EPTOn December 05 2025 00:40 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
December in the United States: 'Tis the season for Christian pearl-clutching!
Charlie Kirk's Turning Point USA, Fox News, and other right-wing news outlets have been spreading the story of a poor college student who was recently persecuted by her University of Oklahoma professor for sharing her Christian faith.
Except, of course, that's not what happened.
It turns out that the student's psychology class was asked to write an essay analyzing a peer-reviewed journal article on gender typicality, peer relations, and mental health during early adolescence [1] [2] [4].
"The assignment was to write an essay in response to an article. The article is research-based and called “Relations among gender typicality, peer relations, and mental health during early adolescence.” It’s authored by Jewell, J. A., and Brown, C. S. (2014). The abstract stated, “The current study examines whether being high in gender typicality is associated with popularity, whether being low in gender typicality is associated with rejection/teasing, and whether teasing due to low gender typicality mediates the association with negative mental health. Middle school children (34 boys and 50 girls) described hypothetical popular and rejected/teased peers and completed self-report measures about their own gender typicality, experiences with gender-based teasing, depressive symptoms, anxiety, self-esteem, and body image.” [6]
Instead of completing the assignment, Samantha Fulnecky submitted a two-page, middle-school-level rant about what she believes God and the Bible say about gender [1] [3] [4].
To give an idea of her essay's tone, quality, preachiness, missing punctuation, and lack of academic rigor, here are several direct quotes:
- "Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic"
- "My prayer for the world and specifically for American society and youth is that they would not believe the lies being spread from Satan"
- "The Bible says that our lives are not our own but that our lives and bodies belong to the Lord for His glory"
- "Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts" [1] [3]
Obligatory reminder that this is a university-level psychology course, not a Bible study circle or Trump University.
Fulnecky received a 0 out of 25 on her paper (the total number of points in the course is over 1000), with the professor (teaching assistant, technically, but synonymously called "professor" in pretty much every news source) providing feedback and justification for the grade - "Does not answer the questions for the assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive" [4] [5] - based on the rubric and assignment expectations that were laid out ahead of time [2] [4].
Fulnecky then responded by filing an illegal discrimination claim with the university, accusing the professor of infringing on her religious freedom [4]. The University of Oklahoma then placed the professor on administrative leave and stated that Fulnecky's grade would not be affected by this essay, even after "A second teacher in the class also told Fulnecky that she agreed with the other instructor's grade for the assignment" [5]. Other students who had taken the same class and completed the same assignment agreed with the professor's grade too, since Fulnecky's essay didn't even reference the scholarly article [6].
Fulnecky is clearly just trying to grab 15 minutes of fame: "After getting the failing grade, she went straight to Governor Stitt, other politicians, and the OU Turning Point USA chapter instead of waiting for the school to finish its investigation." [6]
Some right-wing news outlets have - predictably - focused on the fact that the professor is trans, as if that changes the assignment, rubric, or student's essay in any way. (If those news outlets truly wanted to bring up irrelevant details, then they could also look up just how much of a controversial mess Fulnecky's mother is... it's not hard to see where the conservative Christian pearl-clutching comes from.)
[1] https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/education/2025/11/25/ou-oklahoma-samantha-fulnecky-read-essay-gender-bible/87463858007/
[2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vgjTfejwWz7Sw7voi57kwaVQAql3doSe/preview
[3] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qxnVi_yaJ-Fb9u1-A1Vy2vQT3Aiw8Nix/preview
[4] https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/ou-essay-bible-instructor-on-leave
[5] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-oklahoma-instructor-on-leave-failing-bible-essay-multiple-genders/
[6] https://kfor.com/news/oklahoma-education/students-speak-out-after-ou-educator-put-on-leave-for-giving-a-failing-grade
December in the United States: 'Tis the season for Christian pearl-clutching!
Except, of course, that's not what happened.
It turns out that the student's psychology class was asked to write an essay analyzing a peer-reviewed journal article on gender typicality, peer relations, and mental health during early adolescence [1] [2] [4].
"The assignment was to write an essay in response to an article. The article is research-based and called “Relations among gender typicality, peer relations, and mental health during early adolescence.” It’s authored by Jewell, J. A., and Brown, C. S. (2014). The abstract stated, “The current study examines whether being high in gender typicality is associated with popularity, whether being low in gender typicality is associated with rejection/teasing, and whether teasing due to low gender typicality mediates the association with negative mental health. Middle school children (34 boys and 50 girls) described hypothetical popular and rejected/teased peers and completed self-report measures about their own gender typicality, experiences with gender-based teasing, depressive symptoms, anxiety, self-esteem, and body image.” [6]
Instead of completing the assignment, Samantha Fulnecky submitted a two-page, middle-school-level rant about what she believes God and the Bible say about gender [1] [3] [4].
To give an idea of her essay's tone, quality, preachiness, missing punctuation, and lack of academic rigor, here are several direct quotes:
- "Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic"
- "My prayer for the world and specifically for American society and youth is that they would not believe the lies being spread from Satan"
- "The Bible says that our lives are not our own but that our lives and bodies belong to the Lord for His glory"
- "Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts" [1] [3]
Obligatory reminder that this is a university-level psychology course, not a Bible study circle or Trump University.
Fulnecky received a 0 out of 25 on her paper (the total number of points in the course is over 1000), with the professor (teaching assistant, technically, but synonymously called "professor" in pretty much every news source) providing feedback and justification for the grade - "Does not answer the questions for the assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive" [4] [5] - based on the rubric and assignment expectations that were laid out ahead of time [2] [4].
Fulnecky then responded by filing an illegal discrimination claim with the university, accusing the professor of infringing on her religious freedom [4]. The University of Oklahoma then placed the professor on administrative leave and stated that Fulnecky's grade would not be affected by this essay, even after "A second teacher in the class also told Fulnecky that she agreed with the other instructor's grade for the assignment" [5]. Other students who had taken the same class and completed the same assignment agreed with the professor's grade too, since Fulnecky's essay didn't even reference the scholarly article [6].
Fulnecky is clearly just trying to grab 15 minutes of fame: "After getting the failing grade, she went straight to Governor Stitt, other politicians, and the OU Turning Point USA chapter instead of waiting for the school to finish its investigation." [6]
Some right-wing news outlets have - predictably - focused on the fact that the professor is trans, as if that changes the assignment, rubric, or student's essay in any way. (If those news outlets truly wanted to bring up irrelevant details, then they could also look up just how much of a controversial mess Fulnecky's mother is... it's not hard to see where the conservative Christian pearl-clutching comes from.)
[1] https://www.oklahoman.com/story/news/education/2025/11/25/ou-oklahoma-samantha-fulnecky-read-essay-gender-bible/87463858007/
[2] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vgjTfejwWz7Sw7voi57kwaVQAql3doSe/preview
[3] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qxnVi_yaJ-Fb9u1-A1Vy2vQT3Aiw8Nix/preview
[4] https://www.news9.com/oklahoma-city-news/ou-essay-bible-instructor-on-leave
[5] https://www.cbsnews.com/news/university-oklahoma-instructor-on-leave-failing-bible-essay-multiple-genders/
[6] https://kfor.com/news/oklahoma-education/students-speak-out-after-ou-educator-put-on-leave-for-giving-a-failing-grade
The daftest thing, in a thoroughly daft chain of events is you could still answer that question without any recourse to discussing trans legitimacy whatsoever.
Almost every high school film ever made has some variant of the plain Janes versus the archetypally attractive mean girls, jocks versus nerds etc
Argh, make it stop!
