Instead, the district’s sex-ed curriculum for Mansfield High freshmen and juniors teaches uses the genderbread person in its curriculum, as the school disclosed to NewBostonPost as the result of a public records request.
The genderbread person lesson includes a handout given to students across the country that says gender identity exists on a spectrum; it teaches children that they can pick their gender. It also calls biological sex the “sex assigned at birth.”
The artist of the graphic, Sam Killermann, describes the purpose of the graphic on the genderbread.org web site. Killermann writes that the model shows that there aren’t just two genders, but rather an unlimited number of genders.
“The schema used here to map out gender (the ‘-ness’ model) allows individuals to plot where they identify along both continua to represent varying degrees of alignment with the traditional binary elements of each aspect of gender, resulting in infinite possibilities of ‘gender’ for a person,” Killermann wrote.
Mary Ellen Siegler of the Massachusetts Family Institute told NewBostonPost in an email message last week that the genderbread person is not only confusing for children but also that it lies to them by denying biological reality:
I sat in on a presentation being done in a MA school using the genderbread person to describe the differences between identity, expression, attraction, and sex. The presenter said so many alarming and false statements that I could barely keep up taking notes. There was absolutely nothing scientific about the assertions being made, and yet they were presented as undisputed facts. Things like if a person thinks in their mind they are a female, but they are anatomically male, the brain cannot be changed, so their body must be changed. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Children are being confused about their sex by presentations like these.
Siegler said such presentations communicate false information about human sexuality. She said:
It is not possible to change sex. Every cell of a person’s body is either male or female and that cannot be changed by cutting off healthy body parts or by taking opposite sex hormones. What is being done to children in school around this issue is absolutely abusive. It sets young students up for profound mental and emotional distress and irreversible physical harm. School officials need to stop being controlled by special interest and think about the real harm they are doing to children by transgender lessons like the genderbread person. They need to look themselves in the mirror, be honest with themselves, and examine whether what they are teaching is true and whether it is helping or hurting? Education of children is a sacred task. It is high time teachers and administrators have the courage to do the right thing and stop teaching dangerous and false transgender ideology. Parents must insist that this abuse of children in school stop.
Mansfield Public Schools superintendent Teresa Murphy could not be reached for comment over the weekend or on Monday this week. Nor could Killermann.
The genderbread person is uncopyrighted and is free for school districts to use.
An image of the handout is available below:
Additionally, here is the public records document that Mansfield Public Schools sent to NewBostonPost:
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