Washington State University Credentials Anti-Trans Hate Group SEGM to Teach Medical Providers

The Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine an anti-LGBTQ hate group for its role in proliferating pseudoscience and transphobic policies.

WSU // Public Domain

The Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), a Southern Poverty Law Center-designated hate group, received the green light to teach medical professionals through Washington State University’s continuing medical education (CME) program—meaning medical providers may now use SEGM courses to fulfill requirements to maintain their licensure.

Critics argue the move by WSU gives the appearance of legitimacy to a group with opaque funding and a disturbing proximity to far-right, Christian fundamentalist forces. It also means well-meaning providers who want to enhance their practice with trans-competent care may be misdirected to SEGM propaganda instead of evidence-based best practices. Most damning, critics say, is that listing SEGM as a CME option lends undue legitimacy to a dangerous cell of what the Southern Poverty Law Center has dubbed an anti-trans pseudoscience network.

“They’re an issue group that has a position on transgender health care,” said Evan Urquhart, a science journalist and founder of Assigned Media. “Whatever they do serves that particular agenda. It’s not about an openness to evidence in the spirit of scientific exploration; they advocate against gender-affirming care, using misinformation.”

The CME series, which is available for free viewing online, appears to be composed of lectures and panels from SEGM’s October 2023 conference. It is marketed to a wide range of medical providers, from psychologists and physicians to dietitians, dentists, and pharmacists.

To the untrained eye, the content may seem innocuous—one lecture claims to examine the role of psychotherapy in treating gender dysphoria. Another one reviews international literature on trans issues. But coming from SEGM, they take on a more sinister role. Conversion therapy tactics and restrictive, debunked screeds against trans people’s medical self-determination (such as the United Kingdom’s Cass Review) are being presented as sound science. And while scientific debate is always an important step in improving medicine, the program is full of red flags that betray a political, as opposed to academic, agenda.

In fact, Dr. Gordon Guyatt, who is regarded as the “godfather” of evidence-based medicine for his part in pioneering evidentiary metrics, spoke at that 2023 conference. Despite arguably being the most high-profile academic in the room, however, his presentation didn’t make it into the CME course.

Earlier this year, Guyatt co-published a letter lambasting SEGM for its anti-trans and anti-science views and practices, as outlined in a recent Mother Jones investigation into the group. Guyatt said he hadn’t known about SEGM’s sordid past when he accepted the invitation, and he has since rebuked it for its ideological and unacademic practices, calling SEGM “an unconscionable use of our work to deny people gender-affirming care.”

Meanwhile, the CME prominently features a panel moderated by Jamie Reed, a disgraced anti-trans activist who made unsubstantiated if not flat-out false accusations against her former employers at a Missouri gender clinic, where she was a caseworker. She has since spent her time traveling around the country touting “falsified” data and pushing conspiracy theories about how transitioning makes one more likely to commit acts of political terror and violence.

SEGM has publicly refuted its designation as a hate group and rejected the idea that it peddles misinformation. The group often uses its proximity to outliers in the trans community—like Dr. Erica Anderson, who also spoke at the conference—as a shield against accusations of transphobia or ideological motivations.

“SEGM as an organization has taken great care to avoid wading into political debates, seeking only to enable evidence-based decision-making about care for gender-dysphoric youth, without prescribing specific policy solutions,” a Sept. 25 press release from the group reads. “We reject the politicization of questioning how best to care for gender-dysphoric youth.”

However, the group’s leaders and its very foundation are steeped in anti-trans political advocacy. Before the incorporation papers were even finalized, co-founder Dr. Stephen Beck was using the SEGM moniker to advocate for Trumpian policies that effectively write trans Americans out of existence. In 2020, SEGM board member Dr. William Malone testified in support of an Idaho bill that would have made it a felony crime to prescribe hormone blockers to trans minors, while leaving cisgender youth access to that same care intact. The organization has also filed a 2021 amicus brief in Arizona arguing against state health insurance coverage for chest surgery for transgender boys, plus a 2024 anti-trans amicus brief during the Skrmetti proceedings. This is just the tip of the iceberg.

A spokesperson for WSU, Pam Scott, told Erin in the Morning that the inclusion of SEGM in their CME offerings does not represent an endorsement of the espoused views.

“For the situation in question, the WSU Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine acted as an accreditor, through its Continuing Medical Education (CME) program,” Scott said via email, noting WSU did not create the courses nor compensate SEGM or any of its “faculty” speakers for the program.

But when the university acts as an accreditor, it is expected to adhere to standards set by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME).

“Accreditation indicates that the courses met ACCME’s requirements for scientific balance and educational integrity,” Scott said.

When Erin in the Morning asked about the use of content from a hate group in a CME course, ACCME president Dr. Graham McMahon said the matter may warrant further scrutiny.

“The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) is committed to ensuring that all accredited CME activities are valid, evidence-based, and free of commercial or other biases,” McMahon said via email. “While we are not in a position to comment publicly on an activity that we have not (yet) reviewed or audited for compliance, the description you provided raises questions that appear appropriate for an inquiry. We welcome a formal submission through our confidential complaint process.”

Meanwhile, Dr. M.A. Miller, an assistant professor of gender, race, and health at WSU who researches the intersections of gender, race, and health, told Erin in the Morning that SEGM’s affiliation with the medical school has alarmed some LGBTQ+ community members at the university.

Miller was cautious to reaffirm the importance of academic freedom in this political moment. “We’re in this pretty intense battleground space of embracing freedom of speech, even if it’s speech that we don’t like,” they said. State repression under the Trump regime has led to a flood of anti-trans academic attacks, such as the Texas professor fired for teaching college students about nonbinary people, the Florida teacher ousted for using a trans teen’s preferred name, the countless faculty members branded “groomers” or “pedophiles” for acknowledging the biological reality of sexual and gender diversity, or the student works being censored for featuring queer art.

But Miller felt lending WSU’s official accrediting capacity to platform proponents of debunked ideas—like “Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria,” a quack theory painting transness as a social contagion, or “exploratory therapy,” which has been called rebranded conversion therapy—goes beyond the spirit of diverse thought and debate.

“It’s another thing entirely to suggest that medical providers can be credentialed in something that has already been unanimously understood as not only pseudoscientific, but also deeply, deeply dangerous to already vulnerable populations,” Miller said.