This nuance can help us all better understand ourselves, and the specific ways we might be misunderstanding, excluding, or misgendering others. Sometimes we’re talking about sex assigned at birth, and a lot of other times we’re talking about the anatomical sex that someone embodies (which changes, for all of us, throughout the course of our lives - although that change is, for some of us, more drastically, or for different reasons, than others). I’ve listened in on this, tinkered with lots of versions of the Genderbread Person that reflect each side of the debate, and tested both a bunch in the classroom (and heard from lots of you doing the same), and here’s where I finally landed: like so many social justice things, this isn’t an either/or situation, it’s a both/and one.Ĭontrasting between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s anatomical sex, it turns out, is really helpful for a lot of people to better grasp the idea of sex. Others really find the benefit of discussing the variations of anatomical sex using continua, and have argued for that for years. Get the Email.Ī lot of people have been pushing for me to remove the anatomical sex continua and reference sex assigned at birth (SAAB) only. I publish new Social Justice, Gender, & Sexuality Resources. The top half of the paper and the bottom half are two completely separate lessons (components of gender those components visualized on scales), and can be easily treated as such. This also allows for easy top-to-bottom, left-to-right reading/facilitating. This change was, in hindsight, a gimme: it’s something that no fewer than 1,000 of you emailed me requesting it’s the way most people were printing the old (tabloid, 11″x17″) version anyhow and it’s also how Meg & I at the Safe Zone Project had been doing Genderbread Person for years.

Vertical layout, 8.5″ x 11″ format (also more A4-friendly) Let’s start with the most obvious, then I’ll move into the litany of subtler changes. The changes I explain below are what resulted from that process, and reflect something that isn’t perfect, but is an improvement upon 3.x, a forever work in progress, and the best me and the people providing me constructive criticism could do right now. I explain way down below a bit of my rationale on how I make changes to the cookie, but there’s one big thing I don’t say there that makes more sense here: this version of the Genderbread Person (like all my versions and subversions since 2.0) is workshopped/tested/tweaked for quite awhile (in this case, years) before I publish it here, almost entirely queer (and mostly trans*) educators/feedbackers.

The New Ingredients: What’s changed and why? While you’re doing that, I’ll explain what’s changed, why I changed it, and some thoughts regarding this little cookie in genderal. Or just click the big pink button and get a folder including all the graphics in this post. You can also head over to, where this version (and some others) will be available, in all of its forms.

Check it out, download it, and share it with your educator friend who is still using v3.x and say “well, actually…”

A few hundred workshops, three years, and one book edition later, I’m happy to finally publish here my 4th version of the Genderbread Person.

Infographic concept map