President of SEGM authors new study claiming transition is worse than gay conversion therapy

SEGM President Roberto D’Angelo’s latest academic journal article uses the Cass Review and the history of his field abusing gay people to justify undermining transsexual medicine. 

By Artemis T. Douglas

Editor’s Note: This article is the latest in a series of articles investigating the anti-trans hate group known as the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. The other parts will be released as it progresses.

Part 1 is here. Part 2 is here.

On Jan. 12, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis published a peer-reviewed article by Roberto D’Angelo titled “Trans is not the new gay: How psychoanalytic elitism and the rejection of science are creating a repetition of the past”. D’Angelo is the President of the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM), a fact which is partially-listed as part of D’Angelo’s author affiliation section, but not in the ethics disclosures for the article.

In other words, D’Angelo is the current President of an anti-trans hate group, and has been since its founding, according to public filings by the non-profit in question. Yet this is not listed anywhere in the journal article about the health of trans people. 

The academic journal article opens with the phrase "Psychoanalysis has a troubled history with regard to homosexuality.” While strictly true, that opening line reveals the fundamental logic the entire article uses to claim that transsexual medicine is worse than anti-gay conversion therapy. 

D’Angelo’s assertion is not the typical UK “Gender Critical” narrative that transition is about turning gay kids straight by forcing the kids to change their gender, but rather that “the problematic similarity is that gender-affirming care may facilitate an attempt to erase a part of the self.”

He also frames clinicians providing transsexual medicine as a type of collusion. To do this, D’Angelo brazenly asks, “In the past, gay men sought treatment to rid themselves of their “gay” self. Are some trans patients not doing the same when they seek our assistance to get rid of their natal gendered self. If we collude with this, are we not in fact doing what conversion therapists did to homosexuals?”

The simple, factual answer to such a question is “No.”

That is not the only time he refers to clinicians providing access to transition medicine as a form of collusion. He argues that his field, “when it comes to gender dysphoria” are guilty, that there is a widespread practice of  “[clinicians] essentially collud[ing] with the elimination of the hated part - i.e. the natal sex/gender and everything it might represent or carry.”

D’Angelo also uses recent weaponization of the US and UK governments' actions and reports to falsely claim that “there is evidence that patients and clinicians are being misled about the benefits and safety of these interventions”.

To bolster this line, D’Angelo cites the Federal Trade Commission’s early 2025 action to investigate companies that manufacture and distribute gender affirming care related products for consumer fraud as well as an article published in the Economist back in 2024. He also uses the anti-trans dog whistle of “irreversible medical and surgical interventions”  to describe standard trans healthcare, and cites the UK’s misinformation-laundering, anti-trans Cass Report.

According to D’Angelo, “Much harm was done to gay people as well as to our profession, as a result of psychoanalysis’ refusal to engage with empirical science.” This seems like an innocuous statement, when divorced from context.

However, the empirical science that his non-profit organization, classified as a hate group, defends, is both unethical and impossible to perform in the case of transition medicine.

SEGM is among the anti-trans actors that defend the idea that randomized controlled trials are the only allowable, high-quality evidence for a medical intervention. Anything less, as argued by SEGM’s press releases about competing WHO standards, is something they brand as “consensus based” rather than “evidence based.”

Also, the effects of hormone replacement therapies are known. It would be obvious if someone was given a placebo sugar pill instead of their desired sex hormone. That’s just one of many reasons why you can’t perform randomized controlled trials on HRT. 

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D’Angelo, in the article, will criticize the pathologization that psychoanalysis does to gay people, and in the same or next lines, pathologize transgender people and transsexuals. He does this in part by mostly using the word “trans” instead of “transgender” and not saying “people”. He just refers to trans people as “trans” or “the trans issue”. 

One example of this is when he says “Most clinicians would agree that trans is not a monolithic entity”.

Towards the end of the journal article, D’Angelo reveals his underlying animus. According to D’Angelo, “The issue at hand is maintaining a healthy, functioning body that is not exposed to pharmaceuticals with known risks…”. 

That line reveals the ableist, saneist, and natalist anxiety that motivates this entire journal article.  

It’s not about protecting gay people, or trans people– especially when the author can’t say “trans people” most of the time. It’s about controlling and maintaining cissexual bodies. 

The fact that D’Angelo is listed as affiliated with SEGM in his author bio, but withholds the power relationship of his affiliation as President of SEGM is only the smallest of the ethical issues with this article.