The WPATH Files

March 11, 2024

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On March 4, the group Environmental Progress released “The WPATH Files: Pseudoscientific Surgical and Hormonal Experiments on Children, Adolescents, and Vulnerable Adults.” The report was written by Mia Hughes. From the press release:

Newly leaked files from within the leading global transgender healthcare body have revealed that the clinicians who shape how “gender medicine” is regulated and practiced around the world consistently violate medical ethics and informed consent. The files, which were leaked from within the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), were published today by the US-based think tank Environmental Progress.

WPATH is considered the leading global scientific and medical authority on “gender medicine,” and in recent decades, its Standards of Care have shaped the guidance, policies and practices of governments, medical associations, public health systems and private clinics across the world.

However, the WPATH Files reveal that the organization does not meet the standards of evidence-based medicine, and members frequently discuss improvising treatments as they go along. Members are fully aware that children and adolescents cannot comprehend the lifelong consequences of “gender-affirming care,” and in some cases, due to poor health literacy, neither can their parents. 

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In the WPATH Files, members demonstrate a lack of consideration for long-term patient outcomes despite being aware of the debilitating and potentially fatal side effects of cross-sex hormones and other treatments. Messages in the files show that patients with severe mental health issues, such as schizophrenia and dissociative identity disorder, and other vulnerabilities such as homelessness, are being allowed to consent to hormonal and surgical interventions. Members dismiss concerns about these patients and characterize efforts to protect them as unnecessary “gatekeeping.”

The files provide clear evidence that doctors and therapists are aware they are offering minors life-changing treatments they cannot fully understand. WPATH members know that puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries will cause infertility and other complications, including cancer and pelvic floor dysfunction. Yet they consider life-altering medical interventions for young patients, including vaginoplasty for a 14-year-old and hormones for a developmentally delayed 13-year-old. 

The WPATH Files also show how far medical experiments in gender medicine have gone, with discussions about surgeons performing “nullification” and other extreme body modification procedures to create body types that do not exist in nature.  

A growing number of medical and psychiatric professionals say the promotion of pseudoscientific surgical and hormonal experiments is a global medical scandal that compares to major incidents of medical malpractice in history, such as lobotomies and ovariotomies.

UK journalist Andrew Doyle wrote about The WPATH Files on his Substack, saying:

Some of the leaked internal messages are astonishing in their disregard for basic medical and ethical standards. For all that paediatric gender specialists have publicly stated that there is a consensus in favour of the “affirmative” model, that it is evidence-based, and that it is safer than a psychotherapeutic alternative, their private conversations would seem to suggest otherwise.

There are messages in the WPATH Files proving that surgeons and therapists are aware that a significant proportion of young people referred to gender clinicians suffer from mental health problems. Some specialists associated with WPATH are proceeding with treatment even for those who cannot realistically consent to it. After all, how could a pre-pubescent or even adolescent child fully grasp the concepts of lifelong sterility and the loss of sexual function?

Feminist author Edie Wyatt explains what The WPATH Files mean for Australia:

The WPATH Files has been published by Michael Shellenberger’s organisation Environmental Progress and reveals that there is a surprising absence of scientific rigor and ethical guardrails in an organisation with massive influence over Australian paediatric medical practice and human rights law.

This should have gotten much more attention than it did, but at least The Washington Post managed to report on it.

Some of the best coverage, in my view, is a 1.5 hour special episode of Free Speech Nation with Andrew Doyle from yesterday. Much of that coverage concerns the implications of The WPATH Files for the UK’s NHS, because the NHS has been following WPATH’s guidelines. Doyle tweeted the episode, and it’s well worth your time.

In the episode, Doyle interviews Michael Shellenberger (founder of Environmental Progress) and Mia Hughes (author of the report). Helen Joyce makes some excellent points. A man (who claims to be a woman) named Robin Moira White mumbles about “gender identity” being an “essence.” Doyle also interviews Genevieve Gluck, who has written extensively about the connections between WPATH and pornographic websites for the magazine Reduxx. She talks about how the most recent version of the WPATH Standards of Care (Version 8) include “eunuch” as a “gender identity,” including for minor boys. Plus much more.

I wrote a long section about WPATH in my book The Reckoning: How the Democrats and the Left Betrayed Women and Girls in Chapter 6 on Pharma and the Ghouls in the Medical Establishment:

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) started out as the Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria Association (HBIGDA), founded in 1979 by a man named Paul Allen Walker. At its origins, WPATH was basically a merger of the Janus Information Facility (JIF), described as a “referral service for transsexuals affiliated with the University of Texas” in Galveston Texas, the Harry Benjamin Foundation, and the Erickson Educational Foundation (EEF), a non-profit philanthropic organization funded and controlled by Reed Erickson (a woman born Rita Mae Erickson, sometimes referred to as Rita Alma Erickson, who had undergone what was then called a “sex-change” operation conducted by Harry Benjamin himself). The HBIGDA became WPATH in 2007. Its current president is a man named Marci (Mark) Bowers. Bowers brags on his website that he is a “pioneer in the field of Gender Affirmation Surgery,” that he has performed more than 2,250 vaginoplasties and 3,900 “gender-affirming surgeries” overall, and that he has been named the “Transgender Surgery Rock Star,” the “Georgia O’Keefe of Genitalia,” and the “Beyonce of Bottom Surgery.” He has also served on the board of GLAAD.

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Currently, WPATH does not recommend any age limit for hormones or genital surgeries on minors. Version 8 also, for the first time, advances the idea that “eunuch” (referring to a man or boy who has had or wishes to have his genitals removed) is a “gender identity.” This is in large part thanks to a man named Thomas W. Johnson, a retired professor at California State University in Chico (CSUC), who helped form a body modification fetish website called The Eunuch Archive. According to Reduxx, the Eunuch Archive “hosts over 3,000 pieces of fictional child pornography that detail the rape, torture, and killing of children. In some narratives, children with stunted puberty are raped by doctors. In others, children are castrated by force as part of a sadistic sexual torture ritual.” Johnson has also been involved in research on the topic of castration as a fetish. In 2022, he co-authored an article titled “Castration for Pleasure: Exploring Extreme Castration Ideations in Fiction” in the journal Archives of Sexual Pleasure. That article is included in the National Library of Medicine on the NIH’s website.

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The early sexologists were focused exclusively on “transsexualism” among adults. Whatever anyone thinks about that, they did not appear to concern themselves with the concept of a “transgender child.” The 2012 version of the WPATH Standards of Care, although it recommended the administration of hormones under limited circumstances in children and adolescents, at least urged caution among medical practitioners when working with such kids. But the seeds of change had already been sown. The concept of a “transgender child” had been introduced and WPATH went right along with it. Most people had probably never heard of the idea of a “transgender child” before 2020 or so. But by then, it had become impossible to ignore. WPATH is one of several organizations that have concretized the idea in society that medicalizing identity is healthy and safe for all people, including children, and it continues to double down on its position to this day. It is paid handsomely to do so.

The Biden administration supports all this. In November 2022, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra submitted written testimony before the House Committee on Education and Labor stating, “The Biden-Harris Administration supports the upcoming release of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) Standards of Care Version 8 and believes that all children and adults should be afforded life-saving, medically necessary care. Payers, both public and private, should cover treatments which medical experts have determined to be medically necessary.” This is the nation’s top medical chief calling for taxpayer dollars to fund the administration of hormones and surgeries to otherwise healthy children and young adults.

In response, Republican Representative Nancy Mace wrote to the Department: “The Biden Administration appears to be encouraging any child, who does not conform to perceptions of masculine or feminine stereotypes, to alter his or her body through potentially irreversible medical or surgical intervention. Instead of funding these life-altering drugs and procedures, our government should be promoting policies to protect vulnerable children—who cannot consent. In light of these concerns, I am requesting documents and information to understand whether, and to what extent, taxpayer dollars are being used to promote and/or fund these potentially harmful practices.” I agree with her completely.[1] Americans deserve to know how the Democrats in power are spending our money and whether our tax dollars are funding medical practices that harm children. WPATH has a lot to answer for.

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[1] Incidentally, Representative Mace has called on her Republican colleagues to soften their stance on abortion and in 2023, introduced a bill to increase over-the-counter contraceptive options for women. Regarding abortion, she has said, “We've buried our head in the sand. We're afraid to talk about it. Because we're afraid, we want to go to the extreme corners of this issue. But that's not where the vast majority of Americans are right now. And we've got to show compassion, especially to victims who've been raped.” If her Republican colleagues would follow her lead on this, I know plenty of women who would vote for them.

I understand that Representative Mace more recently endorsed Donald Trump for president, notwithstanding Trump being found liable for sexually abusing and defaming E. Jean Carroll. I do not agree with her on that.

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I agree with my friends and colleagues who argue that there is “no such thing as a transgender child.”

I agree with all of this. But the main reason I agree that there is no such thing as a transgender child is that I don’t think there is a coherent category of people called “transgender.” One hundred percent of human beings, all 8 billion or so of us, are either female or male. No one is the opposite sex and no one belongs to a mysterious third sex category that doesn’t exist. Men are male and women are female. It isn’t complicated. As I said on Dr. Phil last year, it’s time we all said so.