#uspath

Greg Owen at LGBTQ Nation:

The Trump administration took the next step in its attack on gender-affirming care for trans youth on Wednesday, filing a lawsuit against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), the leading global organization focused on transgender health and the primary developer of clinical guidelines for gender-affirming medicine. The complaint, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, follows an earlier Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigation of WPATH over the same claims in the lawsuit, which accuses the 46-year-old organization of defrauding parents for the financial benefit of health care professionals.

The FTC, which is not a medical regulator, brought the suit, joined by Republican attorneys general in Texas, Iowa, Nebraska, and Alaska. “Today, the FTC filed a lawsuit against WPATH alleging that the organization made false and unsubstantiated claims regarding the necessity, effectiveness and safety of puberty blockers, hormones and sex-change surgeries,” said FTC Chairman Andrew N. Ferguson in a statement announcing the filing.

WPATH “has provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services,” the FTC alleges.

Ken Paxton, a MAGA loyalist who was endorsed by President Donald Trump in his bid for a U.S. Senate seat, signed on to the suit in his role as that state’s attorney general. “Any group that illegally promotes irreversible, life-altering ‘transitioning’ procedures to kids as safe and necessary will face the full force of the law for harming children,” Paxton was quoted in the FTC announcement. “We will not allow WPATH or any other organization to illegally promote or perform dangerous ‘transitioning’ procedures on our kids that leave them with permanent trauma and lifelong health consequences.”

Among the complaint’s allegations, the FTC says WPATH deceptively promoted the benefits of “breast amputation” and “penis removal” for trans minors (even though such procedures are almost never performed on minors); failed to disclose the side effects “cross-sex” hormones for minors, including “pelvic pain, clitoral discomfort, vaginal pain, inability to orgasm, incontinence and erectile pain”; and blackmailed parents into the organization’s “profit” scheme by asking whether they “would rather have a live daughter or a dead son,” in the case of gender dysphoria diagnoses for boys. According to the FTC, parents in search of life-saving treatment for their children are dupes in a decades-long grift perpetrated by doctors associated with WPATH and the organization itself. Doctors’ characterization of gender-affirming care as “life-saving” is only a means of forcing insurance companies to pay for the treatments, thereby profiting health care professionals and WPATH, according to the suit.

The Trump Regime’s FTC, along with 4 far-right extremist GOP AGs, sues World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) by baselessly accusing the organization of “blackmailing” parents as part of the Regime’s war on gender-affirming care (and trans people more generally, esp. trans minors).

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By: Emily Crane

Published: Dec 4, 2025

Doctors have admitted to performing “non-standard” gender-affirming procedures on youngsters and sometimes base treatment purely on cosmetic goals — as they see a spike in patients seeking out “nonbinary” surgeries.

The medical professionals copped to sometimes even performing the life-altering procedures with little to no assessment of an individual’s mental health or gender identity, newly emerged videos obtained by The Free Press show.

The recordings, some of which have been made at closed-door medical conferences in the US within the last few years, captured clinicians openly discussing how they were trying to fulfill a patients’ desires — even if it means deviating from guidelines.

One social worker from Oregon once described how an 18-year-old high school graduate wanted to look like “a Barbie down there.”

Amy Penkin, a social worker with the Transgender Health Program at the Oregon Health & Science University, spoke of the case study at the 2021 conference of the US Professional Association for Transgender Health.

The patient, only identified as Sky, had indicated they were asexual, had no desire to have sex in the future and was hoping to have a procedure to remove “all erogenous tissue.”

Penkin went on to say that requests for “nonbinary” procedures were “growing in number.”

It wasn’t immediately clear what became of that specific patient.

At a separate World Professional Association for Transgender Health conference in 2022, one unidentified clinician from Utah sought advice after seeing nonbinary interventions at a “dramatically increased” rate.

The clinician noted, astonishingly, that she was drawn to the idea of providing patients with a “Pinterest board” of gender procedures that could be offered.

She acknowledged, too, that medical professionals were often making it up as they went, saying: “I feel like we’re all just winging it, you know? And which is okay, you’re winging it too. But maybe we can just, like, wing it together.”

The controversial videos emerged as the nationwide debate gender-affirming care rages on.

The battle against transphobia is being fought on the streets, in public buildings, in the hospitals, and in conference rooms. Yesterday (03 feb 2017) it was being fought at the USPATH national conference of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) - and won.

WPATH has long been criticized by transgender activists for being elitist and cis-dominated, speaking over transgender people, demanding prohibitly high fees for their conferences and inviting transphobic speakers. 

Yesterday protestors held up this sign and others at the talk by transphobic promoter of conversion therapy Kenneth Zucker. Security was called on them by someone and security threatened to call the police. Witnesses photographing the sign were asked to identify themselves and told that they were being disruptive and would be asked to leave. 

Security was called off by WPATH, but not before being assigned to stand outside of the room set aside for trans people throughout the conference. 

After some lightning quick organizing by trans women of color, a meeting was convened between WPATH/USPATH organizing and the trans folks at the conference in which three demands were presented.

1. An unreserved apology for security being called and for Zucker being scheduled. 2. Zucker's talk the next day (04 feb 2017) is to be cancelled. 3. Termination of whoever called security. 4. (bonus) trans people get to publicly read the apology, drafted between trans people and USPATH, at the gala tonight.

WPATH agreed to everything. 

This was a powerful victory showing that transphobic speakers will no longer be tolerated at WPATH events and that trans people will not sit back quietly while cisgender ‘professionals’ decide whose voices matter. 

USPATH_WPATH Response to AG Bailey Emergency Regulation 03.22.2023.pdfDescarga USPATH y WPATH confirman que la atención médica que afirma el género no es experimental.pdfDescarga La Asociación Profesional de Salud Transgénero de los Estados Unidos (USPATH) y la Asociación Profesional Mundial para la Salud Transgénero (WPATH) denuncian la regulación de emergencia que detiene la atención…