Commentary

This Prominent Children’s Hospital Teaches 8-Year-Olds About ‘Gender-Blending’

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • July 2, 2024

America’s leading hospitals are eschewing scientific ethics for gender unicorns & top surgeries.

If you are unfamiliar with the ‘Gender Unicorn,’ an animal analogy about how sex comes from genitalia and gender identity comes solely from the mind, your children may be able to explain it to you. Some healthcare providers, including the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP), preach radical gender ideology to elementary schoolers.

CHOP, one of the oldest hospitals in America, has more than a deeply unfortunate (but perhaps fitting) acronym. It has demonstrated a deep commitment to expose its patients of all ages to unproven gender ideology, rejecting science and basic medical ethics in the process.

Figure 1: The Gender Unicorn, as illustrated by Trans Student Educational Resources, included in CHOP’s training materials.
Hear it Straight from the Unicorn’s Mouth

This is not a simple rumor. According to documents Do No Harm obtained through FOIA request, the training materials prepared for children’s sex education are defined by radical anti-scientific gender ideology. A presentation given to a local public elementary school, titled “Supporting Transgender and Gender Expansive Students,” contains a clear outline of the most radical aspects of modern gender theory, served up in whimsical fonts and colors for the hospital’s future patients. The program’s goal, as per CHOP’s guidelines, is to forward a ‘gender-inclusive’ environment for students.

The programming begins by encouraging children to discuss “messages you received about

gender while growing up from your parents/family,” before asserting that messages regarding gender are often “influenced by social norms.” At no point is any mention made of the biological roots of human sexuality–the term ‘biological sex’ is only referenced as a vague framework for the much more in-depth discussion of gender identity and expression. Included in this in-depth discussion are what the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia considers to be the three categories of gender expression: masculine, feminine, and fluid/creative. All of this is being told to children who have yet to complete (or in many cases even begin) puberty. 

Figure 2: CHOP training materials.

Further, CHOP’s training hardly comes from unbiased sources.  One of the CHOP instructors teaching Pennsylvania elementary-age children about gender is Samantha King, who, after getting degrees in human sexuality and social work, manages CHOP’s “Gender and Sexuality Development Program.”

The other is Nadeen Herring. She describes herself publicly as an “unlearner; unapologetic mother and loud-mouth for Blaq trans youth” and has written copiously about the unlearning journey connected with parenting her own transgender child. She dedicates her career to ensuring medical providers “take trans realities seriously,” including getting medical personnel to avoid the use of pronouns with young patients. This makes sense, given her goal of being “a creative ambient, deeply-impassioned word massager.”

Each instructor holds a master’s degree in education. Neither appear to have any scientific credentials.

Misconceptions and Hypotheticals

The presentation calls out ideas they deem ‘misconceptions,’ such as the concept of peer pressure playing a role in child development. Apparently, peer pressure is simply a non-factor among children about to enter puberty. Despite this assertion, CHOP has an entire webpage dedicated to the role of peers in behavioral development, conveniently when the subject might not raise fair questions about peer pressure, social contagion, and gender identity.

Herring and King offer off-the-shelf rebuttals to common comments like, “You can’t be a girl, you’re a boy.” What is the response from CHOP, a leading medical institution? “It is not okay to tell someone they aren’t who they say they are. Since Sam knows herself best, if Sam says she is a girl then that is true.”

Figure 3: CHOP training materials.

This sort of behavior from an otherwise serious healthcare provider is the new normal at CHOP, as it is among many providers and medical institutions. As reported by the Daily Caller in April 2023, the hospital scrubbed information off its website about the benefits of top surgery for girls as young as thirteen and hormone therapy for children as young as eight, along with information about clinic staff seeking to hide children’s gender identity from their parents. This is the path that CHOP, and an increasing number of children’s hospitals, have chosen to go down in promoting deeply unscientific practices to their youngest patients.

Only time will tell whether America’s medical institutions continue this trend.