What Is This Gender Role-Loving OU Student Even Doing In College?

She should be home making babies and sandwiches.

Samantha Fulnecky, University of Oklahoma

For the last several decades — and especially the past couple years — we have not heard the end of how DEI and affirmative action mean that people who aren’t as qualified will be admitted to colleges, get jobs and get promotions at the expense of those who are, based on their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation.

The irony of this, of course, is that these programs are actually meant to counter the problem of those who weren’t as qualified getting into college, getting jobs and getting promotions at the expense of those who were … based on their race, gender, religion or sexual orientation. Except, of course, in that situation, the unqualified folks were white people, men, Christians and straight people, not to mention those with family connections.

If it wasn’t already abundantly clear that what those complaining about DEI and affirmative action want not a “meritocracy” (a term first invented as satire), but a return to those “good old days” (as if they were ever really over), the saga of one Samantha Fulnecky ought to make it so.

Fulnecky is a psychology major in her junior year at Oklahoma University who recently managed to get her psychology professor ousted for giving her a bad grade on a terrible and poorly written paper that did not complete the objectives of the assignment, simply because that terrible and poorly written paper that did not complete the objectives of the assignment. The failing grade, she claims, was “religious discrimination” against her because she is a Christian and therefore should be given a pass on writing a terrible and poorly written paper that did not complete the objectives of the assignment.

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The assignment was to write a 650-word essay on an article they read in class about a study involving gender roles and stereotypes. Students were given a number of options in how to respond, not one of which Fulnecky chose to go with.

1. A discussion of why you feel the topic is important and worthy of study (or not)

2. An application of the study or results to your own experiences

3. An application of the study or results to observations about other behaviors

4. Linking the objectives or findings from the assigned article to other domains of development or other findings that we read about or discuss in class

5. A suggestion for further studies or experiments that might help researchers better understand the topic being studied

6. Alternate interpretations of the researchers’ findings

7. A discussion of how development in this domain might proceed differently at other developmental stages

8. Your own thoughts about how development proceeds in the domain being researched in the article

Rather, she wrote her essay on how she believes God made men and women to have specific gender roles and therefore gender roles are good and right and should be adhered to.

But hey! Let’s hear her out, shall we?

This article was very thought provoking and caused me to thoroughly evaluate the idea of gender and the role it plays in our society.

Spoiler alert: it did not.

The article discussed peers using teasing as a way to enforce gender norms. I do not necessarily see this as a problem.

Who would Jesus bully? We are about to find out!

God made male and female and made us differently from each other on purpose and for a purpose. God is very intentional with what He makes, and I believe trying to change that would only do more harm. Gender roles and tendencies should not be considered “stereotypes.”

Women naturally want to do womanly things because God created us with those womanly desires in our hearts. The same goes for men. God created men in the image of His courage and strength, and He created women in the image of His beauty. He intentionally created women differently than men and we should live our lives with that in mind.

I do not believe in God, obviously. But imagine believing in one and thinking that he was this all powerful and omnipotent being … who only made two very specific kinds of people, one meant to fill one role and one meant to fill another. That’s not terribly impressive.

It is frustrating to me when I read articles like this and discussion posts from my classmates of so many people trying to conform to the same mundane opinion, so they do not step on people’s toes.

Just to be clear, she is complaining about people conforming in an essay about how she believes people should conform. So the problem for Samantha here is not so much that they are conforming as it is that they are not conforming in the way she would prefer they conform.

I think that is a cowardly and insincere way to live. It is important to use the freedom of speech we have been given in this country, and I personally believe that eliminating gender in our society would be detrimental, as it pulls us farther [sic] from God’s original plan for humans.

Yes, because the brave thing to do would be to forego freedom of speech altogether and just agree with everything Samantha Fulnecky believes about her God.

Now, she is free to believe that, but for the purposes of this assignment, she was supposed to do more than state her personal beliefs, no matter how special or correct she may believe they are. She was supposed to back them up with empirical evidence or relate them, in some way, to the study in the article she was meant to read.

It is perfectly normal for kids to follow gender “stereotypes” because that is how God made us. The reason so many girls want to feel womanly and care for others in a motherly way is not because they feel pressured to fit into social norms. It is because God created and chose them to reflect His beauty and His compassion in that way. In Genesis, God says that it is not good for man to be alone, so He created a helper for man (which is a woman).

If she were to have said that there are many girls who feel this way independently of social pressure, there would have been nothing wrong with that. That is not the issue and no one has said that it is. The issue is that not everyone does feel that way, or that they don’t feel that way in every aspect of their lives. This includes Samantha Fulnecky, who goes to college and plays competitive sports — activities once considered to not be especially “womanly.” Indeed, if she were to go back 100 years, she might have been considered a brazen, gender norm-defying feminist for doing either of those things.

God does not view women as less significant than men. He created us with such intentionally and care and He made women in his image of being a helper, and in the image of His beauty. If leaning into that role means I am “following gender stereotypes” then I am happy to be following a stereotype that aligns with the gifts and abilities God gave me as a woman.

Again, she is free to do that if she so wishes. Many of us align with gender stereotypes in one way or another, which is part of why they are stereotypes. The problem is when people are expected to conform to those stereotypes whether they want to or not. For instance, by claiming they are ordained by God.

I do not think men and women are pressured to be more masculine or feminine. I strongly disagree with the idea from the article that encouraging acceptance of diverse gender expressions could improve students’ confidence. Society pushing the lie that there are multiple genders and everyone should be whatever they want to be is demonic and severely harms American youth.

Here’s where she fails, other than using the term “demonic” in a serious manner. She doesn’t actually offer any empirical evidence of this supposed “harm.” She doesn’t offer any evidence that “encouraging acceptance of diverse gender expressions” does not “improve students’ confidence.” She just says she does not personally think that it does. This is not a psychology paper, it is a personal essay about her thoughts and feelings.

I do not want kids to be teased or bullied in school.

Though, nota bene, she previously said that this was not a problem for her.

However, pushing the lie that everyone has their own truth and everyone can do whatever they want and be whoever they want is not biblical whatsoever. The Bible says that our lives are not our own but that our lives and bodies belong to the Lord for His glory. I live my life based on this truth and firmly believe that there would be less gender issues and insecurities in children if they were raised knowing that they do not belong to themselves, but they belong to the Lord.

Where do I even begin?

She’s mad at the idea that “everyone has their own truth,” and I agree with her there. I hate the term “my truth” more than you can possibly imagine. Either something is factually true or it isn’t, and if it’s not factually true, it is a personal belief that does not become more true or more valid simply by calling it “my truth.” By that same token, I don’t think Samantha Fulnecky should get her own truth, either. She is free to believe in whatever she believes religiously, but that doesn’t mean it is factually true.

No one asked Samantha Fulnecky if it was “biblical” for there to be multiple gender expressions. That was not the assignment, even if she would have liked it to have been. Had she wanted to actually fulfill the assignment, she could have come up with an idea for another study that she might believe would prove her assertion. She could have analyzed the results and explained why she would have come to a different conclusion. She didn’t. She just said “it’s not true, because God and my personal feelings.”

My prayer for the world and specifically for American society and youth is that they would not believe the lies being spread from Satan that make them believe they are better off as another gender than what God made them. I pray that they feel God’s love and acceptance as who He originally created them to be.

Again, this was not the assignment. It was not the Miss America pageant and there simply was no “Let us know what your prayer for the world is” option given.

Were I, as an atheist, to respond to this article by explaining that gender roles do not exist because I, personally, do not believe that God exists, I would deserve an “F” as well. This is not about her personal beliefs, but the fact that she did not complete the assignment, as the professor repeatedly explained to her.

Moreover, if her assertions were even remotely true or even possible, she would have been able to complete the assignment within the parameters given. Clearly, she was not.

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So, just to be clear, here — pressuring people to all believe the same thing is bad, unless it’s the thing Samantha Fulnecky believes, in which case everyone should be bullied into believing it. It’s bad when people have their own “truths” about their gender expression, but good when they rely on Samantha Fulnecky’s “truth” about their gender expression. Freedom of speech is good, except for when people use that freedom of speech to disagree with Samantha Fulnecky. Gender roles are good and must be adhered to, because God, unless they are gender roles that Samantha Fulnecky does not want to adhere to.

Because let’s just note here, again, that by going to college, playing competitive team sports and having opinions of any kind, she is openly defying the gender roles she so cherishes. If she really cared about preserving these norms, she would drop out of school immediately in order to give up her spot for a man who is even more stupid than she is, and, instead, just have his babies and make him sandwiches all day long like a good Stepford Wife.

By the way, Oklahoma University has put the instructor who failed poor Samantha Fulnecky on leave. Did we mention the instructor is trans?

So yes, this is that kind of hitjob. Frankly, it’s all the conservative “attack a professor” hitjobs in one!

OPEN THREAD.

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