Quote Originally Posted by JJJ View Post
Yes, some schools teach this. Not all, and certainly not the majority. And if you haven't noticed, even here in Australia there is serious push-back against it. I'll not even get into the USian situation (and this is made for a USian audience, after all).
All public schools in Australia (which are the majority of schools), and many non-government schools teach this. This was initiated by the Safe Schools programme which began in Victoria in 2010, then it became national in 2013 and the programme was dissolved in 2017 because it's not needed anymore. LGBTIQ+ is fully integrated and embedded across schools now, nationwide. It's also part of the law, namely the Anti-Discrimination Act. So yeah, for at least a decade now this has been the norm in schools across the country, meaning that our current Year 12 students have also been fully educated about this since they were in early primary school. homophobia etc.

This isn't to say that homophobia doesn't exist in schools anymore, it does. But it's like racism now. Saying or doing something homophobic these days is equivalent to saying or doing something racist. Schools are also legally required to have a staff member act as the anti-discrimination officer. That staff member is given special training to deal with things like racism, sexism, homophobia etc., and schools have explicit policies in dealing with such behaviour, should it occur.

Quote Originally Posted by JJJ View Post
For a start, there's nothing that automatically tells me that someone is gender-neutral - from acculturation, I (wrongly, I freely admit - but I am a product of my society) presume them to be male or female based on their presentation. It is only when someone tells me that they are non-binary that I know; and how else would I know?
As you said, you are a product of your society/upbringing. Perhaps I'm fortunate that via my workplace, I've been educated about these things, and I practise it too because we have had and continue to have openly gender-neutral and transgender students. Safe Schools has, as its name states, made it safe for LGBTIQ+ people to openly be themselves at school. We also have kids who come from households with openly LGBTIQ+ parents; this is nothing new, of course, but now families no longer feel the need to hide it.

Given that, as you said, the target audience for this cartoon is children, it just feels excessive to have to point out what is, for their generation, something that is bleedingly obvious. When Safe Schools first started, a lot of people criticised it as a conspiracy to "indoctrinate" or "convert" kids to being gay (hahaha), but of course it was a programme to educate children. And it's worked incredibly well.