It’s quite a coup to get one serving member of any government to a Genspect event let alone two. I have written up the views of Admiral Christine, Donald Trump’s Assistant Health Secretary, who gave the keynote speech at this year’s Life Beyond Transition conference in Washington DC. The second member of the Trump administration to talk was Andrew Ferguson, a lawyer who is now Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
Ferguson explained his organisation was given a mandate in 1938 to go after “businesses and individuals who made claims about their public health services, and products that were not backed by scientific evidence”. This included “unfair or deceptive acts and practices that injured consumers”. You might already be able to guess where this is going.
Ferguson emphasised the FTC’s role as the “government’s guardian against false and deceptive health claims and advertisements”. His style was energetic, delivered with emphatic confidence.
“Experience has taught us”, intoned Ferguson, “that the more vulnerable the population, the more likely they are to be targeted with deception… Thus, the FTC is a special duty to protect… consumers who may have been deceived about the efficacy or safety of procedures promoted by advocates of so called gender affirming care.”
It’s hard to imagine UK Trading Standards going after the NHS for producing appallingly misleading documents like this, but that’s precisely what the FTC are and having been doing in America since Trump began his second term.
False or Unsubstantiated Representations
A week after The Donald’s inauguration, the President issued an order to stop the federal government funding gender surgeries. He also ordered the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to “rescind and amend all policies that rely on the standards of care promoted by the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH)”.
Ferguson told us that “in keeping with the president’s order, HHS has issued two proposed rules that would prohibit Medicare and Medicaid funding for hospitals, performing or individuals electing to undergo that care, including puberty blockers, cross sex hormones, and surgical operations.”
As for the FTC, in July last year they “convened a groundbreaking workshop that gathered detransitioners, their parents, medical professionals, legal experts, and whistleblowers”. This was done to try to understand whether the gender-affirming mob might have misrepresented “the effectiveness of their surgical interventions, or otherwise deceive individuals about its purported benefits.”
Ferguson told us the FTC then issued “civil investigative demands” to “evaluate whether the American Academy of Paediatrics, the endocrine society, or WPATH, have made or assisted others, and making false or unsubstantiated representations, or engaged in unfair practises in connection with the marketing and treatment, or marketing and advertising, of paediatric, gender, dysphoria treatment.” These investigations “and others” are “ongoing”.
Getting Glenna On Board
Ferguson then reminded his audience, to a spontaneous round of applause, that he had hired Glenna Goldis to investigate “potentially false or deceptive claims in healthcare and beyond”. Glenna is a famous lefty lesbian gender-critical lawyer who kindly allowed me to post one of her essays on this blog.
Ferguson was keen to frame what he was doing as a neutral, procedural, bureaucratic act. “I have not been guided by partisan or ideological concerns”, he said. “As chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, I am not charged with passing judgement on anyone’s ideology, lifestyle, or medical choices.” Instead he was “responsible for making sure that those who make claims about the treatment of vulnerable children are held to the same standard we apply to every other person who engages in commerce.”
I’m not sure anyone was convinced, but only because, in the field of gender care, ignoring harm is the accepted norm. Executing your responsibilities properly is not what teachers, doctors, journalists and politicians have been doing for the last ten years.
Or as Ferguson put it, “if I were to forego the vigorous enforcement of federal law with regard to health claims, simply because those who make those claims have chosen to politicise them, I would be letting ideology and politics guide my enforcement decisions, and I refuse to do so.”
Ferguson paid tribute to Genspect, lauding them as being “committed to an evidence-based, non-partisan approach to the care and support for gender distressed Americans.” He said “such an approach avoids the dogmatism of those who see no differences among gender-distressed persons. No alternative pathways to healing, no future life for them except one that involves walking the road of surgical and hormonal transition.” He called this gender-affirming pathway “dogmatism” caused by an “ideological blindness” and an “unwillingness to listen”.
The FTC boss also addressed the detransitioners in the audience directly, telling them “For too long, your voice has been ignored by those men and women that occupy the halls of power in this city…. your experience has been dismissed or weaponised by politicians and activists for partisan purposes…. your suffering has been leveraged for profit by unscrupulous surgeons and therapists… your struggle to lead a fulfilling life after medical transition has been treated as an afterthought by major medical associations…. you have not been treated as you are, courageous and beloved persons whose flourishing in this life ought to be the aim of everyone who purports to represent you, to treat you, to guide you, to hear you, and to learn from you.”
He delivered the pay-off: “That is ending under the administration of President Trump. Today, your voice is heard. Your experience will inform our public debates and our policies.”
In Britain this will be seen as further proof that gender critical people are inherently right wing, or duped by right wingers, or are being used as political pawns. I suspect a lot of detransitioners won’t care. I imagine they are delighted that someone appears to finally be listening.
* I have nothing to say about the Trump administration’s adventures in the same way I have nothing to say about the Biden administration, the Conservatives, the Lib Dems, the Greens, or the Labour government, save on the areas in which I have a miniscule amount of expertise.
The Life Beyond Transition conference took place in Washington DC on 12 March 2026 and was organised by Genspect. You can read all my live tweets from the event here.
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