Summary
Rebecca Paul MP and SEGM - members of the WESC have a particular responsibility to ensure the safety, inclusion and access to healthcare of all marginalised members of society. That is particularly so for those holding protected characteristics.
Rebecca Paul MP and SEGM
TransLucent is disappointed to see that a member of the Women and Equality Select Committee (WESC) has retweeted a post by Scientific Evidence for Gender Medicine (SEGM).
This American-based group has been named a trans hate group by the human rights organisations Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC) and the Lemkin Institute. Unfortunately, there are no UK-based organisations that similarly designate groups that seek to dismantle the human rights of marginalised and disadvantaged groups.
SEGM is the outcome of the right-wing political agenda pursued by Project 2025, which successfully campaigned to elect Donald Trump to the presidency. Project 2025 seeks to roll back the human rights of the 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+ community, ethnic minorities, and women and has particularly focused on the legal exclusion of trans people from any meaningful participation in society:
SEGM acts as the organisation’s health-focused arm and is concerned with providing public information that undermines the efficacy of gender-affirming care. Many organisations and universities, including the SCLP and Canada’s McMaster University, have criticised its approach, calling it pseudoscience.
Recently, SEGM tweeted details of one such piece of research, which purports to show that gender affirming medical treatment provides no psychiatric benefit to trans people.
This research has been heavily criticised by the scientific community for its lack of methodological and analytical rigour (Turban, J. L., et al., 2024). Methodological Flaws in Finnish Register Study on Gender-Affirming Care. Yale Integrity Project / Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry (JAACAP).
It has been produced by academics and practitioners from the University of Tampere in Finland. These authors are closely associated with SEGM, having jointly run a conference with it at the university. Professor K Kaltalia is a frequent attendee and speaker at its conferences, and she has been an outspoken critic of gender-affirming treatment for young people.
Conservative MP and WESC member Rebecca Paul recently retweeted a SEGM post supporting this research. Paul has claimed that “gender affirming care” is the biggest medical scandal of our time. We are deeply concerned about the impact this claim could have on those who would benefit from this treatment and those who have already received it.
The overwhelming evidence is that gender-affirming care is positive, transformative, and well-supported by scientific evidence, according to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATHWPATH World Professional Association for Transgender Health https://www.wpath.org) (2022) and the Standards of Care for the Health of Transgender and Gender Diverse People, Version 8.
Members of the WESC have a particular responsibility to ensure the safety, inclusion and access to healthcare of all marginalised members of society. That is particularly so for those holding protected characteristics. We do not believe that Paul has consulted with those within the trans community in reaching this damning conclusion.
Dr Debora Diamond, CEO.
