Stella O’Malley, Psychotherapist, author of Fragile, Bully-Proof Kids, Cotton Wool Kid and co-host of the Gender: A Wider Lens podcast, provided a history of WPATH in interview with Benjamin Boyce last year.  (How Gender Activists Dictate "Standard Care" | with Stella O'Malley.):

Something people need to know a lot about…you have to look at who are WPATH.  They started in 1979 as the “Harry Benjamin Gender Dysphoria Association.”  DEBRA BATY 1

We're a movement of terrible acronyms and it all began with the HBGDA which catchy.

The thing about it is that this was just a disparate group in 1979 of people who are interested in medical transition.  Whether they were clinicians who frankly were an either evangelical mission, or they were making money, or whether it was trans people or people who were interested in trans people, they just came together an formed this organization.  And they want to advocate for medical transition – that’s what they were there for and that's what they did.  So it was principally about advocacy, not necessarily research.  It was based on advocacy more than research

…Then the Harry Benjamin Society kept on bringing out different “standards of care” and then finally in 2008 they called themselves WPATH.  And so, you can see that they are - maybe it was 2007, I think it was 2008.  But they renamed themselves because “The Harry Benjamin Gender…” it wasn't a catchy name.  It sounded like what it was - which is a disparate group of people who are interested in trans issues.  And so, they professionalized, they marketed, they branded, and they called themselves the “World Professional Association for Transgender Health.”

And certainly, they had become the gold standard.  They were letting out these standards of care every few years, always changing, always kind of modifying and deciding.  “We have decided,” - they don't follow…. There's a criterion to become a standard of care.  So, it's not just a moniker.  “Standards of care” means something.  You have to pass through certain hoops; you have to get over obstacles to become a - they don't pass that.  But they call them, they self-identify their standards of care.

Benjamin Boyce:  Do they fail to pass it or did they just circumvent that hoop?

Stella O’Malley:  That's a good question.  No, they call themselves the “standards care” when, if you look at what is a standard of care, they don't pass the criteria

Defendants say that the ordinances “safeguard the physical and psychological we being of minors.”  Together with their amici, they present a series of reports and studies setting out harms.  But when examined closely, these documents offer assertions rather than evidence, at least regarding the effects of purely speech based SOCE.  Indeed, a report from the American Psychological Association, relied on by the defendants, concedes that “nonaversive and recent approaches to SOC have not been rigorously evaluated.”7 In fact, it found a “complete lack” of “rigorous recent prospective research” on SOCE. 

As for speech-based SOCE, the report notes that recent research indicates that those who have participated have mixed views: “there are individuals who perceive they have been harmed and others who perceive they have benefited from nonaversive SOCE.”  What’s more, because of this “complete lack” of rigorous recent research, the report concludes that it has “no clear indication of the prevalence of harmful outcomes among people who have undergone” SOCE.8  W fail to see how, even completely crediting the report, such equivocal conclusions can satisfy strict scrutiny and overcome the strong presumption against content --based limitations on speech.9,[3]

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