By ALEX HAMMER FOR DAILYMAIL.COM
The Indiana University School of Medicine is still touting a mandatory first-year ‘Human Structure’ course that instructs students to use gender-inclusive language and avoid words like male and female.
The lessons, also offered last schoolyear, were first laid bare this past March – via a series of controversial, leaked slides from instructors Dr. Jessica Byram and Dr. Valerie O’Loughlin.
Documents obtained this month by conservative website The College Fix show how the same class – with a virtually identical lesson plan – is still being taught, despite a storm of backlash seen during the previous school year.
This year’s lesson, like the last, preaches that sex and gender are both ‘non-binary’, and are instead constructs to be interpreted.
In one slide, aspiring medical professionals are urged to not use words that associate organs with a person’s sex – even the word ‘woman.’
The course, first leaked last schoolyear, tells aspiring doctors to avoid words like male and female when dishing out diagnoses. Another example word that Byram and O’Loughlin deemed offensive is the word ‘male’ – even when it’s offered in a scientific context
Instead, med students are told to issue directives like ‘People with cervices need to undergo yearly cervical cancer screening,’ as opposed to more traditional instructions that would use the word ‘women’.
Other slides reportedly obtained by Do No Harm and then shared to The Fix show more of the same, with a line from that slide also telling students to instead use ‘inclusive terminology’.
Instead of ‘first-person’ terms that ‘[place] the person before a trait [or] condition’, students are told to use accepted words [focus] on the organs, tissues, and structures themselves… and not as ‘typical’ person of any one sex assigned at birth,’
Another example word mentioned by Byram and O’Loughlin that could be deemed offensive is the word ‘male’ – even when it’s offered in a scientific context.
Instead of sentences like ‘the male gonad produces sperm’, students are advised to tell prospective patients ‘that the testes produce sperm’.
The section of the Powerpoint offering those instructions is titled Inclusive Terminology, and, per the slides shared by the Fix, is identical to a corresponding section seen last schoolyear.
Ironically, the slide then notes how ‘linguistic practices are open to change as LGBTQIA+ advocates refine their perspectives on language.’
It then tells freshmen how such language ‘ensures gender is not associated with having or not having an organ’, citing transgender people as a demographic.
The Indiana University School of Medicine is still offering a mandatory first-year ‘Human Structure’ course that instructs students to use gender-inclusive language
‘Uteruses are typically associated with women,’ it notes, ‘but what about a woman who’s had a hysterectomy?
‘Trans persons may have organs that do not align with their gender.’
Another slide also seen last semester elaborates on this school of thought, and features a prominent title placard that reads ‘Sex ≠ Gender.’
Below, the two doctorated professors write how sex is a ‘mostly biological construct’, and claim that one ‘some societies’ have binarized sex as just male and female.
‘Not everyone fits into those categories,’ the slide goes on to state, before pivoting to the concept of gender – which in contrast is billed as a ‘mostly social construct.’
Most identify with their sec assigned at birth,’ one bullet reads.
Another insists that ‘recent evidence suggests there may be a biological basis of gender’, recent assertions that sex hormones present in children before puberty and before they are even born play a part in their ‘gender identity.’
Another similar slide leaked by The Fix insists that both gender and sex are ‘non-binary’, while stylizing the prefix in all capital letters.
That presentation also included 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
Identical to one unveiled last year, the slide notes how ‘male’ and ‘female’ are the ‘typical’ sex types assigned at birth, while ‘man’ and ‘woman’ are the ‘common’ categories for gender.
The instructors go on to conclude that ‘these are [both] oversimplifications, and that ‘BOTH’ – again in all caps – ‘exist on a continuum.’
The Fix did not share any more of the leaked lesson plan, but the documents provided suggested the remainder was near-identical to the slides unveiled back in March.
That presentation also included 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.
A ‘Goals’ section, meanwhile, told the class strived to instill ‘reduced gendered language’ and direct students use ‘anatomy specific language’ throughout their future medical practice.
That leak almost immediately sparked swift public outcry from medical experts and other onlookers across the US, as controversy surrounding DEI instruction in medical schools and other American institutions continue to swirl.
National bestselling author Heather Mac Donald, who penned the “The Diversity Delusion,’ told Fox News of such lesson plans: ‘It’s putting patients’ lives at risk.’
“When you show up at the ER in an ambulance after a near fatal heart attack, do you want your doctor to be able to reel off the various forms of white privilege or do you want them to be able to get your heart going again?’
Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, board chairman of Do No Harm,’ similarly told The New York Post: ‘This focus on diversity means we’re going to take someone with a certain skin color because we think they’re okay, that they can do the work.’
He went on to add: ‘But we’re not going to look for the best and the brightest. We’re going to look for people who are just OK to make sure we have the right mixture of ethnic groups in our medical schools.’
A recent report found that critical race theory-related ideas were present in mandatory programs at 58 of the top 100 US medical schools, highlighting the growing trend of medical practices putting ideologies before science,
Concerns about how DEI policies recently raised by allegations that the University of Florida College of Medicine is using its curriculum to steer students towards certain agendas involving gender, while a prominent St. Louis medical center was also accused of bullying parents into giving children irreversible hormonal treatment.
Meanwhile, the Indiana University School of Medicine – which has roughly 2,000 students and is taxpayer funded – has still yet to comment on the controversial class.