As first reported by The Daily Wire and Campus Reform, the University of Minnesota attempted to actually pay children to play with so-called “transgender dolls.” An advertisement was posted to Instagram by the National Center for Gender Spectrum Health; the center is part of the “Human sexuality program” at the University of Minnesota’s medical school. The advertisement reads:
Let’s Talk About Gender. We are looking to hear from transgender and gender diverse children between the ages of 5 and 10 years old and their parents about a new hands-on activity to talk about gender and bodies! Children and parents will meet a few times in groups with others to play with and give us ideas about the activities.
The post notes that compensation for participation amounted to between $20 and $60, and the Instagram advertisement referred interested potential participants to mygenderdolls@umn.edu. As Campus Reform reported: “My Gender Dolls are advertised as a ‘therapeutic tool’ for ‘transgender and gender diverse children.’ The project aims to teach gender ideology to children, who can swap the dolls’ ‘genitals and internal reproductive organs’ to ‘show that their gender identity is valid no matter what parts they have.”
In short, a center associated with the medical school at a prestigious American university sought to pay children to play with dolls that allowed them to mix and match penises and vaginas in order to affirm the idea that biological sex and “gender” are not synonymous but distinct. This is perhaps the best microcosm I have yet seen of what Mary Harrington has been calling “Meat Lego Ideology.” The Daily Wire was unable to confirm whether any parents signed their children up for this transgender doll program or not.
Campus Reform noted that the National Center for Gender Spectrum Health “has also produced a handbook to ‘support sexual pleasure education’ for trans-identifying men after transgender genital surgery” and that the center’s mission is to “1) promote scholarship by those who are trans-identified; 2) forward empiricism that is based on the real lived experience of trans-identified people; 3) challenge cisnormativity in healthcare; and 4) promote pleasure and positive sexuality for all bodies.”
The center exists to grant a veneer of academic respectability to gender ideology that it furthers by attempting to affirm gender dysphoria in children who were likely confused by other gender ideologues to begin with. It isn’t just the University of Minnesota; Campus Reform noted that Syracuse University had a “Trans Support Day” on March 23 that offered “therapeutic support for parents of trans youth” and “a space for youth to connect”; the University of Missouri and Washington University “had also been conducting “gender transitions” on children until a state law made such procedures illegal on Aug. 28, 2023.”
“Transgender toys” are not new, either. Mattel has released a “Laverne Cox” doll; Cox is the trans-identifying actor who was featured on TIME magazine’s infamous “Transgender Tipping Point” cover in 2014. Another doll, called “Sam,” was created in order to “stop the transphobia before it starts.” It is sinister and subversive to consider that dolls for children — toys created encourage the natural nurturing instincts and used in children’s games like “house” or by little girls pretending to be mothers — are now being used as a tool of trans activists to deceive children into believing that sex changes are possible.
