Lather, Lie, Grift, Repeat: How being anti-trans can be an easy career
After Thanksgiving weekend, a story went viral about a student at the University of Oklahoma who got a 0 on a two-page psychology paper. Because apparently, it is now big news when a college student receives a 0 on a paper. At least, when a trans person is involved.
The student, Samantha Fulnecky, reached out to Turning Point USA, saying that she was given a zero due to her religious beliefs, violating her First Amendment rights. The assignment was a 650-word essay for a psychology class, asking the students to read an article about how expectations about gender affect children.
Fulnecki mainly cited the Bible throughout her essay (not APA style) to support her claims that eliminating gender would put people farther from God’s original plan for humans, thus expectations about gender roles aren’t a bad thing. She also said that traditional gender roles shouldn’t be considered stereotypes, because they are supposed to be that way. You know, because God and Jesus and the Bible say so.
The essay was given a zero out of 25 by the graduate teaching assistant (TA) grading the papers. An important thing to point out is that the TA is trans. While the TA did write that Fulnicki’s use of the word demonic to describe sex and gender being on a spectrum is highly offensive, another instructor also read the paper and agreed with the teaching assistant’s grade.
Fulnicki claims that she did this assignment the same as she would in any other class, giving her opinion on gender binary and gender stereotypes, which, in her view. Her views come from the Bible and her Christian worldview. The University of Oklahoma responded, saying they were reviewing the issue, calling the concern about First Amendment rights. The school placed the graduate TA on administrative leave while they conduct an investigation.
The chapter advisor and faculty member of the Turning Point chapter at the University of Oklahoma, Gail Barksdale, reported that while the paper may not have been the best written, the student deserved at least some of the points due to her essay referring to the topic of the article. She argues that since the student mentioned the article in the paper and was responding based on her point of view, Fulneki met at least some of the points with her students.
However, the TA wrote comments saying that they were not subtracting points because of the sort of beliefs, but rather the paper did not answer the questions for the assignment, that the paper contradicted itself, and heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence. While the TA did mention that the paper did say things that were offensive, being that it was a scientific class, citing the Bible isn’t on par with the standards of a psychology class teaching psychology topics. The TA said that while it’s perfectly fine to believe in hearing the traditional gender roles, the student’s personal beliefs do not change the broad medical, psychological, and scientific consensus about sex and gender. The TA said that if you personally disagree with the findings of all the shared criticisms, make sure to do it appropriately, using the methodology of empirical psychology as a line of goal learning goes into class.
I read the essay and the grade rubric, and while it does say she read the article, none of her actual criticisms are of the actual article, but the general idea of gender roles. The essay was supposed to be a response to an article titled “Relations among gender typicality, peer relations, and mental health during early adolescence.” The topic was how gender expectations affect the mental health of adolescents, but none of her criticisms were actually about how children being bullied about gender roles affect their mental health. The student also contradicted herself; she states in one part of the essay that “I do not think men and women are pressured to be more masculine or feminine, but earlier in the essay, she says that she doesn’t see peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender roles as a problem.
While many agree that the essay was terrible, some argue that this is mostly about a general attack on academia. However, many trans people are worried and see it as an attack on trans people existing in public life, because the TA who gave the assignment is trans.
Oklahoma’s state Senator Lisa Standridge, a member of the caucus, is currently calling on the TA to be fired. While the paper was looked at by two instructors, currently, it is only the instructor who is trans that is being punished, at least when it came to the grade. On Monday, December 8th, it was reported that another instructor at the university was removed due to the controversy.
Apparently, there was an official protest scheduled for Friday in support of the TA who was suspended, and a professor said she would excuse anyone absent on Friday to attend. Another student asked if attending a counter-protest would qualify; the professor said that it would have to be an organised protest. Not that a counter-protest would qualify, but currently, there was only one official protest scheduled in support of the suspended TA.
The student complained, and then the university removed the professor because they “allegedly demonstrated viewpoint discrimination by excusing students who intended to miss class to attend a protest on campus, but not extending the same benefit to students who intended to miss class to express a counter-viewpoint.”
Some even believe that the student intentionally wrote the essay in this way in hopes of making it go viral for attention and political clout. The student’s mom is on Twitter right now, calling for trans people to be banned from teaching. The student’s mom, Kristi Volakie, is herself in politics; she’s a former Springfield, MO, City council member who eventually faced a recall campaign in 2016 before resigning in late 2018. She’s also a conservative attorney who sued several cities in 2020 to overturn mask mandates.
The podcast Kill the Computer had Parker Molloy on their show on December 3rd to talk about it. Parker Maloney pointed out that the Turning Point USA chapter for Ohio University, or Oklahoma University, seems to only started posting a week before the story went viral, with a post that was anti-trans.
Parker Molloy argued that it is very possible that this was orchestrated either specifically by the Turning Point USA chapter or by Samantha Fonecki and/or her mom to purposely write a bad essay, expecting to get a very low grade on it and then once they got the zero, tried to make this more viral and claimed it’s because of religious discrimination.
There’s a very real possibility that this student wanted to get a zero on the essay to do this entire script. Samantha Fonecki is going to be a special guest speaker for Turning Point USA at the University of Oklahoma. Fulmaki is also scheduled to make an appearance at an event for the conservative think-tank OC PAC.
This could start being a pattern once more people realise that it works. Just like how Riley Gaines, who tied with Fifth with Lia Thomas in swimming competition, has now made a career hosting a podcast for vaccination and giving speeches all about anti-trans activism, essentially trying to ban all trans women from women’s sports.
Another example, Payton McNam, a student at a Western Carolina University, was injured when an opponent (who she claims was a trans woman) spiked a ball in her face where she suffered a concussion, a brain bleed and two black eyes didn’t answer them. It also left her with a traumatic brain injury, which she claims impacts her daily life.
McNam is now a paid spokesperson for an anti-transgender group that advocates for banning medically necessary trans-health care and for schools to out LGBTQ youth without a parent. While McNabb is among more than 214,000 high school students and college female athletes who have been injured while playing volleyball since 2012, the vast majority of the injuries and accidents did not involve a trans person at all. She herself is essentially making a career out of being injured by a trans person.
Lindsay Shepard, an Ontario TA, was reprimanded in a disciplinary meeting due to showing a Jordan Peterson video in class where he criticised “alternative gender pronoun usage,” and a student complained that it created a toxic climate for some students who may be trans. She has since filed lawsuits (that were dismissed) and has made a career complaining and giving speeches about free speech.
This is going to start to be a pattern. If someone is made to feel uncomfortable due to a situation that is either caused by or related to a trans person, then that person will start complaining and try to make as much noise as possible about it. They will go around complaining about how they are a victim and suffered terribly from being discriminated for their beliefs, then make a career and make a lot of money from spreading anti-trans propaganda.