University of Minnesota Researchers Built “Transgender Dolls” for 4-Year-Olds. Eighteen Months Later, No One Will Say Who Paid for It.
A research center at the University of Minnesota Medical School is building “MyGenderDolls” — paper-doll-style figures for children ages 4 to 10 with swappable “internal and external genitals,” marketed as a therapeutic tool for “mental health providers, school counselors, educators, pediatricians.” The project’s own site says it is “Launching 2026” with an open waitlist.
An earlier phase of the project paid children ages 5 to 10 between $20 and $60 to play with the dolls; the university then quietly scrubbed the project’s public webpage after reporters started asking questions. A Minnesota public-interest law firm has been waiting since January 2025 for the university to disclose exactly how the project is funded — a request that remains unanswered.
Gov. Tim Walz (D) has one documented tie to the project: a 2023 award from the researchers’ own institute, given for two unrelated actions. His office has not answered questions about MyGenderDolls itself.
- 4–10 — the age range MyGenderDolls’ own site says its swappable-anatomy dolls are designed for — University of Minnesota, National Center for Gender Spectrum Health
- $1,305 — raised toward the project’s $25,000 University of Minnesota Foundation crowdfunding goal, as of the most recent public tally
- $20–$60 — paid to child participants ages 5 to 10 recruited for an earlier round of the project in December 2024
- 18 months — since the Upper Midwest Law Center filed a public-records request for the project’s full funding sources — still unanswered as of this story
MyGenderDolls is a project of the National Center for Gender Spectrum Health, a research unit inside the University of Minnesota Medical School’s Eli Coleman Institute for Sexual and Gender Health, part of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health. Its co-directors, Dianne Berg, PhD and Katie Spencer, PhD, oversee a center whose dolls — designed and illustrated by “transgender and gender diverse artists,” per the Daily Wire — are described as “classic paper dolls” redesigned so children “will be able to choose different internal and external genitals, clothes, and other accessories to help them visualize their anatomy and genders,” per the project’s own description.
The official site, mygenderdolls.com, targets a specific age band — children 4 to 10 — and markets the product to “mental health providers, school counselors, educators, pediatricians.” As of this writing it lists no specific Minnesota school district as a customer; the page says only “Launching 2026” with a waitlist to join.
'MyGender Dolls mimic classic paper dolls, featuring drawings of children of different ages, shapes, and skin colors to represent “all” kids. 'Children [aged 4-10] will be able to choose different internal and external genitals, clothes, and other accessories to help them
The Fox News headline that put this story in front of a national audience calls MyGenderDolls a “Walz-backed program.” The documented connection is real, but narrower than that phrase suggests. In 2023, the Eli Coleman Institute — the same institute that houses the dolls project — gave Gov. Tim Walz (D) its inaugural “Distinguished Sexual and Gender Health Champion Award,” citing two of his actions that year: HF1, the law codifying abortion rights in Minnesota, and Executive Order 23-03, which directed state agencies to protect access to gender-affirming care. “As states across the country move to ban access to gender-affirming care, we want LGBTQ Minnesotans to know they will continue to be safe, protected, and welcome in Minnesota,” Walz said when he signed the order.
Neither HF1 nor the executive order mentions MyGenderDolls, which is not a state program, was not created by state law, and is not administered by any state agency Walz oversees. No outlet reviewed for this story — including Fox News itself — produced a quote, signature, or funding decision from Walz specifically about the dolls. His office did not respond to press inquiries about the project. The honest description is that Walz’s administration built the broader legal environment the project’s creators operate in and that their own institute later honored him for it — not that he personally created, funded, or ordered MyGenderDolls into being.
The project first drew national attention in December 2024, when Fox News and the Daily Wire reported that researchers were recruiting children ages 5 to 10 to test the dolls, offering $20 to $60 per child or group for their participation. Within days of that coverage, the university removed the project’s public webpage content, an explainer video, and a crowdfunding appeal from view; it also stripped some staff names from the site, according to The College Fix.
A university spokesperson issued a boilerplate statement at the time: “MyGender Dolls are therapeutic tools intended for licensed therapists to use with patients and their parents or caregivers to help children who find it difficult to express themselves… these tools are not currently available for use.” The project reappeared publicly in July 2026 with the “Launching 2026” waitlist site now live.
Where the money comes from is genuinely contested, not settled. In November 2024, the MyGenderDolls team won roughly $3,000 through the university’s MIN-Corps entrepreneurship program — a prize UMN I-Corps Program Director Ashley Mahoney told The College Fix was “solely funded through private donations.” The project has also received a separate grant of up to $10,000 from the university’s Early Innovation Fund, per The College Fix — the university has not clarified whether that award drew on state or private money. Separately, the University of Minnesota Foundation runs a donor-matched crowdfunding campaign for the project with a $25,000 goal; as of the most recent public tally, it has raised $1,305. Beyond those three lines, the university has not disclosed how much, if any, of the project’s remaining funding comes from state appropriations versus private sources.
“It's important to know exactly how the University of Minnesota is able to fund this program, especially while coming so short of their funding goal.”
James Dickey · Senior Counsel, Upper Midwest Law Center
That question is why the Upper Midwest Law Center, a Minnesota public-interest law firm, filed a formal data request with the university on January 22, 2025, demanding a full accounting of every funding source behind MyGenderDolls. As of this story’s publication — roughly eighteen months later — the law center says it has received no substantive answer. Absent that disclosure, the widely repeated claim that MyGenderDolls is “taxpayer-funded” is the reporting outlets’ characterization of a funding picture the university itself has declined to make public — not an independently confirmed dollar figure.
The American College of Pediatricians has been the project’s most vocal medical critic. Dr. Quentin Van Meter, the group’s immediate past president, called MyGenderDolls “just a grooming tool” that has “no place in an ethical medical care world,” adding that “a child will recognize their biological sex by age three… until age 7 years, kids don’t really understand the immutability of the sexes.”
“My Gender Dolls” — The University of Minnesota is launching “MyGender Dolls” — a “therapeutic” doll line for “gender diverse children ages 4–10.”
No Minnesota Democratic official has defended the project by name; Walz’s office and the university itself have both stuck to boilerplate or silence rather than engaging the substance. And despite the “coming to classrooms” framing several outlets used in their July 25 headlines, no specific Minnesota school or district has been identified as having purchased or adopted MyGenderDolls — the product markets broadly to counselors and educators, but the university’s own site describes it only as a therapist-facing tool “not currently available for use,” not a curriculum item already in a classroom.
The researchers — Dianne Berg, PhD and Katie Spencer, PhD, co-directors of the University of Minnesota’s National Center for Gender Spectrum Health, which oversees the project.
The governor — Tim Walz (D), whose only documented tie is a 2023 award from the researchers’ own institute for two unrelated actions; his office has not commented on the dolls project itself.
The transparency advocate — James Dickey, Senior Counsel at the Upper Midwest Law Center, who has waited eighteen months for the university to say who is actually paying for it.
A University of Minnesota research center built genital-swappable “transgender dolls” for children as young as 4, paid child participants to test an earlier version, and has gone eighteen months without answering a public-records request for its full funding sources. Gov. Tim Walz’s only documented connection is an award his researchers’ own institute gave him in 2023 for actions unrelated to the dolls themselves — a real link, but a thinner one than “Walz-backed” implies. The facts that don’t need embellishing: a public university built this, paid children to test it, scrubbed its own website when reporters noticed, and still won’t say who’s paying for it.
