Wisconsin School District’s Sex-Ed Program Goes All-In on Gender Fluidity

I n an affluent Milwaukee, Wis., suburb, the Wauwatosa School District is generously offering its students a new sex-ed program that adheres to the deceptively titled National Sex Education Standards — a private program developed by such leading lights as Sonya M. Norsworthy, the national director of education for the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The program trains students in gender ideology starting in kindergarten and progressing through high school.

Like many such programs, it cloaks itself in concern for a child’s well-being while explicitly teaching five-year-olds about the anatomy of “female-assigned” persons. Perhaps most insidiously, the ideological instruction is woven into state-mandated sex-education programs, meaning that gender and sex — feeling and biological reality — are conflated.

To be clear, I am not opposed to sex ed. It is good that kindergarteners learn that there are parts of their bodies that are private and not to be touched by others, and a grasp of basic anatomy is useful. But the district’s classes go far beyond that: The program looks to warp children’s conceptions of human biology, and this perversion of necessary instruction is simply unacceptable.

The district defends the program, stating on its website:

Together with a community of educators and families, students in the WSD will be empowered to develop healthy relationships, to engage in respectful communication, and to practice responsible decision making that is grounded in the importance of self-worth and the dignity of others. Prepared instructors will provide grade level appropriate information on sexual health that is current, factual, consistent, and inclusive. [Italics in original]

But what the district aims to teach is not sexual health.

By second grade, a child is expected to know that not all boys have penises and not all girls have vaginas — contrary to what we have come to know about mammalian species and the natural function and value of the two sexes.

The curriculum reads:

You will notice that this lesson refers to “girls,” “boys,” “male,” and “female” when identifying body parts. To be inclusive of all students, including transgender and non-binary students, start this lesson by explaining how assigned sex can be different from gender identity. When a baby is born the doctor labels them “boy” or “girl” based on what their body looks like. For many people that label fits, but for some people the label doesn’t fit. What’s important is to respect the label people give themselves, whether they feel like a boy, a girl, or another gender.  . . . Most people have a vulva and a vagina or a penis and testicles, but some people’s bodies can be different. [Bold added.]

In third grade, kids are permitted the opportunity to understand the granular nature of the gender spectrum. AP students, step aside; these kids will dominate gender studies in college, outshining their unenlightened peers.

A Venn diagram is offered with “boys” and “girls” on the left and right, with “anyone” in the overlapping section. Teachers are instructed to ask how students identify and why they might identify as a boy or girl. The prompt then reads:

If a student says something like, “I just know it” or “I feel that way on the inside,” explain that knowing what gender you are is called “gender identity.” Put the sign that reads “gender identity” up (or write the phrase) on the board. Ask students to repeat it with you.

Point out that the word “Identity” begins with an “I.” Say something like, “Identity starts with an I. That’s how you can remember it. ‘I’ feel, ‘I’ know. Gender identity is that feeling of knowing your gender. You might feel like you are a boy, you might feel like you are a girl. You might feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts. You might feel like you’re a girl even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘boy’ parts. And you might not feel like you’re a boy or a girl, but you’re a little bit of both. No matter how you feel, you’re perfectly normal.’” [Bold added.]

A high-school presentation on sexually transmitted diseases — an unpleasant but valuable topic, given the frequent sexual activity of high schoolers — reduces sex to the friction of bodily parts. No longer is “heterosexual sex” sufficient to explain sex between a man and woman, “penis to vagina” is the preferred inclusive term.

A pre-lesson note instructs:

Language is really important and we’ve intentionally been very careful about our language throughout this curriculum. You may notice language that seems less familiar — using the pronoun “they” instead of “her” or “him”, using “partner”, and referring to “a person with a cervix” and “a person with a penis” vs. man or woman. When discussing penetrative sex, be specific (i.e., penis-vagina sex vs. heterosexual sex). This is intended to make the curriculum inclusive of all genders and gender identities.

Because the program is part of sexual education, students are automatically enrolled in it unless families choose to opt out of the instruction. Concerned parents must then either plan to pull their student from school on multiple days, or opt the kid out and have him sit in a room apart from his peers. The first option would be welcome to many kids, who love any reason to be pulled out of school, only to triumphantly return with a McDonald’s lunch in hand. But many parents cannot afford to take repeated time off from work to rescue their offspring from nonsense that shouldn’t be taught in the first place. The second option, where the student sits in another room with quiet work, could make the kid feel ostracized and also excluded from the chatter that no doubt would result from the day’s sex-ed lesson.

And then there are many kids with parents who are so detached from their education that they’d never take the time to opt them out or speak with the teacher. Such kids will be inundated with gender dreck, and no one will act in their defense.

I’ll leave the reader with some excerpts from the glossary of the National Sex Education Standards: Do these terms and ideology belong in a program for K–12 students?

• Agender — A person who does not identify with any gender.

• Reproductive Justice — A term coined by 12 Black women to define the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. In addition, reproductive justice demands sexual autonomy and gender freedom for every human being.

• Spontaneous Abortion — A naturally occurring termination of pregnancy before the 20th week of pregnancy. (Naturally occurring pregnancy loss after the 20th week is often called a stillbirth.) Spontaneous abortion, which may also be called a miscarriage, is a naturally occurring event, unlike induced abortion, which is also know [sic] as medicinal or surgical abortions [sic].

• Two-Spirit — A contemporary umbrella term used by Native, Indigenous, and/or First Nations people whose gender identity encompasses both male and female energies. Often recognized as a third gender since it falls outside of the two-gender binary, two-spirit people may or may not identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, or gender nonconforming. Please note that most Indigenous communities have their own unique words for describing people who defy gender norms and in many Nations, being Two-Spirit carries both great respect and additional commitments and responsibilities to one’s community.

The intersectional-obsessed Left sees race, sex, and class struggles as one, and uses state-mandated sex ed as a Trojan horse for progressive ideology. The Right would do well to remember this and pare all but the basics from such sex-ed programs. Kids should know the operations of their bodies and should not have to suffer indoctrination while learning of them — realizing where babies come from is shocking enough, if the tears of some of my fourth-grade classmates were any indication.