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 Seeking Forgiveness and Being Undeserving Of It

It's funny how people didn't care that their vote would increase the cost of or outright eliminate healthcare options, terrorize communities with masked bootleg police and the U.S. military, devastate the job market, increase the cost of living, and dismantle and eliminate food assistance programs and other social services for millions of people because they somehow thought that Black folx, Brown folx, Indigenous folx, trans folx, and immigrants would be the only people harmed...until they found themselves also being hurt because, you know, all of the things mentioned above impact everyone and not just a couple of communities voters felt were expendable and disposable.

It's also funny how these same voters begged and pleaded like Keith Sweat for their president to save them for months on end, only to realize late last month that they would not be saved because their president had essentially used them to increase his wealth and power.

Hilarious.

Now, suddenly, it's y'all begging forgiveness on TikTok and Instagram for "mistakenly" voting for y'all's president (some of y'all in the last three presidential elections) and putting us in this autocracy.

Now it’s, "I made a mistake" and "We have to stick together."

Y'all can miss me with all of that.

I can care about you as a person, even if you don't care about me and mine, because I don't want to see anyone hurting and struggling. I'm a humanist and an empathic being. Even if you hate me, I want you to be okay. But let's keep it 100: you did not make a mistake. You knew what you were doing. All of you did. So nah, we are not "sticking together." I do not forgive, and I definitely will not forget.

Y'all need to learn that empathy only goes so far.

I do not have it in me to forgive you for willingly hoping others would suffer so you could thrive under a hateful regime. And I know I'm not the only one feeling this way.

Y'all expect people you harm to forgive you because you live in a country where white supremacy has trained y'all to abuse others and expect forgiveness. It ain't happenin' this time, and a bunch of y'all are starting to see this, and you're unraveling. A part of me feels sorry for you, for your despair. But it's a small part, because y'all have made it very clear that this was supposed to be your "survival of the fittest" moment and you're realizing that a whole bunch of y'all ain't the fittest. And knowing that probably sucks. But...well...

I hope that you survive what you've inflicted on all of us, because that's what I want for everyone. And most of y'all will survive because of the work and community programs created and led by the people you were hoping would be harmed by all of this. But that's all that you'll get from me, and all you should get from them. That's more than enough. And if you have a problem with hearing that?

Better go and embrace some of that greatness you voted for to keep you fed and wealthy while "liberals" decide whether to help y'all at all.

This Week's Opening Thought: September 22, 2025

This week's opening thought: After this past weekend's full-on hate rally masquerading as a memorial service, and seeing the sea of people of pallor who showed up to "pay their respects" to a white supremacist bigot with tears in their eyes and a distortion of the purported "values of Christianity" in their hearts, I found myself once again playing my least favorite game: What Will It Take?

What Will It Take? focuses on me asking myself one question: what will it take for people of pallor to be uncomfortable enough to feel like "enough is enough" and stand up and fight for, well, everyone? Themselves, oppressed communities, targeted communities, everyone?

I've been playing this game for at least 30 years now, y'all.

What Will It Take?

Hell if I know.

After all my years on this planet, and decades of my own learning around the intersections of white supremacy and history, I honestly have no clue what it will take to get people of pallor to recognize how dangerous this country is for marginalized, targeted, and invisible communities and decide they're ready to fight.

I have no clue what it will take for people of pallor to collectively realize that white supremacy harms them, too, and that it's time to do more than show up to a "No Kings" rally.

And I'm flummoxed when it comes to understanding what it'll take for people of pallor to realize that we've been long past "talking it out," "finding a middle ground," choosing to "not get into political conversations," and well into dealing with an escalating level of danger that will eventually subjugate, eradicate, and oppress most if not all of us.

What Will It Take?

What will it take for y’all to fight?

I honestly don't know.

Y'all do always seem more than ready to fight and "stand up" against Black and Brown folx, melanated folx, trans folx, and queer folx for pointing out the harm, hate, or discrepancies in y'all's words and actions, though.

Huh.

Guess I know the answer to the question after all.

On Transphobia, Facts, and Acting Like We Don't Know Who The Real Terrorists Are

TW: transphobia, hate.

The Heritage Foundation is urging the FBI to add “Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism” (TIVE) to its list of domestic extremist groups so that it could “detect, disrupt, & dismantle TIVE cells.”

Citing the murder of Charlie Kirk as the “latest example in a long line of home-grown terrorists brainwashed by trans ideology,” it’s being reported that the FBI is discussing “treating Trans Individuals as a subset of its new threat category - Nihilistic Violent Extremists” or NVEs (a category created earlier this year). What’s an NVE, you ask?

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines “Nihilistic Violent Extremism” as “criminal conduct… in furtherance of political, social, or religious goals that derive primarily from a hatred of society at large and a desire to bring about its collapse by sowing indiscriminate chaos.” There is, of course, not one bit of evidence that suggests trans folx are fomenting terrorism, but facts and evidence don’t matter in a budding autocracy, right?

Wrong.

Fact - y’all’s president and his cronies, with guidance from a white supremacist terrorist group masquerading as a think tank, are planning to define 1% of the U.S. population as domestic terrorists in a country where cishet males of pallor are literally terrorizing people every day.

Fact - less than 1% of mass shooters in U.S. history identified as trans. Cis males are 98% of mass shooters in U.S. history. Cishet males of pallor make up 54% of the recorded mass shooters in U.S. history.

Fact - the FBI currently has 11 known and registered white supremacist terrorist sects that they are supposed to be monitoring the activities of. I’ll let you guess the racial and gender identities of 96% of their members.

Fact - 1% of the population can’t be a terrorist group. That’s not anywhere near the population number and demographic structure it would need to be for a legitimate FBI to consider a subset of the citizenry a legitimate threat, a recorded terroristic threat, or a group that should warrant attention.

Fact - this sh-- they’re trying to pull is intentional, targeted, and violent transphobia and hatred. Pure and simple.

Contrary to popular belief, facts still matter. Facts aren’t dead.

But the way we use those facts to mobilize, stand with, and protect people and communities being targeted by hate could be, though.

It's well past time for folx to decide to stand up and fight the way we should in the face of transphobia, bigotry, and hatred or decide the facts make them too uncomfortable to care about their fellow human beings in danger.