Here’s the answer that Hadley Public Schools teaches its ninth-graders: infinity.
The district’s sex-ed curriculum for its high schoolers at Hopkins Academy uses the genderbread cookie YouTube video to teach students about gender, the school district disclosed to NewBostonPost as the result of a public records request.
It’s a video created in 2018 by a pro-LGBT organization in Belgium called Wel Jong Niet Hetero. The name is in Dutch; in English, it translates to “Well Young Not Hetero.”
The video, which is in English, teaches children that sex and gender aren’t the same — and that children can pick their gender.
“Sex is biologically determined and has everything to do with what’s inside of your pants,” the video says. “It is often assumed that everyone is born either male or female.”
The video later explains its viewpoint that sex and gender aren’t the same and that there are more than just two genders (male and female).
“Your gender or gender identity denotes how you feel. A person can feel exclusively feminine or ultra-masculine,” the video says. “But this too lies on a spectrum. It is perfectly possible to feel a little bit more masculine than feminine, or the other way around. Some people feel both male and female, or neither and just want to be themselves.”
At one point in the video when explaining gender identity, several different identity names appear on the screen. They include: Genderqueer, Non-binary, Bigender, Genderfluid, Agender, Genderneutral, Pangender, and Third gender.
The video explains that what the word means to one person might not be the same to another. Of gender identity, it tells the viewers “Only you can decide which word fits you the best.”
Additionally, the video tells viewers that being heterosexual means someone is attracted to someone of the opposite gender on the traditional gender binary. By their definition, a man being attracted to a man who identifies as a woman would be heterosexual rather than homosexual.
Massachusetts Family Institute communications director Mary Ellen Siegler said it’s a topic that doesn’t belong in schools.
“The Hadley school district is acting unethically by using videos like this to teach unscientific and harmful transgender identity lessons. These lessons not only seek to reform reality by challenging the basics of the biological binary, but they trample parental rights and authority by undermining what parents teach their children about sex and gender. Instead of indoctrinating students with dangerous ideas that set them up for mental, emotional, and physical harm and that disrespect the sacred parent / child relationship, Hadley school officials need to focus on teaching reading, writing, and math.”
The genderbread cookie is similar to the genderbread person used in other sex-ed curricula, including at Mansfield High School. However, the genderbread person graphic visually represents the concept of unlimited gender identities; the genderbread cookie video, on the other hand, just tells students they can pick whichever gender they want.
“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,” Sam Killermann, the artist of the genderbread person, wrote.
Hadley Public Schools superintendent Anne McKenzie could not be reached for comment on Monday or Tuesday this week. Nor could Wel Jong Niet Hetero.
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