Mental Health Advocacy

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Lore & Background

SEGM was founded in 2019 as an international group of clinicians and researchers. Its co-founders include William Malone, an American endocrinologist; Julia Mason, an American pediatrician; and Zhenya Abbruzzese, an American healthcare researcher. Psychiatrist Stephen B. Levine, who has testified in nearly every case on gender-affirming care in the United States and argues transgender people become pathologically narcissistic, is an advisor. SEGM, among other affiliated groups, was formed through connections in the "Pediatric and Adolescent Gender Dysphoria Working Group", a group of 17 academics and researchers including Kenneth Zucker, Ray Blanchard, and J. Michael Bailey. Several SEGM members collaborated with the CAMH Gender Identity Clinic which was directed by Zucker. A report by the Southern Poverty Law Center described SEGM as a hub of the "anti-LGBT pseudoscience network", and specified that the relationship was strongest between SEGM, Genspect, and Therapy First, who shared over 24 personnel connections. The report also stated SEGM members are affiliated with the "anti-LGBTQ+ far right". Julia Mason, Marcus Evans, Roberto D'Angelo, Sasha Ayad, Stella O'Malley, Lisa Marchiano, and Avi Ring are advisors for SEGM and are on Genspect's team or advisors; O'Malley is the founder of Genspect. Therapy First is a group of therapists founded in 2021 by four SEGM members and a Genspect advisor to market gender exploratory therapy, which experts believe is transgender conversion therapy. Marchiano and O'Malley are on the board of Lisa Littman's Institute for Comprehensive Gender Dysphoria Research (ICGDR). SEGM members O'Malley and Robert P. George are also advisors to the Foundation Against Intolerance and Racism. A report by seven people in various departments of the Yale School of Medicine stated that the 14 core members of SEGM regularly worked together on the boards of other organizations that oppose gender-affirming healthcare and "feature biased and unscientific content."

In Their Own Story

In March 2022, Julia Mason, a board member of SEGM who also works with Genspect, proposed Resolution 27 along with four other members of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), stating the AAP should reconsider hormone therapy as a first line of treatment and called for an evidence review to update AAP's 2018 policy statement on gender affirmative care. The AAP said that the resolution mischaracterized its policy, which instead promotes "following a systematic, collaborative evaluation by clinicians and mental health professionals". The resolution was not passed. After the resolution's proposers said that the AAP changed procedures to block discussion of the resolution, the AAP said that their processes worked normally and that Resolution 27 did not pass because it received no co-sponsorship and the majority of AAP members did not agree with the resolution. The AAP stated the guidelines were already under review as part of a routine procedure and that "there is strong consensus among the most prominent medical organizations worldwide that evidence-based, gender-affirming care for transgender children and adolescents is medically necessary and appropriate". In April, the Florida Department of Health wrote a memo which misrepresented the scientific consensus to stop minors in the state from socially or medically transitioning and cited Malone. The same month, SEGM met with White House officials in the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs to argue that a rule on "nondiscrimination in health programs and activities" from the Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights would "effectively force physicians to provide hormonal and surgical interventions". In September 2023, SEGM members and advisors filed a petition with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration calling for them to end prescriptions of puberty blockers to transgender youth. SEGM claims to have over 100 members but removed their membership list and organizational structure from the site in late 2023. In 2025, SEGM co-founder Zhenya Abbruzzese co-authored the Trump Administration's HHS report on gender dysphoria.

Reader's Guide

Between 2021 and 2024, SEGM gave a team at McMaster University headed by Gordon Guyatt, a pioneer in evidence-based medicine, $250,000 to conduct independent systematic reviews into trans healthcare. SEGM was involved in choosing the question for each of the reviews. The reviews were published in 2025. The reviews "graded the evidence for each intervention as having either low or very low certainty." Following their publication, the studies received criticism from people who questioned their veracity due to SEGM's involvement. The results of the reviews were quickly seized by anti-trans activists, right-wing news outlets and the Trump Administration to justify questioning and restricting gender-affirming care. Guyatt claimed he had written to several news outlets that prominently cited the reviews to tell them "You are misconstruing how my work should be interpreted and used". However, all of the outlets refused to publish his letters. In July 2025, an opinion piece by professors at the university called on the university to distance themselves from the reviews. In August 2025, Guyatt and his team released a statement asserting that using the reviews to deny care was a "gross misuse of our work and is unconscionable" and that while SEGM initially "appeared to us as non-trans, cisgender researchers to be legitimately evidence-based", they would no longer work with them in the future. The statement continued to say it was "profoundly misguided to cast health care based on low-certainty evidence as bad care or as care driven by ideology", with Guyatt saying "low quality evidence doesn't mean it doesn't work. It means we don't know." Guyatt additionally criticized anti-trans activists for using the report to claim that is it unknown if anyone benefits from gender-affirming care, saying that whether some people are harmed by gender-affirming care is just as unknown, but that due to the testimonies of people who have undergone the treatments, there is "sufficient evidence to say there are some people who are benefited".

Did You Know?

• The Southern Poverty Law Center has designated SEGM as an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group since 2023.
• SEGM co-founder Zhenya Abbruzzese co-authored the Trump Administration's HHS report on gender dysphoria in 2025.
• SEGM gave a team at McMaster University $250,000 to conduct systematic reviews into trans healthcare between 2021 and 2024.
• Seven advisors to SEGM are on Genspect's team of advisors, including Genspect's founder Stella O'Malley.
• A paper published in March 2024 described SEGM as a 'fringe medical organization'.