Shaftesbury Kids, a division of the Canadian production company Shaftesbury Films, has produced a series of sex education videos for children titled “Sex-Ed School” that have outraged parents. The videos show classrooms of young children discussing such issues as transgenderism and masturbation with instructors.
The website for the series states:
Sex-Ed School is an entertaining and educational YouTube series about sexuality and healthy relationships for youth, ages 9-12. Each episode features two expert hosts, Nadine and Eva, leading a respectful and authentic dialogue on sexual health, and guiding participants through fun and thought-provoking activities about specific topics.
CBN notes, “They feature Nadine Thornhill, who is described as ‘one of Canada’s foremost experts on child and adolescent sexuality’ and Eva Bloom, a ‘sex research and online sexuality educator.’”
Examples that precipitated outrage:
Episode Four, titled “Gender,” is described this way:
Gender expression is how a person chooses to express themselves, while gender is how they feel on the inside. Eva and Nadine discuss pronouns and the kids learn more about what gender is all about. We meet Kaleb, a trans man who shares his gender journey during a fun and informative Q and A. As well, the kids play a game of musical-chairs-with-a-twist to learn more about how everyone can feel comfortable expressing who they are.
As CBN notes, in that episode, the educators play “true or false” with the children. One asks the children, “Everyone born with a vulva is a girl, true for false?” Most, but not all, of the children reply, “True,” leaving the teacher the opportunity to instruct, “Not everybody is sure, and that makes sense. Our genitals actually don’t determine our gender. Some people born with vulvas can be boys.”
Kaleb tells his life story, including this passage: “For me, in my daily life, I was a girl. But then when I went on stage and I wanted to perform, I was male and I used he/him pronouns.” Kaleb segues to hormone injections, saying, “It changed my voice a bit and changes your body a little bit. … I basically went through a second puberty when I was in my 20’s. … I have to take [the hormone injection] … every week … I did have my breasts removed. I have scars on my chest. I really only talk about kind of what’s in my pants if people are getting in there.”
More: in the video called “Love is Love”, the instructors discuss masturbation with the children, describing it as “self-love,” and asking about “things that can happen when you masturbate since some people consider masturbation a form of self-love.” One girl asks, “What does masturbate mean?” Instructor: “It’s basically when you touch yourself for sexual pleasure … touching your genitals in a way that feels good.” Further, “you can make yourself feel good on your own so you don’t need to have sex with someone else.”
A third example: an episode titled “Orientation,” which the website describes thus: “Local Drag Queens, Fay Slift and Fluffy Soufflé drop by for a delightfully candid discussion about all things orientation from their POV. The kids learn more about LGBTQ2+ and pose some very interesting questions for Fay and Fluffy.”
In that episode, a bearded man wearing an orange wig, a dress, and elbow-high pink gloves addresses the children seated on the floor in front of him and states, “Hi, I’m ‘Fay Slift’ and I use the pronouns she/her, and I’m queer-identified.” The other drag queen, Fluffy,” wearing a purple wig and a dress, adds, “I’m Fluffy Souffle; I use they/them, cause I’m a non-binary performer, and I also identify as queer.”
Fluffy asks Fay, “What does queer mean to you?” Fay answers, “For me it means limitless potential; it could be whatever it is that I feel or want to be.”
One young boy asks, “How do you teach somebody to be gay?” Fluffy answers, “Well, if it’s somebody who is gay that is like ‘I want to learn what gayness is,’ there’s the internet for that.”