Morning Wire - Inside WPATH's Private Forum: Trans Regret, Damage Control & Denial

Episode Date: August 1, 2026

In this episode of Behind the Story, Tim Rice sits down with Daily Wire investigative reporter Megan Brock to break down her explosive three-part exposé on WPATH, the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, the group whose "Standards of Care" shape medical policy, treatment, and insurance coverage on transgender procedures worldwide. Using a creative FOIA strategy, Megan obtained nearly 250 pages of private member forum messages that reveal what WPATH members say behind closed doors, a stark contrast to their public messaging. Megan's full three-part investigative series is available now at  dailywire.com. Subscribe for more Behind the Story episodesRead Megan Brock's reporting: dailywire.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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and welcome back to another edition of Behind the Story. My guest today is Daily Wire investigative reporter Megan Brock, who this week published a incredible three-part expose on probably the most radical pro-transgender group operating at all, but certainly the most radical pro-transgender group operating in the medical field. This is something that we've covered before, it's something that Megan has covered extensively, but as we will get into, this story has even more of an interesting twist based on exactly

what what Megan uncovered and how she did it. So Meg, thank you so much for joining me. Always a pleasure to have you. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So let's just start for those of our listeners who have not, and I would encourage everyone before we even start to go read these three pieces. They're all available on dailywire.com right now, as well as many stories that Meg has written for us, for previous outlets in the past.

But for right now, quick refresher for those of us who don't remember, who is this group? What is this group that you're writing about? Yeah, so W. Path is the World Professional Association of Transgender Health. And they're a group that's been around for a long time. They're actually first organized in 1979 under a different name. But they really are the bedrock of the entire transgender movement. They publish something called the Standards of Care, which they currently have the Sanchez of Care version 8. There's been various iterations of this. And this is medical guidance

that really guides the medical community. It guides legislators around the country, around the world. And it also guides insurers who are deciding which procedures are considered medically necessary and therefore covered to implement policies that are pro so-called gender affirming care. So really, if you think about the lynchpin and the entire surge of medical transgender procedures, W-Path really is the bedrock of all of that. Yeah, so I think it's not an exaggeration to say that this, as you said, I mean, this, they've been pushing this since the 70s, which is crazy. But this is also broadly speaking, and maybe not even that broadly speaking, this is the group that when people want to point to something that says sex change surgeries or cross-gender hormones or, puberty blockers are not only safe and effective, no downside, but also good and necessary. Like, this is the group.

It all eventually comes back to W-Path. These are the doctors that are going out, making these statements. This is who lawmakers are citing. This is who Blue State governors are citing. Basically, their whole position is that there is no downside to transgender procedures broadly, which is what makes your most recent investment. investigation so shocking because behind closed doors, the group's members are singing a little bit of a different tune. So tell us about, again, what this story is and how you got your hands on

this information. Yeah, so one of the benefits of being a W-Path member is that you get access to their member forum. If your listeners have been following the Transgender Movement, they may have heard the W-Path files, which were a series of messages that were from this private forum that were obtained by a group who published this information that was very cutting edge when it was came out. So I do a lot of FOIA requests. I was foying someone in the Washington Department of Corrections and realized that they were getting emails from W-Path to their government email. And I also knew that the Washington Department of Corrections for some of their staff positions requires their staff to be W-Path certified. So I thought, I wonder if they're getting any of these forum messages.

So I submitted a follow-up FOIA, and sure enough, I got almost 250 pages of this member forum where W-Path members discuss all kinds of issues from corrections to detrovisioning protocols to some of the absolute horrific side of normal, I would say normal complications, regular complications maybe is the better way to say it, of sex chain surgery such as vaginalplacity surgery. So it really offers a look behind the curtain of what members are concerned about and what they're talking about that maybe isn't publicly discussed. Yeah, so two quick notes that I want to make before we dive into the stories. Foya, you just mentioned that's the Freedom of Information Act.

You're referring to Freedom of Information Act requests, which is when journalists can submit often kind of complicated and bureaucratically involved forms saying, you know, to governments or public departments or officials, you know, I want to see this publicly available information. This is, you do this a lot. I think we've discussed this on the podcast before. It can take a long time, right? I mean, how long did it take you to get this stuff back after you filed the requests? You know what? I have a bunch of different requests that I've

filled out to the Washington Department of Corrections, and they just sent me, like, they sent me an update email every two weeks on the various requests. Some of them are like over a year old, and they're still working on them, so it really depends on the state, but this one is just every once in a while I get an inbox saying, hey, you have some more records to look at, and I'm like,

great, you know, but... So it can take years, and again, I just, it gets stressed, because this is such a, this I think really highlights kind of the kind of work that you do, right? And the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, you would not have been able to, you can't FOIA a private message group. Like, you can't, that's not a thing. So, thinking through, okay, hold on, Washington state, the Department of Corrections is involved, so maybe that, like, this is, just even getting there, even getting to the point where you thought to

file this FOIA, you have to be so deep in the world. both of the transgender medicine, but also deep into investigative journalism. So I have to shout that out because it is really like that alone is such an accomplishment. And we haven't even talked about what you've uncovered. Yeah, I don't know. When I read the messages and I write articles about vaginalplasty, I'm like, is it, though, is it? Is it someone's got to do it? Well, let's start there.

In my personal ranking, I think this is the second most shocking. It's really hard to rank of the three pieces. So let's talk about the first piece in your series, which was members discussing side effects. Talk to us about that. Yeah, so this was a series of messages about vaginalplasty surgery, which if you have young ones, cover their ears. But it's basically a procedure where a male's genitalia is removed. And then a surgeon tries to create a fake vaginal canal, a fake vagina for a man using that tissue.

So obviously that's a very complex and difficult procedure. And when a patient undergoes that procedure, they have to dilate this fake canal for the rest of their life or it will harden because it's a wound. So you think about any kind of scar tissue naturally is going to harden. And so I found a series of emails or series of messages, sorry, where the members were discussing that some of the patients were undergoing this huge procedure. and then they weren't keeping up with the dilation due to the painful complications. You can have bleeding. You can have all kinds of things. And one of the most shocking messages I got was actually from the past president of W-Paths

to someone who's very significant in the transgender movement. I'm going to read the real, the craziest quote, because they discussed this. They acknowledge all of these problems, which they do not acknowledge publicly. I think, you know, aside from I'm sure that somewhere on the website or in reports, There's some kind of standard disclaimer that says, you know, all surgeries have carry the risk of side effects. I'm sure that W. Path has, you know, covered their asses effectively legally. But publicly, right, the preponderance of statements that they're saying is, you know, there's something wrong. There's something wrong.

So this is what their members are discussing internally. And then one of the members, I believe this was the past president, said, just because someone does not wish to maintain their vagina because of pain and discharge, jumping to regret, should. not be our first response. I don't even know how to follow it up to him, to be honest. There's not, I mean, there's not, like, it's truly one of the craziest, like, hey guys, we're mutilating people's bodies

so much so that it is causing a lot of them to want to stop doing the very invasive and expensive and life-altering thing that they asked us to do. But none of that means that we should stop doing this. I mean, the lack, I don't know if it's a lack of reflection or just,

they are so deeply committed to this, but that is a shocking statement. And again, this is from, I mean, I think your reaction there is perfect. You're not shocked by a lot of this. As both a nurse, as a medical professional and someone who has been exposing these people for years now, there's not much of this that shocks you, offends you, upsets you, angers you perhaps, but that's maybe the first time I've ever seen you shocked at something like I mean, look, a lot of this is me in my office by myself, and I get these things, and I don't even have able to talk to about it. I mean, it's just, I'm a woman, and I will just say on behalf of women, we thankfully do not have to maintain a vagina. That's not something that someone actually has to do if they're an actual woman.

So I think just that phrase alone really tells you the truth, and that's that there are men and they're women. And I think what's so sad, I mean, as a nurse and as someone who's spoken for surgeons who's worked with post-stop patients for very complicated procedures, whenever you have a procedure, the goal is to restore function. That's the whole thing. I'll also say another part of my background is I volunteered for almost two years on a hospital ship in West Africa working with people who had no access to surgery to provide them basic surgery, like cleft pallets, different kinds of really basic care that we take for

granted in the U.S. And so I think about a surgeon is a highly skilled person, someone who's gone to school for a long time, and someone that we don't really have a lot of in the world. Like, there's a limited number of surgeons in the world, and that they're using this amazing skill and talent they have to take away the function of adults and young adults and even minors when they really have this amazing opportunity to be building up bodies. And that's really the whole purpose of health care and of surgery. Yeah, that's, I mean, first do no harm, right? That's the, that's, it's, it's, it's, it's a great way of putting it. And I think, yeah, the scarcity of, of that's, I've never really thought about it that way, but yeah, what do you think about? It's like, it's what, it's what people on

the left would call a first world problem or, you know, or an example of privilege, were they not so captive by this other part? Yeah, we hate to use the word privilege, but I mean, you know, I, I never have to worry about my kids, like, losing function from their arm because they broke it. And there are people in the world who still have to worry about that. So I think when you even, And there's so many layers to this. I mean, in the piece that I know if you're going to bring up, but I discussed the Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit against W. Path in June, and they really went into detail discussing just how awful these procedures are

and also emphasize that these procedures are being sold specifically to children, male children who are maybe 17, under 18. You know, they use the example of 17-year-old so that they have the parental support to maintain the brutal dilation schedule. And I referenced to another series that I had done on W-Path, which is, again, one of the top shocking things I heard was I obtained videos from a 2022 scientific symposium. And one of the doctors was discussing puberty blockers. And he said, we really need to be careful of the timing because when we block a male's puberty, we're blocking the growth of the future vagina, meaning that when you stop an 11-year-old boy's genitalia from developing, it doesn't develop enough skin. And so that makes it difficult then to do these vaginalplasty surgeries, which was also referenced in another email in the piece. So, I mean, it really is just the whole thing. It's why all of it matters.

It's why stopping us from happening to young children matters. I mean, it's just very, very traumatic to even read about. But then you think about all these poor people and poor kids who then become young adults who regret what they've done, which is the subject of the second piece. that's uh yeah well that's maybe the the stopping the growth of the future janetalia is maybe the worst thing that i've ever heard so thank you for that that's sorry to no it's no it's you know you know profaness of doom here i'm so sorry to everyone but it's it's it's horrible but it's this is why this is important important but okay so this is a great segue to the second piece in the series which at least for right now for my money was the most uh shocking or offensive to my

sensibilities because in this piece, we see W-Path members talking to each other about detransitioners. So detransitioners, right, are, as for those who don't know, this is the term, as it sounds, given to people who, and actually, you can probably correct me on this, is it, does it only apply to people who stop at some point and reverse, or can there be people, do we use the term to apply to even people who had a full sex change but then want to come back? as best as possible. Like, is there a cutoff? I mean, I think it would be anyone who realize that, that, wow, you can't change your sex,

and I want to align myself with my true sex as much as as possible. So detransitioners, folks like Chloe Cole, who's been an incredible advocate for this, and the whole concept of detransitioning has become affiliated with the right more broadly, which is not because it's a political thing, but it's because outlets like The Daily Wire, people like you, like our colleague, Mary Margaret Olahan, who has written a book called D-Trans,

where she interviewed detransitioners. Conservative outlets and conservative politicians and groups are the ones who will highlight this, right? Because no one on the left politically who has supported these things wants to then admit that people have regret. W. Path also does not want to admit this, but their members discuss this.

So tell us a little bit about, Let's talk about this story. Yeah, so, I mean, two of the threads again in this email forum were specifically about W-Path members who were, I think they're a doctor and a physician's assistant, asking for help to meet the physical needs of patients who were wanting to detransition. And when I first read this, I mean, you brought up Chloe Cole. Hearing Chloe Cole has testimony in September of 2022 is what brought me into this whole issue because I remember hearing that and thinking, oh, my gosh, as an adult, as someone who cares about

children as someone who is a pediatric nurse, I couldn't believe that children were having their breast cut off by the medical profession. And I remember crying. And to be honest, when I got these emails, it like made me want to cry because one of them is a story of a young woman who has already had her breasts removed, her uterus removed, and her overrears removed. And now she wants to return back to being a woman. And the W-Path members asking, like, how do I get her estrogen? because if you don't have ovaries, you can't have estrogen. And so these patients are put into a surgically induced early menopause in their 20s. And that's something that Dr. Kurt Maselli gave me some information about.

He's from Do No Harm. But you really are creating chronic medical patients by giving young people these procedures. I mean, everything else aside, your body has certain needs. and it is just so heartbreaking to read that this is going on. And a lot of the, I mean, to be, to be, it was interesting to me that there were quite a few members chiming in that we really need detourishing protocols. We need to detourishing groups. But I think what still stuns me is the lack of just thinking, like, wait, maybe we need to stop doing this. Because even if one patient is harmed in this way, that's one too many.

you know. Right. Well, but the other, I want to come back to that in a second, but the other shocking thing, right, is that the responses that they're getting in these boards, it's all these people saying, hey, how do you get, you know, this young woman estrogen? How do we do this? We need detransitioner protocols. And so many of the responses are people saying, this is just a tragic anomaly. Or, again, much like just because the patient is in pain and regrets it does not mean that we should stop doing this, right? People start pivoting, right? In the, you know, you know, you can, again, read the piece that people say, well, I really think this just shows that we need to be there and counsel them through the confusion or tell them that it's just the hormones making them feel this way or make sure that they're prepared for the changes beforehand. Like, some of these folks are not even acknowledging, they're trying to just say, well, you know, they're basically blaming the patient, right? They're basically saying, well, maybe they weren't mentally strong enough to undergo this, but that's not our fault.

One, of course, it's entirely their fault. And the other thing is, to your point, right, it would be to go back to what you were saying about, you know, what medicine is for and what surgery is for, this attitude would make sense if it was an experimental cancer treatment for, you know, pediatric cancer or any kind of cancer. Well, there's a 50-50 shot. It could either kill the patient or leave them maimed or it could save their life.

But if we don't give them this six months from now, they're dead anyway, it is worth the risk, right? In those moments, these are tough decisions that doctors and families and patients have to make, but this is, we've all, this is a reasonable calculus because it's giving people a chance at a better life. These people do not even, they're applying that logic to harming people, to actively ruining people's lives. Right. Well, I mean, the thing that's different is in the cases you're discussing, you're taking patients who have a really critical medical and physical need, where their body is, Like, I can give my family, my dad had five cardiac bypass surgeries, which is a very risky procedure.

But if he didn't have that procedure, he was going to die. Like, his heart was going to stop working and he was going to die. So the calculus, the risk benefit is pretty easy. It's like, well, yep, this is risky, but the benefits are overwhelming. So you're going to do this. With these sex change surgeries, I mean, it's a mental diagnoses. It's not a physical problem. you're taking people who have young, young people, young adults, teens, adolescents who have

physical working bodies, but they have a mental problem where they're disassociating from their body. Like essentially, you know, I believe in a wholly integrated, that you're fully female or fully male. And so disassociation is a mental disorder where someone believes they have multiple personalities, right? So essentially, I wrote an article about a detransition who discussed it this way, who had who had actually full-on disassociative disorder. And she was saying how that's really, really what it is.

So you have someone who's disassociating from their body, and this is a mental problem, and we're telling them, well, the answer is to cause physical harm to your body and take on these procedures that are so high risk. I mean, the other, the, you know, kind of ying to the yang of the vaginalplasty is a phallopasty surgery. That's for women. And they can cause serious damage to the kidneys. I mean, one of the problems with those is you can get urethral stenosis.

which can put pressure on your kidneys, if you don't have kidneys, you die. Do you know what I mean? Like, we're not talking about like small things. Like you have to have at least one working kidney or you're going to be on dialysis or you're going to be dead. So, I mean, the seriousness of the complications really can't be overstated. And this is not to correct a problem. This is creating problems.

Well, this then brings us to the third and final. Well, I'll say the third and final piece for now. I think we can give everyone a little sneak peek. we have at least, I think, one more piece from this coming out at some point from this current batch of FOIAs. And also, as you sort of mentioned, you have still tons of FOIA requests. And this is, of course, an ongoing issue. And this group and other groups like it is something that we're going to stay on. So not the final piece that we will expect on W. Path or trans radicals from you, certainly.

But the final piece of this installment series, which is, again, relatively the least shot. shocking of the three, only because it's something that has been documented in the past, which is blue states trying to put biological men who identify as transgender women in female prisons. This is a horrifying thing that our outlet and others have reported on, but here we get to see the W, again, the W-Path members, and what are they saying to each other behind closed doors about this phenomenon? Yeah, I mean, there was basically saying we need to, I'm paraphrasing here, but we need to re-educate female, quote-unquote, cis females, which would mean actual female inmates, to accept and embrace men as women, which is horrifying. I mean, so many of these women who are incarcerated are victims of sexual abuse or have sexual trauma in their history, and now they're being told that they have to share a cell with a giant man who everyone knows is a man.

and then on top of it, they're basically being chided as, you know, they're not cooperating if they're not accepting these men as women. So in these messages, the W-Path members were prioritizing the feelings of men rather than the physical safety of women. And I think what's going on in prisons is shocking. And it really, to me, really shows how gender ideology, in my opinion, isn't a culture war issue. It's a war to redefine reality, which then impacts every element of culture. because once you change that, whether it's prisons, it's medicine, it's education, you find me

anything, and I'll show you how gender ideology is really warping that. I want to read this quote in full from your piece because it really is striking. This is Michelle Webb, who is the, this is a ridiculous title, a gender affirming program administrator for the Washington State Department of Corrections. Here's her response to female prisoners who have the audacity to not want to share cells with, as you said, massive men, who also, we can't stress enough, criminal. right, criminal men, like men who have already done crime. Many who have crimes specifically against women.

Against women, right. She says, the cis female population should have open and frank discussions with train staff, with community experts to understand why they, the transgender inmates, want to be in an affirmative environment. They are not trying to take resources. They are not getting more than, in quotes, cis females. They are just looking to live their authentic lives and have equity. end quote.

I mean, there's a lot in that. The two things that strike me, one is, again, the sort of the way that these W-Path members shift to the argument, right? Like, that's a dishonest reading. These, I don't think no one, maybe sure someone is saying,

oh, you know, they get special accommodation, whatever. But the main argument against allowing men to be in women's prisons is not that female inmates are saying, oh, they're getting more resources. These women fear for their safety and for their life.

lives. So that's first of all just the dishonest characterization. But then also, this woman works for the Department of Corrections and she thinks the prisoners should be having discussions about gender equity and transgender theory. Like, people don't want to do that outside of jail. That's not what jail. Like, this is, she just so fundamentally misunderstands the point of what her job is. It's, it's shocking. Yeah, I mean, I have a lot of emails from the Department of Corrections and at some point I'll get to writing about them because the policies that are being pushed really do really are shocking. And I think that you have some of the most vulnerable people in society, which are prisoners, and that they have rights to, you know, no one should be treated in an

inhumane way at any prison cell. And I can't think of anything more inhumane than sticking a large biological male who has a history of violence against women into a potentially into a prison cell with a woman who's probably been, who has a good chance of having experienced sexual assault. It's terrible. And I think, you know, saying you mentioned the most vulnerable, and that's really what is so striking about all of this, is that this would be, you know, a policy issue and a societal issue regardless, but so often we're not talking about, you know, what advocates like to say, oh, these are consenting adults. We're not talking about consenting adults. We're not talking about people who, you know, fully cogently opted into this. We're talking about young people. We're

talking about prisoners. And again, in the case of prisoners, right, we're talking about this being foisted on people who didn't choose it. But, right, the female inmates in question should not have to do, they, they did not, it's not their problem that this person chose to identify as something else and then the government decided that counts, right? Children who are confused or undergoing mental issues, they deserve counseling and, and help. They shouldn't then be, have, you know, doctors tell them you should just go have these irrevocable surgeries. It's this, it's this fixation and this focus on the most vulnerable and on kind of like insisting, no, that's where we

have to do it. That is, I think, what's one of the more shocking things about this. Yeah, no, it's 100%. I mean, I think foster care, I've been a lot of reporting on foster care. That's another place. I mean, who's more vulnerable than a child in foster care, right? But you're spot on. It is really the most vulnerable continue to be preyed upon and get very hurt. I guess in closing, because again, this is certainly not the end of not the last conversation we'll have about this, but we can leave it here. But my question is just, what is the future for W. Path and what should people who want to fight this be doing? Because it's, you know, it's one thing when we talk about government policies, right? If like, if you don't like what the Washington Department of Corrections is doing, you can vote in, you know, vote in people who will oppose it, right? If you didn't like the way the Biden Harris administration was going to end another phenomenal series that you've done, you know, people voted for Trump because they didn't want to see what President Kamala Harris would have done to this. But this is a private group, as we discussed at the beginning of the episode, but a very influential group. So what is to people who want to curb their influence? Like, what could come next?

Or is this just something that we have to, again, continue to watch and live with? Yeah, well, I mean, the FTC has a lawsuit filed against W. Path, so we'll see. Unfortunately, I don't think there's been too much success with the DOJ has been a whole rash of subpoenas. I mean, to the normal person. I would say don't accept it in your community, right? Because WPath is very likely influencing your school, your school board policies, your pediatrician's office. I mean, I always tell people you want to do something. When you go to the pediatrician's office and they ask you to fill out a survey and they ask you if your kids a z-zer, like send them a feedback and say, I don't want to see this. I don't want to see this. I'm tired of looking at this. There are two sexes. You know, people pay attention to that. So, I mean, it is very hard in medicine because I think ultimately what really tip to scales is when enough medical. professionals say we're not doing this anymore. But how you reach that critical mass is a million dollar question that unfortunately is out of my, more than above my pay grade. I just think that the more people that we, I mean, I would say my own story, I'm just a mom who heard Chloe Cole talk

and was like, I got to do something about this because this is so wrong. And so I think anyone, if you really want to, can figure out a way to help fight this and protect our kids and also protect generations of kids. I mean, to me, this is a generational issue that if we don't stop this now, then our daughters, our granddaughters are going to live a life where men can become women and that's going to cause all kinds of harm. Megan Brock is an investigative reporter at the Daily Wire. Her three-part series on W-Path and the conversations W-Path members have behind closed doors is available now at dailywire.com. Meg, thank you as always for taking us behind the story. Yep, thank you.