Indiana University School of Medicine has added gender-inclusive education lessons to its mandatory ‘Human Structure’ course for first-year students.
The lessons aim to teach students to use gender-inclusive language and avoid words like male and female. The lessons advise that medical procedures, such as cervical cancer screenings, should be offered to ‘people’ not ‘women,’ to avoid offending patients.
Students are taught that gender is a ‘social construct’ separate from biological sex, and as doctors, they should use ‘gender-inclusive language’ to promote ‘affirmation of identity.’
The lessons include a diagram titled the ‘Genderbread Person,’ which uses a gingerbread man cookie to illustrate the differences between identity, sexual attraction, biological sex, and self-expression.
The lesson advises using ‘person-first language,’ which ‘places the person before a trait, condition, or diagnosis.’ The school advises using ‘anatomy-based language’ that avoids any mention of gender when discussing the human body.
The lesson advises that this ‘focuses on the organs, tissues, and structures themselves and in relation to each other, and not as a ‘typical’ person of any one sex assigned at birth.’
The lesson advises students to focus on ‘anatomy-specific language’ throughout their future medical practice, and to introduce four-year-olds to ideas about the difference between gender and sex.
By six years old, kids should begin private consultations about puberty, and by early puberty, doctors should begin discussing transitions with patients in private. Late puberty doctors should begin organizing transitions with patients.
This approach has been criticized as putting social ideologies before safe medical practices. It comes as a prominent St. Louis medical center has been accused of bullying parents into giving children irreversible hormonal treatment. The investigation is still ongoing.
Indiana University School of Medicine did not respond to requests for comment. Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey confirmed his office was launching a major probe into the St. Louis clinic following allegations of medical malpractice.
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