Schools in Wales could soon be teaching young children a “mixed berry gender-fluid muffin” analogy, recommended in a sex education pamphlet endorsed by the Welsh government.
According to The Telegraph:
Children as young as seven might be a “mixed berry gender fluid muffin”, teachers have been told in a sex education resource promoted by the Welsh Government.
The 170-page “Agenda” pamphlet, which has been promoted to all schools in Labour-run Wales, claims that biological sex “is not just ‘male’ and ‘female’” and lectures teachers on how some “want to change our gender pronouns (eg. from he to she) or want to be ‘agender’”, where they have no gender.
It has been described as the latest “highly inappropriate” example of sex and relationships education in Britain’s schools to emerge, with critics claiming the Welsh First Minister Mark Drakeford is “determined to push gender ideology”.
An investigation by The Telegraph found last week that pupils in some secondary schools have been told there are 100 genders and children are being taught gender fluidity as fact in some major academy trusts and independent schools, which led to Rishi Sunak ordering an urgent review this week.
Now, the Telegraph has obtained the Agenda pamphlet, which was produced by Cardiff University academics in partnership with the Welsh government, the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and charities, and targeted at seven to 18-year-olds.
The Welsh government logo is listed on the pamphlet and Kirsty Williams, who was the Welsh education minister until 2021, said it had been “hugely successful and has been used widely throughout Wales”.
A section on gender identity recommends that teachers play the “mixed-muffin gender berry challenge” to learn about “how you can’t assume someone’s gender by how they look”.
In the game, teachers are urged to make batches of blueberry muffins to represent stereotypes of masculinity, raspberry muffins to represent stereotypes of femininity, and mixed muffins “to represent gender fluidity”.
Staff are then told to break open the muffins and stand alongside a corresponding coloured balloon in a room – but there are only blue and pink balloons, with no mixed balloons.
The moral of the story is to experience “what it felt like to go to a gender-coded corner that they might not identify with” and “what it feels like to be given a gender you might not choose”.
The pamphlet also recommends that teachers play a “gender-snap pairs” game where they “decide which sex-switching or gender-bending worlds you want to explore” to “crack open a little bit of those rigid gender binaries”.
They are urged to research “species that challenged traditional gender roles”, with the examples given of seahorses, anglerfish as well as slipper snails which “change between male and female”.
Welsh teachers are also urged to “pledge to find different ways of dividing young people other than their perceived sex or gender group (eg male/female, boy/girls)” and both gendered uniform policies and gender-segregated toilets are criticised for “reinforcing gender norms”.
Laura Anne Jones, Wales’s shadow education minister, told The Telegraph: “The materials being pushed and approved by the Labour Welsh government are highly inappropriate and not at all age-appropriate for our children.
