A University of Minnesota project funded with taxpayer dollars plans to distribute dolls with interchangeable genitalia to classrooms this fall, targeting children as young as four, and Gov. Tim Walz's office helped make it possible.
The dolls, branded "MyGender Dolls," feature detachable internal and external genitalia along with more than 100 interchangeable pieces of clothing, accessories, and hairstyles. Four dolls carry gender-neutral names, Sam, Rory, Avery, and Parker, and are designed, their creators say, for use in clinical and educational settings with children ages four to ten. The project's website lists a 2026 launch and is currently accepting waitlist signups, Breitbart News reported.
The University of Minnesota Medical School spent more than half a decade developing the project, which operates under the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health. Ben Parchem, a postdoctoral fellow at the university, described the dolls' purpose in a University of Minnesota Foundation magazine article that has since been deleted. A FOX News radio report preserved the quote: the dolls help children "realize all the different options that exist for who they can be, regardless of their body parts."
That deleted article is one of several details that raise more questions than the project's backers seem willing to answer.
Gov. Walz provided $15 million in annual state funding to the University of Minnesota Medical School, which housed the research project that produced MyGender Dolls, the New York Post reported. The connection between Walz and the institute goes beyond budget lines. In 2023, the Eli Coleman Institute gave Walz its inaugural "Distinguished Sexual and Gender Health Champion Award", a title created specifically for him.
An Instagram post from the institute said Walz received the award "for his outstanding efforts in protecting sexual and reproductive healthcare and gender-affirming healthcare." The New York Post also reported that Walz was photographed with one of the doll project's co-founders, linking the governor directly to the initiative he helped fund.
The MyGender Dolls website offers sparse detail about the project itself. It states the dolls are "built to help children tell their stories and see themselves represented" and "promote resilience, confidence, and joy through structured, engaging play." It also claims the dolls are "designed for the clinicians and educators who show up for these kids every day, providing developmentally appropriate, evidence-informed resources that didn't exist before." What clinical evidence supports that claim is not disclosed on the site.
Walz's record of using state authority to advance gender ideology in schools extends well beyond this project. He personally appointed all 13 members of Minnesota's Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board, known as PELSB, which implemented new teacher licensing standards requiring educators to "affirm" students' gender identities as a condition of keeping their licenses, Fox News reported. Those standards also require teachers to develop "racial consciousness" and work to "disrupt oppressive systems."
Catrin Wigfall of American Experiment, a Minnesota-based policy group, said the board "plowed forward with making controversial changes to state teacher licensure requirements despite overwhelming pushback and criticism from the public." Wigfall warned the mandates could worsen the state's teacher shortage by forcing educators to "incorporate ideological perspectives just to be able to do the job they love."
Not everyone shares the project creators' view that four-year-olds benefit from handling dolls with removable genitalia. Dr. Quentin Van Meter, past president of the American College of Pediatricians, offered a blunt assessment to the New York Post:
"They will find anybody who's in trouble and use this as a tool to say, this is why you're unhappy. This is absolutely grooming."
Associate Professor Dianne Berg, identified as a co-founder of MyGender Dolls, framed the project differently. "Everyone should be learning that there's diversity in gender identity and that what makes you real is not what your body parts are, but how you think and feel," Berg told the Post.
That statement captures the philosophical divide at the center of this story. One side says children as young as four should learn that biological sex is secondary to feelings about gender. The other says adults who introduce detachable genitalia to preschoolers are not educating children, they are manipulating them. The governor of Minnesota has put his office and taxpayer money on one side of that divide.
The fact that the University of Minnesota Foundation quietly deleted its own magazine article about the project does nothing to build public confidence. No explanation for the deletion has been offered. The project website, meanwhile, the Washington Examiner noted, provides few details about how the dolls will actually be used in classrooms or what training, if any, educators will receive before handing them to children.
Several basic questions remain unanswered. Which Minnesota school districts have agreed to use the dolls? How much taxpayer money went specifically to this project out of the $15 million annual allocation? What legislative authority or grant mechanism did Walz use to direct the funding? None of these answers appear on the MyGender Dolls website or in any public statement from the governor's office.
The doll project fits a broader pattern under Walz's leadership: state resources flowing toward ideological priorities while the governor avoids direct accountability for the results. His administration has faced scrutiny on multiple fronts, including his pardon of an illegal immigrant convicted of sexually assaulting a child, a decision that drew national attention and bipartisan criticism.
Walz has continued to defend that pardon even after the individual was deported by the Trump administration. The governor's willingness to spend political capital defending decisions that most voters find indefensible is not courage, it is a pattern of prioritizing ideological commitments over the safety and common sense that Minnesota families expect from their elected officials.
Separately, his administration has faced questions about massive welfare fraud that occurred on his watch, adding to a record that suggests oversight is not a priority when the cause aligns with the governor's politics.
In this case, the cause is introducing dolls with swappable genitalia to four-year-olds in public school classrooms, developed over six years by a university institute that gave the governor an award for championing its agenda, funded by millions in annual taxpayer dollars that Walz directed to the medical school. The university deleted its own promotional material. The project website is thin on specifics. And no one in the governor's office has explained to parents why this is a good use of their money.
Minnesota parents did not vote for their tax dollars to fund detachable genitalia for preschoolers. But under Tim Walz, that is what they got, and the people responsible would rather delete the evidence than defend it in public.
