as well as the American Online Giving Foundation (a $2 billion per year nonprofit with nebulous funding sources).
Ultimately, the Guyatt et al. research team should have never taken the SEGM commissions. Yes, it’s good that they are clarifying the political implications of their research, but trans people have been losing access to health care. The damage is already real.
We should also recognize the role of McMaster for laundering the SEGM money and of the journals (The BMJ and Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery) for laundering the hate-funded research. These are not neutral actors. They could have simply chosen not to go along with this charade. Instead, they have lended their legitimacy to the SEGM hate machine.
Pseudoscience networks like SEGM are just misinformation at an academic scale. They are bad actors who hijack the process of knowledge production and infiltrate the media ecosystem with a false air of intellectualism. It is the epitome of an ivory tower that serves only the interests of the oligarch class.
The promise of medicine is so much more than that. It’s new and accessible treatments for human disease, robust public health measures, and equity-based quality of life enhancements.
This vision for medicine seems so far away right now, and that’s an indictment of our political, social, and scientific institutions. We deserve better.
from the archive
