SPLC Designates Genspect, SEGM As Anti-LGBTQ Hate Groups

SEGM members and associates were part of a secret advisory group for the Cass Review in England. Genspect and SEGM pushed anti-trans policies in the United States. Now, they are listed as hate groups.

Tim Pierce, CC BY 2.0

In a major move, the Southern Poverty Law Center has formally designated the anti-transgender pseudoscience organizations Genspect and the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups. This designation is part of the civil rights organization’s latest release of its “Year In Hate & Extremism” report, which tracks hate groups and extremist groups throughout the United States. Members of these and other anti-LGBTQ+ organizations listed have played significant roles in the passage of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and policy by concealing and underplaying their ties to anti-LGBTQ+ extremism. Most recently, members of the newly designated hate group, Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine, helped advise the Cass Review in the United Kingdom, which has led to the criminalization of possession of some forms of transgender care there and is currently being used to argue for heavy restrictions in the United States.

The designation is significant, placing these organizations alongside other extremist groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council—Christian fundamentalist organizations pushing anti-LGBTQ+ policies in the United States and internationally. Justifying the new designations, the report points to conferences held by these organizations that featured “expert witnesses” employed by the Alliance Defending Freedom to target LGBTQ+ people in the United States. It also highlights an investigative analysis that discovered the organizations were at the center of a massive “anti-LGBTQ pseudoscience network.” The analysis further determined that in the case of SEGM, the organization’s funding stream included Koch Foundation money funneled through the Edward Charles Foundation. Notably, SEGM shared funding streams with right-wing Christian groups like the Alliance Defending Freedom and the Family Research Council.

In recent years, the Society for Evidence in Gender Medicine has played a huge role in advancing anti-transgender policy globally. In the United States, far-right politicians such as Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and Governor Greg Abbott have relied on SEGM materials to justify treating gender affirming care for transgender youth as child abuse. In Florida, SEGM members aided in a DeSantis initiative to ban transgender care through a review for the Florida Board of Medicine; that review was conducted so poorly that it led to Yale researchers determining, “So repeated and fundamental are the errors in the June 2 Report that it seems clear that the report is not a serious scientific analysis but, rather, a document crafted to serve a political agenda.” A later investigation determined that before the reviews were even conducted, board members had determined it would result in “care effectively banned.” At the same time, members of Genspect affiliates were placed on the Florida Board of Medicine who would ultimately vote to ban that care.

Importantly, members and associates of the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) have recently played a significant role in the Cass Review, a supposedly “independent” review now being cited to crack down on transgender care in England and the United States. Recent investigations revealed that multiple SEGM members and associates were part of advisory groups to the review with secret memberships. One such person was Dr. Riittakerttu Kaltiala, a Finnish psychologist who prominently presented at the latest SEGM conference and has been closely associated with SEGM, which denies her membership due to the organization having “no official members.” Dr. Kaltiala facilitated a meeting between Dr. Cass and Dr. Patrick Hunter, a DeSantis medical board pick and member of Genspect. Dr. Cass later shared information with the team according a letter obtained exclusively by this publication. Dr. Kaltiala went on to “meet regularly” with the DeSantis appointees and even testified in favor of Florida’s ban on transgender care.

Letter from DeSantis-pick Patrick Hunter meeting with Dr. Cass to help ban care in Florida. The meeting was facilitated by Dr. Kaltiala, who has been widely associated with SEGM and who “met regularly” with the DeSantis picks.

The latest report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) indicates that in 2023, the number of anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups increased by one-third to 86 groups, the highest number ever tracked by the organization. According to the group, this surge is primarily due to the rise of “family policy councils” that push right-wing Christian agendas and members of anti-LGBTQ+ pseudoscience networks that often share the same goals. “As in previous years, the anti-LGBTQ policy push was grounded in demonizing LGBTQ people and using pseudoscientific claims about LGBTQ people, but the weaponization of pseudoscience as a tool of trans suppression and the targeting of fundamental freedoms like free speech, expression, and assembly through book and drag bans has become a more prominent feature in recent years,” the report says, highlighting the increasing use of organizations weaponizing disinformation to target transgender people.

When asked about the inclusion of SEGM and Genspect as hate groups in the latest report and the ways in which they weaponize pseudoscience to target transgender people, R.G. Cravens, a Senior Research Analyst at the SPLC, stated, “We often defer to experts, allowing them to substitute their judgment for our own. Purveyors of hate and extremism count on this deference when they market pseudoscience as objective truth and use it to discriminate (and worse) against others.”

He also stated that such groups “frequently use pseudoscience to disguise their far-right ideologies, using the language of science in an attempt to make their extremism seem reasonable.”

You can find a full list of the anti-LGBTQ+ groups in the latest update here.