At 4zzz, we acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we broadcast. We pay our respects to the elders.

Past, present and emerging of the Turbul and Jagera people.

We acknowledge that their sovereignty over this.

Land was never ceded and we stand in solidarity with them.

You're listening to transm on 4zzz amplifying the trans and gender non conforming voices of Brisbane and Beyond. Good morning me engine. You're listening to Transmission on 4ZZZ. Transmission. All about amplifying the voices of the trans community here in Meanjin and around all other places really. Generally my name is ez, I use he him pronouns.

My name is Bet, I use she, they pronouns.

And yeah, we're hanging out in studio today bringing you some updates on like some community events coming up, but mostly our focus, our laser beam focus will be on Segum who if you don't know who Segum are, that's okay. We're gonna fill you in on all the details. But essentially Segum is Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine which is a not for profit organisation known for targeting or being opposing to gender affirming care, particularly for trans youth. So we will be laser beaming them today in our focus and discuss. So yeah, trigger language content trigger warning for the episode will probably get a bit heavy. So just letting you know dear listener, if you are feeling particularly vulnerable or sensitive to this news today. Maybe, yeah, maybe listen back another time if you need to. But to begin with, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners of the land in which 4zzz broadcast, which is the Turrbal and Yagera people. We know that this land is stolen and we continue to broadcast honouring the traditional owners of the land that we're on. I'd like to extend our love and care and acknowledgement to all indigenous and first nations people living on this, on this land that we are currently broadcasting and to all those suffering around the world fighting the good fight for land back. We stand with you. Four ZZZ stands with you. Transmission stands with you. And so do I personally as well. Yeah. So what else are we doing today? We're also going to be talking a little bit about some events. So there's an event coming up. It's actually not until May but it's really worth mentioning because it looks really like fantastic. I mentioned it before, it's at Vinnie's Dive Bar which is at 44A Nerang street in South Port. So down down the coast on May 9th from 6pm it is a Project 491 fundraiser which is an initiative led by Auspath in response to the Queensland Government's unacceptable restrictions of gender affirming care for trans and gender diverse young people. You can head to auspath.org to donate to 491 if you'd like to directly. Or you could come to this gig 491 fest at Vinnie's Dive. It's got Permanent Revolution, Queerbait, Lucas Chiaczewowski and Flange of Panties, as well as the one and only Salma Sol. So if you want to get down to that. May 9th, 6pm, it's 1818 plus tickets on the door. So it's $18 online or $23 on the door. And yeah, all the funds going to Project 491. Yeah, which is great. You should head on down to that. Also some other things. Bet.

Ah, well, we've got a little community announcement on behalf of a local organisation that do good work called the Church of Snootology. Now, they're partially behind this gig. I'm not sure who else helped out, but I know that Sophie from the Church of Snootology is very passionate about the 491 and had something at least to do with starting this gig.

Yeah.

Think it was her idea. Yeah. So we've got a little community announcement about Snooty the Manitou who escaped from the San Diego Zoo and started this cult group.

Group. A group called Church of Snootology. Here's a little thing for y'all this.

Morning from the calm waters of the Temple of Snootology, Snooty shares the message that everyone deserves to swim free and trans rights are human rights. And in Snooty's waters, all are welcome. May Snooty swim forever in your heart. Authorised by the Temple of Snootology, Brisbane.

We all deserve to swim free. It's true. Forever. Yes. So, yeah, swim free, dear listener.

And look out for the Church of Snootology spreading their gospel at your next trans event. They'll be hanging around in the crowd and probably, you know, trying to bash your ear about Snooty.

Yeah, that's really contra. Get bashed by Snoot. Yeah. So next trans rally, look out for the Snooty crew. They'll be around.

They're keeping people safe.

That's it.

That is one of their prerogatives, which.

Is the main thing. And they'll also probably most likely be at Vinny's dive on May 9th for that incredible fundraiser. So, yeah, head to that. I'LL be carpooling with a bunch of other trans queers. We'll be like snooting down the coast at full speed.

I'll be riding the manatee.

That's it. Amplifying the voices of the trans and gender non conforming community of Meanjin, Brisbane and beyond, Transmission on 4ZZZ brings you the latest in trans community news, music and events. Every Tuesday from 9am till 10am Join our team of hosts for an hour of celebrating the unique perspectives of the trans community. Transmission Tuesday mornings from 9am till 10am on 4zzz. You want to see the transmission on 4zzz. My name is Ez, I use he him pronouns.

My name is Bet, I use she.

They pronouns and we've had some text in from someone asking for a song request. Unfortunately you are a non sub. That is how your name comes up when you are a non subscriber to 4zzz. So if you'd like to make song requests you can subscribe first of all to 4zzz by heading to 4zzz.org au support. It is also April Atonement, which means you've got loads of opportunities to win prizes. So many damn good ones indeed. It also means once you're a subs you can text in and song requests may be added to the list of song requests that we have in studio during the hour of transmission power. Of course, though it is exclusively music by trans and gender diverse artists only. So if you do have a song request, I do ask that you are aware of the communities that the artist is part of or that band and then we can play it for you or we can be sent over to the show after and they may also queue it up for you. So yeah, but apart from that, we're about to dive into some hardcore understanding of things. But we're talking about Segum. We're talking about anti trans groups.

Yeah, I can't promise hardcore understanding. I have all these browser links open on my computer about Segum and I just like it just makes my head spin. So I've done my best. My brain is full.

Let it out, let it out.

Well, the first thing I want to make clear is that there's a connection between SEGIM and the CAS review and there's a direct connection between the CAS review and what's going on on in Queensland at the moment. And there may well be, although I can't prove it, a direct connection between Sagham and what's going on in Queensland at the moment. With the banning of stage one and Two hormones for young people. So in my opinion, Segum at best influenced and at worst authored the CAS review. They definitely were involved and we have proof of that. And I'll get to that in a minute, but first I thought we'd just have a quick look at who Segum are. So there are a handful of anti trans physicians pretending to spearhead a movement. There's a great article by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, a famous law firm and civil rights advocacy organisation from the United States. They've designated SEGIM a hate group. I'm going to link to the article in the show Notes for the podcast listeners. And they refer to Segum as the hub of the anti LGBTQ pseudoscience network. And this network is what we would. Well, from what they've uncovered, firstly, overlapping membership of different organisations in this so called network. It looks like what we call a grassroot, sorry, an astroturfing event. Astroturfing attempt, which is like an effort to recreate the appearance of a grassroots movement of concerned citizens, or in this case concerned physicians. So we don't know where Segum's funding comes from. The SPLC tracked their funding and it's mostly anonymous donations, some very large ones. Like there was one of a hundred thousand dollars, there were other crowdfunding donations of $20,000 here or there. So obviously there's some rich people or organisations supporting these groups and especially Segum. Segum had donations of US$800,000 in one year. I think that was 2020. And the members of Segum serve on the boards of countless other anti trans organisations. And most of these organisations seem to only exist as websites. They don't have any locations, head offices, anything like that. One anti trans physician, her name is Stella O'Malley, she's. She runs Gen Spect, I was about to say.

I know that name.

Yeah. So she's probably the most infamous of all of these people. I'd say she's a big self promoter and she serves on the board of, at last count, something like nine of these organisations. And in fact she's the president of several of them. I couldn't find the link that told me how many. Which sort of tells you, I mean, because also she runs her own psychology clinic and supposedly sees patients. So I mean, how much time does she really have to put into each of these organisations that she's supposedly the president of? They really seem to exist in name only.

Interesting. And genspec, which is the organisation that she founded, that's a gender critical group as well. So basically Saying doesn't like conversion therapy for lesbian and gays, but is open to conversion therapy for trans people.

Yeah. So I kind of think of stellar O'Malley and gen spect as kind of like the bad cop to Segum's good cop.

Okay.

And Roberto D'Angelo being the leader of Segum, he's like the good cop. So he's very professional. He's always wearing a suit. He's very soft spoken. He's not a big self promoter. In fact, he's very reclusive and he hides away.

And he's in Australia, isn't he?

Yeah, he's two hours drive from us in the Byron Bay hinterland. So he, he hides away there in a little town in, in the hinterland. He rarely does press of him his own and when he does it's usually to address psychiatrists at conventions or a Segum convention or things like that. Whereas Stella O'Malley has her own YouTube channel. She's very public and she says some outrageous things. He never says outrageous things. He's very clever like that. But I kind of think this is a, a very clever two pronged approach they've got going here because Stella O'Malley says all the kind of beyond the pale stuff. She talks about things like autogynephilia still and she, she acts as if so called, what do they call it again? Rapid onset gender dysphoria is a real diagnosis. And this is hilarious. Genspect actually host World Rogd Day, so they have a day devoted to so called rapid onset gender dysphoria, which is not recognised as a diagnosis by any major medical organisation. But Stella O'Malley doesn't care. She'll get on YouTube and her podcast, she's got a podcast with many listeners. She's a very busy woman and she'll talk about this stuff as if it's just established scientific fact. Whereas Segum and Roberto D'Angelo, they will only ever talk about the theory of rapid onset gender dysphoria.

Right. So they're a bit more careful with how they word things.

Yeah, they're aiming for more credibility, I think. Gen Spectre aiming to kind of stir up the masses.

Right.

So for instance, like the head of Genspect in Australia is a woman. I forget what she does. She's a real estate agent or something. She's not a. She's not medical practise. That may be. I can't remember exactly what she is, but like. Or she owns a vineyard or something, I can't remember. But she's not A physician.

Right.

She's just the mother of a, of a trans kid or a gender diverse kid that she didn't support.

Right.

And she got all riled up about it and now she's the head of Gen Spect in Australia. That's how much credibility they have.

Right.

Segum, at least it's run by actual physicians. Right.

And, and again, physicians don't always know what they're talking about.

Yeah, but I mean, and I say at least, which, I mean, look, they're far more dangerous I guess is my point. Segum are in my opinion the most dangerous anti trans organisation in the world at the. Well, in the western world. Yeah, I know of Jen Spector, more like the clowns in my opinion. I mean Stella O'Malley is like a buffoon that goes around dancing and singing and drawing attention to this stuff. Kind of like, you know, J.K. rowling and you could probably rate all these people on a scale with Rowling and you know, Posey Parker and people like that at one end being the extremists. And Roberto D'Angelo, who by the way is queer, he's gay and he claims that when he was young, if gender affirming medical care had been a thing back then, that he would have quote unquote been transitioned because he was so feminine and he wanted to be a woman apparently. I mean, so he says. But the funny thing is Stella O'Malley says exactly the same thing. She says when she was young she was this tomboy and she wanted to be a boy and if gender affirming medical care had been around in her day, she would have quote unquote been transitioned. It's.

Wow.

Boggles my mind.

I will let them rest with their own self qualms about that. They're obviously wrestling with it in a very public way on them. How many genders are there?

I don't know.

I just got here. We were just chatting about Segum. Yeah.

And the whole anti trans disinformation network.

That's it. And we are now going to give you information on their disinformation.

So a bit of history. It seems like the most of the main connections between this fairly small cast of characters. I'd say 20 to 30 physicians who are kind of in charge of all of these organisations. I have not tried to count the organisations, but it must be around 20 at least. It seems like most of these physicians met in the late 2000 and tens via something called the Paediatric and Adolescent Gender Dysphoria Working group, which was sometimes just called the GD Working Group. Now, the membership of that group included some infamous names, some old school names, like Kenneth Zucker, who I've mentioned here before. He ran the Toronto CAMH gender clinic where he openly did conversion therapy on trans kids. We spoke about it in the episode on conversion therapy. He's still around. I mean, he also did help some kids transition. If they made it through the gauntlet and they just wouldn't back down, then he would. He would help them. But it was a last resort.

Wow.

His stated aim was to reduce the number of transsexuals in the world. Yeah. So Kenneth Zucker is a huge influence on Segum and all of these groups. They quote his studies, even though those studies are very outdated, they stem from a time before a diagnosis of gender dysphoria actually existed. And they're not. Not only are they not relevant to the questions that we're asking today or that Segum are asking today, like how many trans kids, quote, unquote, detransition. They're not relevant to that because these kids weren't all trans. That's not what, that's not what Zucker was looking for, whether kids were trans. He was just trying to stop little boys, quote, unquote, from being feminine. And they're also not helpful because he was running a conversion therapy clinic. So obviously a high number of those kids, quote, unquote, detransition because he pushed them into it. But anyway, the other person who, who was included in this group was Ray Blanchard, the inventor of autogynephilia theory. He's still around as well, and he gets quoted. I mean, Stella O'Malley, like I said, is always talking about autogynephilia, as are most of the TERFs. Blanchard's still around. He's on Twitter tweeting hate filled rants. There's Michael Bailey, he was basically an offsider of Blanchard. Susan Bradley, she's a trans woman who was an offsider of Z. I don't know a lot about her, but I'm not very impressed with her stance. And then there's this guy, James Cantor, who wanted to put the P in lgbtq. P being for paedophilia. He thought of it as, wow, they're these really reputable people, sexual orientation. So all of these people were influential, quite obviously on the cast of characters that became Segum and Gen Spectrum. They all met at this time in about 2018. And the first thing they did in this GD working group was to promote Lisa Lipman's study into ROGD. Rapid onset gender dysphoria, which has since been called pseudoscientific by just about everyone who has a reasonable stance on this. It's not recognised, as I said, as a diagnosis, but they have been championing it ever since for the last seven years. A little quote from Yale University, who did a study on Saghim in 2022. Segim lists as clinical and academic advisors a group of only 14 people, many of whom have limited or no scientific qualifications related to the study of medical treatment for transgender people. None have published original empirical research on the medical treatment of transgender people in a peer reviewed publication and none currently treat patients in a recognised gender clinic. Segum has a total of 39 relevant publications. This was in 2022. And 75% of these are letters to the editor, which also are not peer reviewed. So those stats have changed since 2022. But Segham still specialises in letters to the editor as well as opinion pieces. If you go to their research page, almost every piece on that they list on there by one of their members or someone is affiliated with them is basically an opinion piece. It is peer reviewed mostly by people from within the.

So it's the same 14 people.

Yeah, reviewing each other's papers. And all of these papers are just opinions. They're not studies, they're not original research, or else they're reviews. This is not systematic reviews, they're reviews of other people's research where they put their own spin on it.

This must be the most annoying WhatsApp group to be a part of.

Oh my God. Looking at their website makes you want to die. Like it's. It goes on and on.

Don't go. Don't give them the views.

It goes on and on. It is so in depth. And they go right into this stuff with all of this justification. It makes your head spin. But I just wanted to point out one way that these organisations operate is through citation laundering. So citation laundering is when a physician will make a claim unsupported by evidence in one of these opinion pieces. So the physician might say A might be associated with B. And then another physician cites that paper, but removes the uncertainty, saying A is associated with B. And then the process is repeated maybe a few times until the statement becomes A causes B.

Right.

At that point, the chain of links is too long for anyone to be bothered following it.

Except for BET.

Well, yeah, I followed a few of them. One. One example of this I saw was where Roberto D'Angelo was on a video promoting therapy first, which I think of as kind of another wing of Segum. It's obviously Roberto Diangelo's baby. It basically seems to be a registry of a lot of gender critical, so called physicians, mostly psychologists and some psychiatrists. So D'Angelo wrote the clinical guidelines, which we spoke about in the episode on conversion therapy. So he's in a video on YouTube addressing or basically promoting therapy first for other physicians. And he says, oh, we at therapy first have been very influenced by Segum, as if Segum's an entirely different organisation and they would just. They just picked up some knowledge from there. But he's actually the president of SEG and when he's saying this, so this is a good example. It reminds me of when I was young and I used to have a lot of musical side projects and I'd pretend that they were different people and then I would have like a website or a bandcamp page where they would feud with each other or they would say things about each other, these different projects. It's like he's created this kind of web of fictional organisations that all relate to each other and say, oh, we're very influenced by this other organisation.

This is actually very clever though, when you think about it, because you do this and for people who are like scared parents who maybe their kids have just come out or disclosed that they might be questioning their gender and then a parent goes, oh my gosh, what does this mean? Goes on the Internet finds even just one of these organisations and they're backing each other and all. It's a very convoluted, believable web of quote unquote evidence and support for these theories and these ideas. So then it's very easy for parents to go, oh, well, this. What. What needs to be happening is conversion therapy for my kid. What needs to be happening is preventing them accessing any of these mainstream support networks or organisations or medical support. So, you know, it can be very. You're being bombarded with essentially a group of just 14 people making out that they're like actually like hundreds of people. They're not. It's just. It's like three kids standing on top of each other wearing a, like wearing a trench coat. That's what Segum is. That's. That's what all of the cast review. All of this is built on an illusion that there's actually like a lot of people backing this when it's just a few really confused, probably internalised, transphobic, you know, people.

Very loud people.

Very loud people. Yeah.

I did want to say now one thing that, that Sagham and Hilary Cass, who wrote the Cass review, have in common is they're like, oh, no, no, we don't support conversion therapy. And nowhere, obviously nowhere, will they say, look, what you should do is give your kid conversion therapy. But then they all come out against bans on conversion therapy. They claim that those bans would have a chilling effect on therapists and that therapists wouldn't be able to just explore a child's gender. Hilary Cass herself has said this, but.

They ask such disturbing and creepy questions to children in those processes.

Well, I know, and like I said in, in the episode on conversion therapy, they want the therapy first recommend 40 hours of therapy before a young person can access gender affirming medical care.

And they're not calling it conversion therapy. What they're calling it is exploratory therapy.

Yeah, well, look, I wanted to point out something clever about that too, which is that when, when these people started out, they created this organisation called the Gender Exploratory Therapy Organisation. Sorry, association. They changed that branding because gender exploratory therapy became associated with conversion therapy. And so now they've changed it to therapy first. And instead of talking always about gender exploratory therapy, they just talk about psychotherapy. And they draw this false dichotomy, which Hilary Cass does in the cast review too. And this comes straight from the Second Playbook and the Family First Playbook. They drew a false dichotomy between gender affirming care, which includes therapy, and includes exploration, but they pretend like it doesn't include exploration and they claim that, you know, gender affirming care is just a medical pathway and they are promoting. They're the only ones promoting psychotherapy for gender dysphoria. Well, even the Australian Standards of Care says explicitly that exploration may be needed, but in other cases, if a child is happy, parents are supportive and that child wants and appears to need to transition, then you don't need to subject them to therapy. No, that's the only real difference. They are Sagam are mandating that every child that displays gender dysphoria or gender incongruence should be put through what I would see as a gauntlet of therapy. And whether that therapy is conversion therapy or not, in my mind, that's just semantics. It's. It's a horrible experience, by the sound of it, for those children that is going to have the effect in most cases of discouraging them and surrounding their gender identity with shame because of the invasive, horrible questions that Segum and Therapy first recommend that therapists grill these kids with. For 40 hours.

Yeah. And they're like kids. They're young, they're children most of the time, you know, which is horrendous. It's horrendous.

Horrifying. Well, it is time. Just briefly, and I said this before, we know that at least two members of Segum were on the clinical expert group that advised Hilary Cass. I will put the evidence in the show notes. We don't know who else was on that board except for Ritaketu Kaltiala, the Finnish psychiatrist who basically says the same stuff that Segum does and has spoken at Segum events, whether she's a member of Segum or not. So we don't know who the professionals were that advised Hilary Cass and helped to write the Cass review. We only know about three of them and all of them were associated with Segum.

Wow. There you go. You're listening to transmission on 4zzz. My name is Ez, I use he him pronouns.

My name is Bet, I use she, they pronouns.

And why do you do what you do, Bet?

Well, in this case, I feel like. I mean, I've had. I've discussed this with some other trans advocates. I feel as if there's not really enough talk about this whole anti trans or anti LGBTQ network that is behind everything terrible that's happening for trans young people lately. I feel like at most we acknowledge the cast review and we try to give it a quick debunking. I don't think we really need to debunk the cast review. I think that some very qualified people have done that and are doing that as we speak and it's incredibly involved. The CAS review, it's 400 pages long, which takes hours to do an effective debunking. What I think we should focus on, or what I focus on, is trying to point out to people that this is very much the situation we had with the climate crisis a few years ago when Greta Thunberg became a big thing and the right started panicking and suddenly all of these supposedly scientific organisations emerged. It was the same thing. An astroturfing attempt to make it look like people opposed to climate scientists, to climate science were legitimate voices to listen to. But basically it was 97% of climate scientists on the one hand and 3% of weirdos on the other. We are in that situation now. Segum are the 3%. Segum and the anti trans network, the rest of the medical profession, all of the peak medical bodies are on our side. I think the narrative doesn't make sense unless we Let the normies know what's going on here, that there is a concerted effort, possibly funded by the religious right. We can't prove that. To shut down gender affirming medical care for young people and ultimately for all of us.

No, we can't have that. Oh, wait, hold on. Forgot to push the button. No, we can't have that. No, we can't. And I appreciate you doing all the work that you do to, you know, at least demystify some of where this stuff is coming from.

I tried to. I was on the abc, interviewed on the ABC recently and I went deep into this stuff. But in the end they just took a sound bite that had nothing to do with this. And that was fine. The sound bite was a good sound bite. But it's very hard to get people to listen to this stuff. And it's hard to not sound like a conspiracy theorist if you don't give them all of the evidence.

And when we were conducting like interviews and stuff with some of those parents, especially when the change of those laws came through earlier in the year for accessing medical care under 18, you know, one of the parents that I was talking to, this mother was saying to me, I've never been political in my entire life, but now I am. And I've been at more rallies, I've been in two weeks than I have at any other time in my life. And that's because just like every other kind of politics, everything is political, people. Everything is political. And the only times you have the luxury, the privilege of saying I'm not political is because the politics serves you. So, you know, and it will come for you. Don't think that you are like some kind of exception to that rule. One day you'll age and ageism will affect you. Because don't worry, that's coming for all of us as well. So everything is political, friends. Everything is political. You're listening to Transmission. Thank you so much for tuning in. And we'll be back next week with more. Don't forget to subscribe to the station4zzz.org au to support. And we'll see you all next week. Bye bye. Thank you so much for listening to Transmission. See you next Tuesday, 9 to 10am.

On Fort Triple Z.