Jennifer Siebel Newsom, wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D), is facing renewed scrutiny after video clips resurfaced this week showing her explaining how she deliberately alters the gender of book characters while reading to her sons and has routinely given the boys dolls to play with.
“What I have done with both my daughters and my sons is if I’m reading a book and the protagonist is a male, I just change the he to a she,” Siebel Newsom said in the clips, which began circulating on X. “And it just normalizes for my sons, in particular… I don’t even just do it for my girls. I do it for my sons because I want them to see that women can be the center of a story, that women matter, that women are interesting.”
She also described giving her boys dolls as a parenting strategy.
“I’ve given our boys dolls, even if they tear the head off,” she said. “I’ve given them dolls to learn that care and caregiving is not just an activity that’s reserved for women, but that it’s also an activity that is a responsibility of men.”
The comments drew sharp reactions online, with critics arguing the remarks reveal an ideological approach to parenting that prioritizes gender deconstruction over letting children develop naturally. The post sharing the clip has accumulated millions of views.
Siebel Newsom, who describes herself as a filmmaker and gender advocate, has long promoted similar views publicly. In a 2016 Salon interview, she called for encouraging boys to play with dolls and said society should challenge what she called a “straitjacket of gender stereotypes.” She made nearly identical remarks in a more recent undated interview.
“At the end of the day, we’re all kind of like in this place in history maybe where we’re recognizing what it is to ultimately deconstruct all these gender roles and ultimately be human, and that’s exciting to me,” she said.
She added: “So, you know, I’ll just continue to kind of do my work and try and deconstruct all these limiting narratives about ultimately what it means to be human.”
The Newsoms have four children together. Gov. Gavin Newsom has governed California since 2019 and is widely viewed as a likely contender for future national office.
The resurfaced clips follow a separate controversy last month when a 2022 interview resurfaced in which Siebel Newsom told a Los Angeles journalist that evangelicals are “pulling us back as a country.” That remark drew bipartisan attention and criticism from religious leaders in California.
