I consider this child abuse:

“First-of-their-kind” transgender dolls — complete with removable genitalia — will debut in some Minnesota classrooms this fall to kids as young as 4 years old.

The paper dolls, with gender-neutral names like “Sam,” “Rory,” “Avery” and “Parker,” have removable internal and external genitals, along with more than 100 interchangeable pieces of clothing, accessories and hairstyles — like a trans Mr./Mrs. Potato Head.

The goal is for kids to “learn about the different options that exist for who they can be,” according to a therapist at the University of Minnesota Medical School, which spent over half a decade developing the controversial project funded by lefty Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz

The Medical School’s Institute for Sexual and Gender Health research over those six years included paying $20 to $60 for “trans and gender diverse” children and their parents to play with the dolls and “talk about gender and bodies” in groups.

Prototypes of the dolls were shown in a 2024 conference where one named “Sam” can be seen in what appears to be some phase of a gender transition, with a detachable penis off to the side, and a dress and girls’ underwear within reach.

The trans dolls — which promise to “make gender fun” — will be made available to teachers, school counselors, pediatricians and mental health providers …

This is terrible on so many levels. From the article, it seems they will be used with children who already “identify” as trans. But any child young enough to be playing with dolls is too young to be on such a track, and certainly it’s not the school that should be dealing with fostering this.

These dolls are wrong wrong wrong; attempting to become trans is not a game. So-called “bottom” surgery is so far from being a game that it is an obscenity to promote it or even visualize it in this way – for children, with dolls. It is a profoundly serious and disfiguring surgery with lifelong effects and dangers, and it is irreversible. It should never be marketed to children in any way or made into a game using a paper doll with easily detachable genitalia. There is no analogy to bottom surgery or to what human beings who undergo it experience.

And there’s also the problem of mission creep. Do we really think these dolls will be limited to children already saying they are trans? I very much doubt it; that’s not the way such things tend to work. These dolls should absolutely never be shown to children in general. Talk about fostering a little old-fashioned castration anxiety – not to mention just plain old anxiety and confusion of all kinds.

But sowing that sort of confusion is the point, isn’t it?