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Steven Montante vs. transgender people

Steven Montante is an American plastic surgeon based in Richmond, Virginia. Montante offers top surgery to trans and gender diverse adults.

Montante has published research funded by SPLC-designated anti-trans hate group Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. The three published papers are systematic reviews:

  • puberty blockers for minors
  • hormones for trans people under age 26
  • top surgery for trans people under age 26

Background

Steven Joseph Montante earned a bachelor’s degree at University of Scranton in 1991 and a medical degree at University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine in 1995. Montante completed surgical residency training at the Medical College of Virginia at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2003. Montante continued at VCU from 2006 to 2011 as a plastic surgeon and researching healthcare informatics in the surgical environment. From 2011 to 2014, Montante was a plastic surgeon ar Southern Ohio Medical Center. In 2014, Montante moved to Richmond, Virginia, working as an associate at Richmond Aesthetic Surgery until 2017 and at the Hunter Holmes McGuire Richmond VA Medical Center since 2016. Montante founded Montante Plastic Surgery and Aesthetics in 2017.

2025 mastectomy paper

Anna Miroshnychenko is lead author of an evidence review on trans masculinizing top surgery funded by SEGM. According to PROSPERO:

Co-authors:

Collaborators

Funding: This systematic review is part of a large research project funded through a research agreement between the Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM), the sponsor, and McMaster University. None of the team members received financial compensation directly from SEGM to conduct this work.

SEGM-McMaster collaboration

From 2021 to 2024, McMaster University took funds from anti-trans hate group Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM). Montante co-authored some papers produced from this funding.

In 2025, McMaster lead researcher Gordon Guyatt and team stopped taking funds from SEGM following criticism and made a contribution to Egale Canada. In a statement that was not signed by Montante, some members of the team said:

“It is profoundly misguided to cast health care based on low-certainty evidence as bad care or as care driven by ideology, and low-certainty evidence as bad science. Many of the interventions we offer are based on low certainty evidence, and enlightened individuals often legitimately and wisely choose such interventions. Thus, forbidding delivery of gender-affirming care and limiting medical management options on the basis of low certainty evidence is a clear violation of the principles of evidence-based shared decision-making and is unconscionable.”

Montante refused to sign the statement. In an interview with anti-trans activist Benjamin Ryan for anti-trans group blog UnHerd, Montante said: “I don’t necessarily agree that he has the authority to dictate” how his work is used, he said of Guyatt. “To be so prescriptive waters down the notion of why we do these systematic reviews, and the notion of evidence-based medicine. There should be some level of detachment.” Ryan added:

“On a July 30 call, according to Montante, Guyatt expressed his unhappiness that his team’s papers had been cited in a US Department of Health and Human Services report on pediatric gender medicine. […] Montante provided me with emails that Brignardello-Peterson, the leader of the SEGM-commissioned reviews, sent in February on her and Guyatt’s behalf to the review authors. Expressing unhappiness that “our work is being misused and may be causing harm,” the pair proposed adding a paragraph to all the reviews’ conclusions emphasizing the importance of patient autonomy and denouncing policies restricting medical interventions. When Montante’s objected that such a post-hoc edit “may undermine the research,” they scrapped that idea. Instead, they proposed sending a letter to the editor to the journals that had published their reviews, which Montante and three others declined to sign and that was similar to the statement ultimately published in August.”

In Ryan’s later publication of the full interview, Montante said: “As far as my experience with SEGM, all the people that I have spoken with or come in contact with, I’ve never gotten any kind of vibe or any kind of perception that this was some kind of anti-trans group.”

Montante removes unwanted breast tissue for cisgender minors but will not perform the same procedures for trans and gender diverse minors because it is “psychiatric in nature”:

“We do gynecomastia surgery on minors and we do breast reductions on minors. You’re removing tissues, yes, that’s true. But when you do a breast reduction on a minor you’re not irrevocably changing their ability to potentially breastfeed. And the breast tissue of a male is essentially useless. I think those [comparisons] are hollow arguments or strawman-type arguments to make. This the only surgical procedure [for which] in getting authorization, you’re using a code that is psychiatric in nature.”

References

Boothe, Katherine; skaidra, sasha; Jones, Angela; Johnson, Jessica (July 12, 2025). Opinion | No pride in pseudo-science. The Hamilton Spectator https://www.thespec.com/opinion/contributors/no-pride-in-pseudo-science/article_095f09f0-5a70-528b-826c-07edd4811f6d.html

Carnell, Henry; Pauly, Madison (May 1, 2025). â€śAn Anti-Trans Fever Dream”: HHS Publishes Attack on Gender-Affirming Youth Care. Mother Jones https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/05/hhs-trans-youth-gender-care-report/

White, Margaret (February 9, 2025). The BMJ needs to take responsibility for its own part in enabling anti-gender ideology. The BMJ https://www.bmj.com/content/388/bmj.r253/rr-0

Coverage in anti-trans press

Ryan, Benjamin (September 16, 2025). “If I’m a funding body, I would think twice about engaging with McMaster.” A Coauthor of Reviews of Pediatric Gender Medicine Reflects On the Fallout. Hazard Ratio https://benryan.substack.com/p/if-im-a-funding-body-i-would-think

Ryan, Benjamin (September 3, 2025). The taming of a gender researcher: Activists targeted Gordon Guyatt’s promising field. UnHerd https://unherd.com/2025/09/the-taming-of-a-gender-researcher/

Brown, Elizabeth Nolan (January 24, 2025). Study Finds Almost No Good Evidence on Gender Dysphoria Drugs for Young People. Reason https://reason.com/2025/01/24/study-finds-almost-no-good-evidence-on-gender-dysphoria-drugs-for-young-people/

Selected publications by Montante

Miroshnychenko, A., Roldan, Y., Ibrahim, S., Kulatunga-Moruzi, C., Montante, S., Couban, R., Guyatt, G., & Brignardello-Petersen, R. (2025). Puberty blockers for gender dysphoria in youth: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 110(6), 429–436. https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2024-327909

Miroshnychenko, A., Roldan, Y. M., Ibrahim, S., Kulatunga-Moruzi, C., Dahlin, K., Montante, S., Couban, R., Guyatt, G., & Brignardello-Petersen, R. (2024). Mastectomy for Individuals with Gender Dysphoria Younger Than 26 Years: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, 155(6), 915–923. https://doi.org/10.1097/prs.0000000000011734

  • Schechter, L., Berli, J. U., & Bluebond-Langner, R. (2025). Discussion: Mastectomy for Individuals with Gender Dysphoria Younger Than 26 Years: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery, 155(6), 924–927. https://doi.org/10.1097/prs.0000000000011963

Miroshnychenko, A., Ibrahim, S., Roldan, Y., Kulatunga-Moruzi, C., Montante, S., Couban, R., Guyatt, G., & Brignardello-Petersen, R. (2025). Gender affirming hormone therapy for individuals with gender dysphoria aged under 26 years: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Archives of Disease in Childhood, 110(6), 437–445. https://doi.org/10.1136/archdischild-2024-327921

Resources

Montante Plastic Surgery & Aesthetics (montanteaesthetics.com)

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