The University of Minnesota is sending transgender dolls with swappable genitalia into classrooms and clinics for children as young as 4, and the institute behind the project once handed Gov. Tim Walz an award for advancing gender-affirming policy.
The dolls are called MyGenderDolls. They come with interchangeable parts, including removable genitalia, and are billed by their creators as a tool to help preschool and elementary-age children understand gender identity separate from anatomy. The University of Minnesota says the dolls, designed for children ages 4 to 10, are headed to Minnesota classrooms and clinical settings this fall, according to Fox News, which first reported the rollout on Friday.
The project came out of the university's Early Innovation Fund and was developed by the school's National Center for Gender Spectrum Health, part of the university's Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health. The dolls are intended for use by what the university calls "clinicians and educators," not solely by families at home. A university description of the project, cited by Fox News and The College Fix, says the dolls are meant to help children "realize all the different options that exist for who they can be, regardless of their body parts."
Before this fall's classroom rollout, the university's gender center recruited children to help develop the product. The National Center for Gender Spectrum Health sought transgender and gender diverse kids between ages 5 and 10, along with their parents, to test the dolls, and offered families between $20 and $60 per session for participation, according to Campus Reform and the Fox News report. The recruitment effort, first surfaced by campus watchdogs, is what put the doll project on conservative media's radar well before this fall's planned classroom expansion.
The dolls themselves are not a subtle product. They ship with swappable genitalia and accessories so a child can physically reconstruct the doll's body to match a chosen gender presentation. Alpha News reported the university's own materials describe the goal as teaching children that "their gender identity is valid no matter what parts they have." That is a specific pedagogical claim aimed at children who, by age 4, are still learning to tie their shoes.
The Walz connection
The political tie here is not incidental. In 2023, the Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health presented Gov. Tim Walz with its Distinguished Sexual and Gender Health Champion Award, recognizing him for advancing gender-affirming executive orders in Minnesota. One of the three faculty members who handed Walz that award was a co-creator of MyGenderDolls, according to Fox News. Walz has not commented publicly on the doll project itself, and his office did not immediately respond to requests for comment cited in the reporting.
That overlap matters because it places the same institution that built explicit gender-identity products for preschoolers directly in the orbit of the governor's policy apparatus. Walz spent his time as a vice presidential candidate defending Minnesota's gender-affirming care laws and executive actions, the same body of policy the institute honored him for. The doll project did not emerge from a vacuum; it emerged from a university center whose leadership has an established, awarded relationship with the state's chief executive.
What remains unconfirmed is the exact taxpayer exposure. The Early Innovation Fund is a University of Minnesota internal grant program, and it is not yet clear how much of its funding traces to state appropriations versus private or university endowment sources, a distinction RedState and other outlets flagged as still needing firm attribution. Also unconfirmed: which specific school districts have agreed to bring the dolls into classrooms this fall, and whether parents in those districts have been notified in advance. Fox News reported the dolls are headed to Minnesota schools broadly this fall but did not name individual districts that have signed on.
Those two gaps, the funding trail and the district rollout list, are exactly what deserves scrutiny in the coming weeks. Minnesota lawmakers who have already sparred with Walz over parental notification and classroom curriculum will have an obvious next move: demand the university disclose which districts requested the dolls, and whether any state dollars financed their development. Parents in those districts deserve to know before the first doll comes out of the box, not after.
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