Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine
This content was last updated June 10, 2024, 10:22 a.m. UTC
The Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt political organization that promotes medical misinformation surrounding gender-affirming care. SEGM is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many of those associated with the group practice alternative therapies for gender dysphoria that lack an evidentiary base. They oppose including treatments that seek to change a person’s gender identity in conversion therapy bans.
SEGM’s organizational activism typically takes the form of filing amicus briefs in court cases worldwide in opposition to gender affirming care and transgender rights, and providing fringe members of the medical profession to serve as expert witnesses in litigation concerning these topics. Anti-transgender papers published by those associated with the group have frequently been cited in court cases that seek to deny or remove transgender people’s civil liberties.
SEGM’s materials present a plausible veneer of professionalism that can be confusing for the average person who encounters them. A report from Yale School of Medicine found that material from SEGM had been relied on for the supposed scientific evidence behind Alabama’s ban on gender-affirming care for youth and for a directive from the Texas Attorney General that provision of gender-affirming care should be investigated as child abuse. The report further found the group was not a reliable source of medical information. The Yale researchers wrote “the group appears to be nothing more than a website; it does not appear to hold meetings, screen its members, or publish a journal. The original content on the website includes statements unsupported by any citations. When the content does provide citations, they are often unreliable or misleading.”
SEGM-affiliated clinicians also published a key publication, “One Size Does not Fit All: In Defense of Psychotherapy for Gender Dysphoria,” which, according to Almetric, is in the top 1% of all scientific publications, and has been downloaded more than 20,000 times. SEGM-affiliated experts also provided critical evidence in the Keira Bell case, highlighting the risks and uncertainties of the “affirmative” intervention model for gender-dysphoric young people.
SEGM President Roberto D’Angelo, 19 December 2020
Founding
SEGM filed as a corporate entity in Idaho on January 27th, 2020. William Malone was listed as their original director, and they listed no voting members at that time. By December of 2020, they named Roberto D’Angelo as their president, and their board of directors included William Malone, Julia Mason, Marcus Evans, and Stephen Beck.
Until August of 2023, SEGM listed fourteen affiliated medical professionals or scientists in the “About Us” section of their website, and claimed to have one hundred active members. A more recent version of their website removed mention of specific individuals and featured an FAQ asserting “SEGM is not a membership organization.”
Finances
Since its inception, SEGM has seen significant growth in revenue year by year. In 2020, they reported an annual revenue of $126,654, the end result of $199,566 in donations or grants, less $72,912 in expenses. In the following year, they reported contributions and grants totaling $793,975, and $151,534 in expenses for a total gross revenue of $769,095.
On December 14th, 2019, board member William Malone started a GoFundMe for the organization, listing fellow board member Stephen Beck as the campaign’s recipient and using an Adobe stock photo of a young woman. Many of the donations are anonymous and in the range of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, with many repeat contributors, including Beck himself. The donation form remains at the bottom of SEGM’s website, but their GoFundMe page states that they have disabled donations.
In both the 2020 and 2021 990 form filed for SEGM, their officers and board of directors are stated to have each worked five hours a week on average for the organization, and received no monetary compensation for their work. They listed no salaried employees, and withheld donor information.
A deeper dive into SEGM's funding was conducted by Health Liberation Now! in February of 2023.
History of Anti-LGBTQ+ Activism
SEGM’s main activism involves providing its collaborators as sources of expert testimony in court cases opposing the civil liberties of transgender people, and filing amicus briefs in those same kinds of court cases.
In February of 2020, board member William Malone testified in support of an Idaho bill that would have made it a felony crime for doctors to prescribe hormone blocking medicines to transgender youth. He stated that sex was a binary, that transgender men on testosterone are five times more likely to have heart disease, and that there is no strong evidence to suggest that gender affirming care leads to happier patients.
Later that month, SEGM was cited in Idaho House Bill 509 as part of the justification to amend Idaho state law such that a transgender person could not update their birth certificate to recognize material changes to their body via medical transition. ACLU Idaho challenged the bill, it was signed into law on March 30th, and then struck down by a federal court on August 7th.
In December of 2020, in their end of year review, SEGM president Roberto D’Angelo stated that “SEGM-affiliated experts also provided critical evidence in the Keira Bell case.”
In May of 2021, SEGM submitted a written request to Canada’s Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs to amend Bill C-6: An Act to amend the Criminal Code (conversion therapy), a proposed bill to define and ban conversion therapy, such that it would not include gender identity in its wording. The bill died on the floor when that session of parliament was dissolved, but was later passed in December of that year, without SEGM’s proposed changes.
In July of 2021, SEGM filed an amicus brief in Doe v. Snyder, an Arizona court case in which two transgender teens litigated against state healthcare services so that their chest reconstruction surgery would be paid for by the state. Doe filed for injunctive relief, but was ultimately denied, and was then denied in his subsequent appeal.
In February of 2022, SEGM was cited twice in a letter from Texas Governor Greg Abbot’s to Jaime Masters of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services. In this letter, Abbott stated that his office had determined gender affirming medical care for transgender youth to be comparable to child abuse, and directed Masters to task his department with investigating gender affirming care in the state of Texas.
In February of 2023, a study by SEGM was cited by Mike Leman of the Catholic Dioceses in support of Wyoming Senate File 111, a proposed bill that would criminalize “any procedure, drug, other agent or combination thereof that is administered to intentionally or knowingly change the sex of the child.” The bill also stipulated that consent of the child would not be considered as a defense for the offense.
Connections to Other Anti-Transgender Organizations
SEGM has close ties to other anti-transgender organizations.
Julia Mason, Marcus Evans, Roberto D’Angelo, Sasha Ayad, Stella O'Malley, and Lisa Marchiano are all associated with both SEGM and Genspect, an anti-transgender advocacy group operating in legal and academic environments to promote medical misinformation about transgender people and transition. O’Malley, the founder of Genspect, is an Irish psychotherapist whose practices have been called conversion therapy. O’Malley has stated that her goal in therapy is to stop youth from accessing medical transition.
Board member William Malone also has direct ties to the fringe conservative doctor’s organization the American College of Pediatricians (ACPeds), an anti-transgender religious hate group, Malone collaborated on a letter to the editor to the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism denying the efficacy of the gender affirming care model with ACPeds president Quentin Van Meter and prominent ACPeds members Paul Hruz and André Van Mol.
Members Become Collaborators
According to SEGM’s 2021 Form 990, SEGM’s board consisted of:
- Robert D’Angelo, SEGM President
- William Malone, SEGM Secretary
- Stephen Beck, SEGM Treasurer
- Julia Mason, SEGM Director
- Marcus Evans, SEGM Director
SEGM’s About Us page, as recently as August 6th, 2023, listed the following anti-transgender activists as members of the organization:
- Sasha Ayad, host of anti-transgender podcast Gender: A Wider Lens
- Lisa Marchiano, inventor of fringe theory ROGD
- Stella O’Malley, founder of Genspect
- Avi Ring, founder of Gender Identity Challenge Skandinavia
The page also listed Michael Biggs, Richard Byng, and Catherine Williamson of the UK, Sven Román of Sweden, and Colin Wright of the US.
In August or September of 2023, SEGM merged their About Us and Frequently Asked Questions pages, removing the above list of members and stating that they are “not a membership organization.” They now claim they collaborate with “licensed clinicians, in good standing with their respective medical societies, and respected in their communities.”