Summary
The Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) is a named SPLC hate group, accused of promoting pseudoscience to deny gender-affirming healthcare. McMaster's University has now added their voice to this narrative. This article explores the background and names some British healthcare professionals involved.
Exposing SEGM’s Influence on UK Trans Healthcare & Cass Review
In 2022, we did something special – we were the first organisation to blow open the fact that the Conservative government had packed the Equality and Human Rights (EHRC) with gender-critical activists to cultivate their culture war against trans people. Today, the EHRC is discredited and in its last throws of (in our opinion) persecuting trans people.
Two years later, after our revelations, on June 8th 2024, we saw an acknowledgement from Kemi Badenoch via a X (formerly Twitter) post saying:
“The third reason was having gender-critical men and women in the UK government, holding the positions that mattered most in Equalities and Health.
You only need to look at what the SNP did in Scotland to see what would have happened had we not intervened.
The Cass Review would **never** have been commissioned under a Labour govt.
Labour did not want to know. We had incredible opposition from the system on everything. It was when the ministers changed that everything changed.”
Because our media is predominantly right-wing, this mind-blowing admission never got any press attention.
The Ministers certainly did change everything. Just five days after American Vice President Mike Pence visited Boris Johnson in Downing Street, Liz Truss was appointed Minister for Women and Equalities – the date was April 10th 2019.
Pence is closely associated with both the Heritage Foundation, authors of Project 2025 – a policy dedicated to eradicating trans people from society and the Alliance Defending Freedom, who the Southern Poverty Law Centre designate as a hate group that operates in the UK as a “charity” with a UK income of over £1.3 million.
Truss immediately started to dismantle trans rights.
Looking back, the demolition of the EHRC was relatively easy – all of our evidence of an anti-trans agenda came from Freedom of Information Requests. That’s not so easy when it comes to trans healthcare.
However, over time, things have started to unravel. Whistle-blowers have emerged, the truth comes into sharper focus, and mistakes become apparent. That is what is beginning to happen when it comes to one “scientific” organisation that has taken an active part in attempts to restrict gender-affirming healthcare.
The Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM).
SEGM is a named hate group in the United States, as is its close associate, Genspect.
SEGM has been under the spotlight previously. The human rights organisation Southern Poverty Law Centre, states on its website:
“Before the campaign to end gender-affirming care, anti-LGBTQLGBTQ LGBTQIA+ is an inclusive term that includes people of all genders and sexualities, such as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, questioning, queer, intersex, asexual, pansexual, and allies. While each letter in LGBTQIA+ stands for a specific group of people, the term encompasses the entire spectrum of gender fluidity and sexual identities. https://abbreviations.yourdictionary.com/what-does-lgbtqia-stand-for-full-acronym-explained.html https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT+ pseudoscience was cultivated and disseminated in campaigns to discourage funding for HIV/AIDS programs.”
Researchers at the Yale School of Medicine issued a report which described SEGM as a
“small group of anti-trans activists”
and
“not a recognised scientific organisation”.
A spokesperson for the Endocrine Society described them as being:
“outside the medical mainstream”
More of SEGM was to come on August 14th 2025, when a statement from the Faculty of Health Science at McMaster University in Canada confirmed they would no longer work with SEGM, saying:
Our research agreement with SEGM ended in 2024. When the agreement started in 2021, the organisation appeared to us as non-trans, cisgender researchers to be legitimately evidence-based.
We will no longer accept funding from SEGM. As recommended by community advocates, we have also personally made a donation to Egale Canada’s legal and justice work, noting their litigation efforts aimed at preventing the denial of medically necessary care for gender-diverse youth.”
This truly damning statement from one of the world’s leading medical research universities should send shockwaves through gender medicine professionals worldwide, but particularly in the UK.
We don’t know what effect SEGM’s gender critical ideology had on Hillary Cass; to this day, her report is cloaked in secrecy, but we know from research that some claim
“SEGM affiliates collaborated with the Cass Review”
Transparency has evaded NHS England on the subject of gender healthcare.
We know that Tilly Langton worked on the Cass Review’s systematic reviews and that she met with Kemi Badenoch [reminder],
“The third reason was having gender-critical men and women in the UK government, holding the positions that mattered most in Equalities and Health.”
Langton is a key figure in work that appears to align with SEGM’s perspective.
A search result on Google resulted in this:
“engaged to design the review methodology” for the Cass Review, and has been associated with a group that promotes “gender exploratory therapy” which is a point of concern for some groups as a form of “conversion practice”.
There is also the involvement of Professor Riittakerttu Kaltiala, who aligns herself with gender-critical views and whose model of healthcare was adopted by Hilary Cass. Dr Kaltiala is closely associated with SEGM; indeed, they often quote her work.
Other UK professionals associated with SEGM include:
Dr Michael Biggs – a trustee of the trans-hostile organisation Sex Matters. Biggs is also a Board Member of SEGM.
Dr Marcus Evans – he and his wife (Dr Susan Evans) played a substantial role in bringing about the Cass Review, which led to the closure of the Tavistock GIDS. Both are advisors to SEGM.
Dr Richard Byng, GP – has been listed as ‘clinical advisor'” to SEGM and spoke at their events. He, too, is a SEGM Board Member.
Professor Sallie Baxendale – she has written for the SEGM website and researched the impact of puberty blockers on brain development, which is highly controversial – her research was originally rejected by THREE academic journals.
Named hate groups should not be involved in the provision of health care. Nor should any bona fide healthcare professional be involved with them.
When it comes to trans healthcare, it would appear that the gender critical ideological movement is less concerned with scientific rigour than it is with promoting its pseudo-scientific theories.
This article was updated on the 21/09/25
