by Candace Hathaway, The Blaze:
A proposed public charter school in Brooklyn, New York, aims to provide a “genderful,” “affirming” learning environment where young children are encouraged to “explore their gender,” the New York Post reported Thursday.
The Miss Mayor Middle, a proposed, tuition-free public charter school, has recently sparked backlash for attempting to create an educational institution that would “prioritize total inclusivity by ensuring that policies and resources are designed with and for trans, gender-nonconforming, queer and ally students and families.”
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Children as young as nine years old, in grades five through nine, would be encouraged to “explore their gender, embrace their own identity, and decide how they will authentically walk through the world.”
“MMM empowers all students to learn and achieve individual success within an academically rich, joyful, inclusive and genderful environment,” the school’s website states.
According to MMM, the term “genderful” means its facility aims to “create a brave space as we work towards physical and emotional safety for all students.”
“We imagine the possibility of gender not as a force that restricts us, but as an embodied experience that is inherently joyful,” the website notes.
A video on its website features some faculty members and children explaining what “genderful” means to them.
Candace Hurley, one of the school’s board of directors, states, “Genderful is a word that is open and tolerant. And it means, simply, to show up as you are. There is no expectation. There is no one-size-fits-all. It is an allowance to be.”
One child in the school’s video says the term encompasses “the full spectrum.”
“Joy, liberation, and expansiveness of possibility,” remarked Jill Glassbrook, one of the school’s lead educators.
Chris Means, another lead educator for the proposed campus, said, “It’s a word that just says, ‘Inclusive.’ It includes everyone and that’s what’s important.”
The proposed school lists five “major values,” including “major work,” “major joy,” “major pride,” “major love,” and “major light.”
The founder of MMM, Joji Florence, recently published an article on Chalkbeat explaining the inspiration behind the school’s concept. Florence is a “proud nonbinary parent” with three children.
“I started thinking about the possibility of Miss Major Middle several years back, when an eighth grade student of mine bravely came out as non-binary. I noticed that other teachers and administrators were asking the student directly what non-binary meant and what they/them pronouns were. The onus of teaching these adults about their gender identity fell, unfairly, to the child,” Florence explained.
“More of our children want to explore, learn about, challenge, change, or move inside and outside the bounds of masculinity and femininity,” Florence continued. “Many kids seem to get that with increased access to an evolving gender spectrum, more people can experience more joy. In the trans community, I’ve heard this idea described as ‘genderful.'”
According to Maud Maron, a parents’ rights activist and community education council member in New York City, the school “rewards and encourages gender dysphoria.”
“It’s horrifying. No charter school that’s aimed at gender ideology indoctrination should ever be approved for children this young,” Maron told the Post.
Helen Qiu, a New York City mom running for the 65th State Assembly District in lower Manhattan, said she was “shocked” when she learned about the proposed school, the news outlet reported.
“There’s a push in schools to normalize the transgender movement, to make it younger and younger in age, and to exclude parents from knowing about their children’s transgender inclination. These three things combined equals child abuse,” Qiu said. “We need to elect people to oppose it.”
An evolutionary biologist and Manhattan Institute fellow, Colin Wright, told the Post that MMM is a “sinister” trap for parents and children.
“If you’re a parent who doesn’t know much about gender ideology and you hear that a kid can be themselves, not judged, it looks so progressive and fantastic. It sounds really good,” he commented. “These parents probably think the school is about just being yourself, free to be you and me, but it’s absolutely not what’s happening. They’re saying you can’t just be an effeminate boy and masculine girl. It’s saying, ‘If you’re an effeminate boy, you’re actually a girl.'”
