The ANU Queer* Department function as a representative body for queer students studying at ANU Campus. As a body that strives to act in the best interests of the community we represent - particularly young queer people - we must voice some of our community's concerns regarding the Item 2D of the RANZCP Congress, which claims to focus on transgender mental health.

We have concerns about the authors/speakers involved with the Congress item, and bring into question the authority the contributors have to speak on best practice for gender diverse health issues. In particular, speakers Alison Clayton, Roberto D’Angelo, and Patrick Clarke all have direct ties to SEGM (Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine), which raises concerns related to SEGM’s history of opposition to gender affirming care, and sweeping pathologisation of transgender identities. The SEGM is not widely recognised by the international medical community, and has been described as 'outside of the mainstream' by the Endocrine Society. They claim to support 'high quality, evidence-based research', but their data collection techniques are no less flawed than the studies they criticise. This includes - most notably - the self-selection bias present in Lisa Littman's survey of parental opinion when formulating the concept of Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, as described by Restar (2020), among many others. These biases are reflected in the speakers’ work on this issue, much of which declares the SEGM as a conflict of interest. Based on these concerns we ask that the Congress Item 2D be updated with a broader set of voices, or that it be removed entirely from the program.

The RANZCP has included a panel of trans-informed speakers the day after this panel, in their virtual program. The two panels are both titled 'Transgender Mental Health', with very little indicating the drastic difference between the tone of the panels. This both directs more attention towards Item 2D, as it comes first and is in-person, and also makes the panels seem interchangeable. Because of this, it does not allow both perspectives to be presented with equal weight. This is why we ask for Item 2D specifically to contain a range of panelists, who can speak for all parties interested in gender-affirming care, including (and especially) trans people themselves.

Please check the google doc linked below about the petition for more detailed information about who the RANZCP is, what congress item 2D specifically covers, what the speakers' academic work is about, and why the SEGM is a disreputable organisation. It is based on information from our social media posts on the petition.
Google doc: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1fpNjjZ3YzY31wkmMOYIGlz6iCyHqHPniwOuNd2RIT6Y/edit?usp=sharing

Note: We would like to emphasise that our criticism of the program item does not signal ignorance of the problems faced by detransitioners. We align ourselves with the health and safety of detransitioning people. We agree that discussing better ways to support the mental health of detransitioning people is extremely important and we support the idea that more research is required to better understand and solve the issues impacting these people. However, we do not think it is appropriate to excuse harmful scientific and anthropological research that distorts the lived realities of gender-diverse communities when discussing this topic, or to ignore the large body of peer-reviewed research that contests the speakers’ approach.