What In The Hell Is Wrong With This Country?: December 2, 2025 Edition

TW: Transphobia.

In today's edition of “What In The Hell Is Wrong With This Country,” I give you Samantha Fulnecky.

From the Huffington Post:

““After Samantha Fulnecky, a University of Oklahoma junior, received a failing grade on an essay, she filed a report with her school alleging that she’s being discriminated against because of her religious beliefs. In response, the school put the instructor who gave her the grade on leave.

In a Thanksgiving Day post, the U of O chapter of Turning Point USA highlighted Fulnecky’s essay and her professor’s response to it. The assignment was to write a reaction to a psychology article on gender stereotypes in middle school students and how it affects their mental health.

In the paper, Fulnecky bases her argument nearly entirely around Christianity and the Bible, arguing that “Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts.” The college junior went on to write that, “Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic.”

Instructor Mel Curth gave the assignment a zero for not addressing the reading. Curth, who TPUSA and other news outlets identified as trans, opened their feedback note to Fulnecky by saying that they were not deducting points because of the student’s beliefs but rather because she did not follow the assignment, contradicted herself, made offensive comments, and did not provide empirical evidence.

The post also included feedback from another instructor, who said she agreed with Curth’s grading and that “[t]his paper should not be considered as a completion of the assignment.”

But what should have been a disappointing but not uncommon outcome in an academic setting turned into a referendum on trans people, attacks on the instructor’s gender identity, and higher education.

“We should not be letting mentally ill professors around students,” TPUSA said in a lengthy post. “Clearly this professor lacks the intellectual maturity to set her own bias aside and take grading seriously. Professors like this are the very reason conservatives can’t voice their beliefs in the classroom.””

So now Professor Curth - a person who was just doing their job (and was cosigned by another professor for their assessment of the raggedy-ass paper Samantha's fragile-ass turned in) - has been placed on leave and may lose their job or be forced to apologize and give Samantha a grade that she didn't earn. All while now being endangered by TPUSA's "call out" for the foreseeable future.

This is the future so many of y'all want, isn't it? To never be challenged, to believe you're "white and right" even when you're wrong, hateful, and harmful?

Well, it's a really violent and stupid future that benefits none of us.

And "none of us" includes willfully ignorant, thin-skinned, and devout "Christian" white supremacists like Samantha.

This Week's Opening Thought: December 1, 2025

This week's opening thought: When it comes to racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, body-shaming, white supremacy, and oppresive language and behavior, way too many of y'all accept the bare minimum from the people in your lives.

Y'all be out here ready to celebrate people for getting someone's pronouns right 1 out of every 20 times they talk to them, saying things like, "I can really see that they're trying."

A whole bunch of y'all be out here inviting people to the cookout because someone taught them how to dougie and they've watched a couple of episodes of A Different World.

Too many of y'all be a little too proud of the toxic people in your life for only bodyshaming or mocking a friend or family member's body or disabilities every other time they see them.

Your acceptance of the bare minimum from the people in your life is aiding and abetting harm by finding every opportunity to not hold people accountable or remove them from your life if they show you time and again how unwilling they are to do better and be better. And guess what? That means you aren't meeting the bare minimum requirements of the allyship you love talkin' about.

Most of y'all ain't about that life. You're ficitional allies.

To paraphrase Kendrick Lamar, I'd cut my granny off, if she won′t see it how I see it.

You willing to do the same?

On Genocidal Holidays, Pallor Fragility, and Willful Ignorance

I haven't wished people a "Happy Thanksgiving" for years. I don't think this federal holiday deserves well-wishes for obvious (terroristic, white supremacist, big colonizer energy) reasons. Instead, when people who celebrate the holiday wish me a Happy Thanksgiving or ask me what I'm doing for the holiday, I state that I don't observe the holiday - no extra context or nothing, because I expect most adults to get it without me spelling it out. I then mention that I hope they're celebrating this holiday with intentionality and an understanding of the historical context of the holiday and its branding.

And whew, y'all.

People of pallor do not like it when I say that. Not one bit.

You should see their reactions, y'all. They either say something like, "Well, I hope you have a Happy Thanksgiving anyway, Pharoah" with that Karen/Kevin energy with their face all contorted with derision or find a way to get away from me as soon as possible and end the conversation they initiated. And it's funny to me that they do this, because it proves that many people of pallor can only exist and operate in a space that caters to them willingly ignoring how harmful so many things in pallor culture, society, and history really are.

You know you can have some turkey on Thursday with your family while acknowledging how funky Thanksgiving as a holiday and concept really is, right? It doesn't have to take away from the meal.

You can be thankful for the blessings you have while also having the fortitude to digest and understand history and educate others on how harmful this week's festivities can be for Native and Indigenous communities and tribes.

It doesn't have to be one or the other.

Knowledge and empathy should always trump feeling cozy in ignorance.

Just sayin'.

And most of y'all's turkeys be dry anyway, so is being willfully ignorant and eatin' unmoisturized meat worth it?

On Olive Garden and White Supremacist Workplace Lunch

You wanna know a low-key bit of white supremacist workplace culture that most people don't think twice about?

When your supervisor or manager orders Olive Garden for a work lunch, when there are 85 freakin’ local restaurants making fantastic ethnocultural dishes in your area that would be better and supportive of your local economy. Hell, I guarantee you that there's a poppin' local Italian restaurant that is absolutely delicious and authentic as hell, but nope!

Olive Garden.

Olive Garden is basically the restaurant version of most people of pallor: safe, unremarkable basic b--- energy. Always talking about how we're a family while knowing we all know it's just a catchphrase (what, you forgot we work here and see how y'all act every day?). Not offensive to most people on the surface, but as you peel back the lasagna layers, you see there's more filler than substance. No evolution in who they are or what they have to offer others in decades.

No wonder it's the ultimate fallback lunch for most workplaces.

Guess that marinara sauce is more of a mirror than you probably thought.

On Trans Day of Remembrance

On this Trans Day of Remembrance, I hope that we all can take the time to remember the trans friends, family, and community members we've lost to hate and bigotry. I also hope that we're celebrating their lives, their energy, their joys, the impacts they had on our lives, and the belief that there is still hope that one day we won't have to lay to rest vibrant people who only wanted to live happy lives without hiding their true identities.

There are still fights ahead. There's still work to do. But the fights and the work are worth it because memoriam should come with knowing that lives weren't taken away from us for naught - they are still with us, hand in hand, fighting for a better tomorrow.

None of us is safe if some of us are facing a constant wave of terror for just existing and living freely as who we are.

None of us is free if some of us are in a never-ending battle for rights and privileges that so many of us take for granted.

To my trans friends, family, colleagues, neighbors: you are loved. You are worthy of love. You deserve the right to exist without danger and bigotry hanging over your heads.

And fighting for you is and will always be worth it.