00:00:49.880If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:00:55.280Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:01:03.960Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought opinions.
00:02:35.220the kind of thing that happens across college campuses every single day.
00:02:38.860But this particular zero would spark a national firestorm.0.98
00:02:42.800The instructor was Mel Kurth, a trans woman working as a teaching assistant while pursuing her graduate degree.
00:02:49.760The student was Samantha Fulnecki, who had turned in an essay for Mel's psychology class that, by multiple accounts, did not answer the assignment's question.
00:02:59.040Instead, Fulnecki wrote that the idea of multiple genders was demonic and severely harms American youth.
00:03:12.800Not quite, because within days, Polnicki had filed a complaint of religious discrimination, contacted Turning Points USA, the right-wing organization that maintains a professor watch list of LGBTQ educators and educators of color, and begun a flashy media tour.
00:03:31.300Meanwhile, the university placed Mel on administrative leave and eventually removed her from her teaching duties.
00:03:37.500The grade was thrown out, and Samantha became exactly what some believe she set out to be, a right-wing media celebrity.
00:03:45.520Now, this is a story about one teaching assistant in Oklahoma, but it's also about something much larger,
00:03:52.040a coordinated effort to push LGBTQ people, and particularly trans people, out of academia and public life entirely.
00:03:59.160Brittany Stewart is Mel's attorney, and Brittany has been fighting these kinds of battles in0.95
00:04:05.680Oklahoma for decades. My name is Brittany Stewart. I'm a civil rights attorney licensed in Oklahoma.
00:04:13.660I currently live in Minnesota, and I'm also co-host of a basketball podcast for my favorite
00:04:20.100team, The Thunder, and my podcast is called The Thunder Gals. What brought you to this work? How
00:04:25.780did you get to be somebody in the space? Well, it kind of happened upon me. I am a woman who
00:04:33.100happens to be trans. So I wanted to initially start my career in Oklahoma as an attorney,
00:04:40.720keeping that kind of on the DL. So I was quasi stealth right out of the gate. And I didn't want
00:04:47.240my life to be defined by that. I just wanted to be a lawyer and live my life. But then as I was
00:04:54.300practicing law, you know, some issues came up where I was like, well, I need to be there
00:05:01.160for trans people who are getting discriminated against or who are having trouble getting their
00:05:07.280name changed through, you know, all the various legal aspects that can impact a person's life
00:05:13.480as they're trying to navigate something like a gender transition. And so I started deciding I
00:05:19.500needed to be more open about that. Brittany saw that there was real value in sharing her story.
00:05:25.640So she did an interview on the local news, knowing that some of her religious clients
00:05:30.100might have concerns about her identity. But the reaction she got was not what she expected.
00:05:36.020So in 2009, I started being a little more open. And I actually did an interview with my local
00:05:44.360fox station in oklahoma city at the time to kind of do a coming out party of sorts
00:05:50.420and the day after the first part ran i got yeah i had my cell phone on and i get a call coming in
00:05:59.700from this client who i knew to be a conservative christian who was i had met this client at their
00:06:06.520house and like it was just all jesus books and videos so i was like oh no here it comes
00:06:13.920like I'm about to lose clients over this. And instead he was like, I saw your story on the
00:06:20.000news. It was so inspirational. I'm so glad to have you as my attorney. And so really said to
00:06:27.320me like, oh, like I do need to be out here being more of a leader because I can bring people our
00:06:34.060way. What was that moment like for you when you expected this client to have one kind of reaction,
00:06:40.740but they had a completely different reaction.
00:06:43.580You know, it made me feel good that there's definitely more good in people out there
00:06:48.560than we sometimes give them credit for.
00:06:51.200And, you know, I think a lot of us make assumptions about people
00:06:55.260based on their religious views or based on how they vote.
00:06:59.480And people are more complicated than that.
00:07:02.440And, you know, we're all some good and some bad.
00:09:03.640I live way up in the forest, hours from the cities.
00:09:07.660So our neck of the woods has been pretty quiet
00:09:10.680and there has not been a lot of ice activity,
00:09:13.820But all of my friends in the cities are just going through it right now. And it's just traumatizing on so many levels and requiring so much community work to get together and get through this.
00:09:29.800And I feel like a lot of the media even is still missing exactly how horrifying it is for the people living in Minneapolis and St. Paul proper and just what it's like to have 3,000 paramilitary thugs driving around your city.
00:09:48.220run they're running stop flights i've seen friends multiple times now have reached out to me saying
00:09:55.720i almost got hit just going to get groceries because these guys are just running stop signs
00:10:01.720and driving like we're in occupied territory it's it's really horrifying just the the level that
00:10:09.280it's impacting everybody's daily lives there and even though i'm not in the part of minnesota
00:10:14.960dealing with that. You know, we're one Minnesota, so an attack on Minneapolis and St. Paul was an
00:10:21.400attack on all of us. You know, I live in D.C., so I had the feeling of just like what it feels like
00:10:32.040when your city is under siege and being treated like you are, you know, a military enemy of some
00:10:38.380kind or like an enemy of the state. The thing that has made me as horrifying as it is, and you just
00:10:44.560put it very well the one thing that has made me heartened is to see the way exactly what you were
00:10:51.640describing how minnesotans are standing up and like it's i i've never i i wish we had more
00:10:59.620illustration of the way community is coming together to support community and neighbors
00:11:04.700are coming together to support neighbors because i've never seen anything like it even in even in
00:11:09.920dc i i i think the reaction was different um here that it is there and it's something that has been0.99
00:11:15.860in a time of rage and anger and disgust people y'all take that shit very seriously i guess is0.95
00:11:23.120how i'll put it like people people in minnesota really take community and community care seriously0.98
00:11:29.260and i wish that was the story that was being told because it's so true oh absolutely and
00:11:34.780And it certainly helped that, you know, folks, for the last couple of years, I worked at Gender Justice, which is a nonprofit legal entity based in St. Paul.
00:11:47.900I worked from home, so I didn't have to be down there all the time.
00:11:51.620But being in that field and being in the nonprofit environment there in the Twin Cities, I saw up close and personal how all of our groups were already working together even before the November 24 election with laying groundwork and plans for what happens if this election doesn't go the way we want it to.
00:12:17.840and we end up being a place that's under attack from this regime.
00:12:23.600And because they were already laying that groundwork
00:12:26.460and those organizers were already talking to each other,
00:12:31.340it made it easier to kind of get that ball rolling when the time came.
00:12:36.320So people weren't scrambling looking for leaders.
00:12:39.600We had people trained and ready to start bringing people into the movement
00:12:44.360and getting them trained up to do the roles that needed to be taken over.
00:13:12.820Absolutely. And what I would say to folks in other cities around the country, please really look at what Minnesota is doing.
00:13:21.440You know, those those are lessons you can learn to be ready for when they occupy the next city, because I know there's ice activity in other cities, but it's not like it is in the cities right now.
00:13:34.260the Twin Cities, it's 3,000 plus agents just roaming the cities at the place that has a total
00:13:43.180of like 600 police officers for that same area. So we're talking a lot of manpower that is just
00:13:52.180around the city streets constantly. It's truly the kind of stuff that like my grandmother would
00:13:59.480tell me about from growing up in Nazi-occupied Holland. And so that's the level of occupation
00:14:07.900we're seeing in the Twin Cities. The attacks that Brittany is witnessing in Minnesota,
00:14:14.040the occupation, the intimidation efforts to push marginalized people out of public life,
00:14:18.200are part of the same project playing out in Oklahoma, where her client Mel is fighting
00:14:23.600for her right to take up space in academia. So let's go from the Twin Cities to Oklahoma.
00:14:32.420How is your client Mel doing with all of this? Mel has been, we did an episode about the whole
00:14:39.820situation when it first started, but Mel has really been in my thoughts, like as a person,
00:14:44.880how's Mel doing? Mel's doing good. She has a lot of really great support, despite coming from a
00:14:52.740conservative catholic family her family has been there for her through this uh she was telling me
00:14:59.820just yesterday about the support she's seeing around norman oklahoma you know just being out
00:15:06.780for brunch and you know people coming up to her table and thanking her for being herself
00:15:13.000and saying let me buy let me pay your tab for brunch today just random strangers she's never
00:15:20.120met or you know buying her brunch you know making sure to come say hi and give her a hug
00:15:26.620so she's feeling a lot of love and support from a lot of people in Norman and so I want to make
00:15:33.040sure those folks hear that like there's a lot of good people out there trying to support her
00:15:38.480and I also want to say there's a lot of headlines that have come out that have kind of made it seem
00:15:44.820like she's like basically been like banished from the university or something and that's not quite
00:15:52.120true um you know she was removed from her teaching assignment but you know they they haven't kicked
00:16:00.340her out of her program she's still studying she's still her department has actually been very
00:16:05.980supportive there and trying to find ways to make sure she can still get the requirements she needs
00:16:12.160to get to, to get her postgraduate degree.
00:16:16.820And so there's been a lot of people within the university trying to look out for her.
00:16:21.900And it's just really that, you know, in my opinion, the university leadership itself
00:16:27.800was in a position of, do we take the side of this one teaching assistant who, you know,
00:16:35.800isn't even a tenured professor and, you know,
00:16:39.860potentially risk having the legislature make taking away money from our
00:16:44.820university, their cause du jour this session.
00:16:48.700Or do we just throw the one TA under the bus for this one teaching0.98
00:16:53.740assignment so that we keep everything calm and keep the legislature from
00:17:00.300And they chose the easy route because that's easier to do that than to
00:17:05.460stand up for what's right. Mel and Brittany filed an appeal against the university's decision
00:17:10.880and the day before Brittany and I sat down to speak she got some news. We did appeal the decision
00:17:17.560internally through the university's internal process. They then sent that appeal to an outside
00:17:26.660law firm to have them do so so they have like a third party rule on the appeal to make it seem
00:17:34.700like we're not ruling on our own stuff here and i can't share the actual documents these are like
00:17:43.280private documents that we're not allowed to share out but i can break some news here
00:17:48.200and tell you they that the appeal went against us um and a really interesting thing of the appeal
00:17:57.060it cites no law doesn't really it doesn't read like what you would think of a legal opinion
00:18:02.700and then it's not signed by any single attorney and in my 20 years of legal practice I have never
00:18:11.580seen a law firm send something out that says it's just signed by the firm there's always like
00:18:18.740an attorney's name on behalf of the firm right instead it just says McAfee and Taft
00:18:25.760in the signature block with no so no attorney even wanted to put their name to this it was just like
00:18:32.940the the firm said this um so i don't even know what attorney reviewed this like what junior
00:18:40.400attorney they maybe said hey write us something real quick it's like a four-page document it's
00:18:46.400short it's it misses the point of things we were trying to bring up in the appeal uh it's it's
00:18:54.340really, really interesting. But, you know, we had to exhaust our administrative remedies
00:19:00.480internally before we can even think about any other litigation down the line. And so that's
00:19:07.300where we're at as of yesterday. I'm very disappointed to hear that. What do you I mean,
00:19:14.780i'm no attorney what explains how atypical that that that decision is like i've i've never heard
00:19:26.160of that that kind of thing either what do you think explains that i mean just being somebody
00:19:32.020from oklahoma and who's been an oklahoma licensed attorney for two decades it really seems just kind
00:19:39.060I like the old good old boy system of, you know, let's call up some friends at a big firm and have them write what we need to write to give us the cover to stick with this decision.
00:19:50.400And, you know, it's been not transparent at all.
00:19:55.260The whole process has just been wildly lacking in transparency.
00:20:02.300And part of the reason I can even talk about this is the degree to which Samantha, the student, did such a media tour that she talked about so many of the facts of the case that she waived that, you know, all of that privacy related to this.
00:20:22.440So that's why I feel comfortable now talking a little more about what's going on in the case.
00:22:18.940They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:22:23.420But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:22:26.860They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:22:30.480Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:22:38.940If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:22:44.880This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:22:57.340I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:23:04.460I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed, so obsessed.
00:23:07.580from best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments
00:23:12.480nothing is off the table it's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling
00:23:19.020characters and that is a trojan horse whether you're looking for literary deep dives smart
00:23:24.300pop culture conversations or a community of readers who love to think a little too much
00:23:29.060you're in the right place listen to pro society on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever
00:23:35.520you get your podcasts. See you between the pages.
00:23:47.180By now, you've probably heard of Samantha Fulnacki. She's been on a media blitz,0.93
00:23:52.000television interviews, political events, conservative podcasts. She is working hard
00:23:56.320to turn a failing grade on what multiple instructors agreed was subpar work into right-wing celebrity1.00
00:24:02.460status. That is one of the things that, I guess, infuriated me early on. The way that Mel is bound
00:24:12.200by these, was bound by these confidentiality rules, right? Meanwhile, the student had media
00:24:18.500appearances lined up the next day. How did that impact Mel's ability to defend herself publicly?1.00
00:24:25.340It did a lot to keep her from being able to talk. I will give, you know, university officials credit. You know, one of the things they did really early on, as soon as Mel's name even got out, is, you know, officials did help her lock down her social media and lock down her private email and do things to get some of the some of that info off of the Internet so that she would not get as much direct harassment.0.99
00:24:54.340so i i do want to give folks credit for for trying to help her in that way um but it was really0.92
00:25:01.780troubling to her that you know until she got me as an attorney she couldn't even say anything and
00:25:09.020so you know she didn't know how to say anything or what she could say and so finally she she hired
00:25:16.200me and we were able to start putting out at least a couple of public statements so that people knew
00:25:21.340Like, yeah, she's getting railroaded here and, you know, we got to we got to at least say something.
00:25:28.220Yeah, I'm happy that you mentioned that the university was helpful in helping her lock down her digital footprint.
00:25:34.280That's something that we talk about a lot on the show.
00:25:36.700When someone, particularly someone of a marginalized or like minoritized identity, becomes the national target in this way,
00:25:45.580oftentimes institutions are just like good luck hope you can handle a million death threats from
00:25:52.040strangers like thoughts and prayers but the very least they can do is offer stuff like if especially
00:25:58.680if you are representing an institution the very least they can do is offer some support in terms
00:26:03.960of digital security and best practices so that it's not just letting this person absorb all like
00:26:09.460all of this hate and just hoping that they're able to shoulder that because oftentimes they're not
00:26:14.540Absolutely. So I guess I do appreciate that and want to give credit where it's due on that.
00:26:21.240I'm also glad that you mentioned the fact that Mel doesn't have tenure. I got my start in education. I adjuncted a half a dozen places across the District of Columbia. I'm a PhD school dropout, so I was a TA, a graduate instructor and all of that.
00:26:38.700And I say that to say that when you're a grad student, you just don't have a lot of support all the time.
00:26:48.440And when I was a grad student, I would make like $1,200 a year or something.
00:26:59.780and it's a lot to expect one person to shoulder when you have strangers you know weighing in on
00:27:11.080whether or not you should keep your job whether or not like you've been good like and Mella someone
00:27:16.140it makes me sad that like Mella someone who I know is an award-winning student right like
00:27:24.320has won awards for her ability to teach students and so this idea that you have a million strangers
00:27:29.080weighing in when you're in a dynamic where you're just a grad student you don't have tenure you
00:27:33.800don't have the protections that some other people might have it just is a very unfair situation i
00:27:38.200guess is what i'm saying it is although i will say um mel did kind of watch the social media
00:27:45.400firestorm you know she couldn't help herself but to go see what people were saying and it did
00:27:51.880hearten her and like fill her with pride that so many people saw through the story and were like0.95
00:27:59.080this is ridiculous. I read that paper. It's terrible. It deserves a zero. And she's like,0.91
00:28:06.700she did feel vindicated that so many people were posting about it and could see it for what it was.
00:28:14.860The fact that Samantha's team released the paper, I've, in my opinion, they released it to be like
00:28:22.820a gotcha like see judge for yourself and i don't think that they realized that the almost the
00:28:29.780entire internet was going to be like wow what a bad paper well and then she goes on to give an
00:28:36.700interview where she admits like oh i forgot i even had this assignment due despite the fact it had
00:28:43.180been on the syllabus for months girl that was clear i'm i'm on my way out to go see a play with
00:28:49.860my friend and so i just was like i'm i'm just gonna hop on and throw this together like the
00:28:56.400paper she's supposed to be responding to that that article was supposed to that she was supposed to
00:29:02.360have read would take 30 minutes to just read not even to respond to and so part of the thing we
00:29:09.720brought up in the appeal was facts that were not brought up you know below and the facts i brought
00:29:15.880up because i was able to review the file it was like nobody's even bringing up this interview that
00:29:21.980she gave after she filed this complaint this is new evidence that cuts against her story
00:29:28.640that this was some really well thought out opinion piece and that in fact you know it seems that she's
00:29:35.180just complaining that she got a bad grade on something she didn't take take the time to do
00:29:40.720right um and they tried to turn that in the appeal as to we're trying to say that you know
00:29:49.120she she just didn't do enough time but it was still her opinion and it it was just it's circular
00:29:56.060logic in the appeal decision but didn't didn't really take what we were saying at face value
00:30:04.520and tried to twist it into something else.
00:30:06.760I'm saying, no, she admitted she did not do the assignment.
00:30:11.740There's just no way you could have in that short of a time frame.
00:30:16.600When Mel gave Samantha that failing grade,
00:30:19.260she asked for a second opinion from the other graduate student instructor in the course.
00:30:23.380That instructor, a cisgender white woman, also reviewed Samantha's assignment
00:30:27.620and agreed that it deserved a zero for all the same reasons that Mel cited.
00:30:31.320But that instructor faced no complaints, no media firestorm, no removal from teaching.0.99
00:30:38.960The only difference, well, she's not trans.0.58
00:30:42.560You have a very specific piece of evidence, that interview that she gave that, I mean, in my opinion, pretty much gives the whole game away.
00:30:50.800Is there any additional stuff like that that you think investigators should have considered or should have used to make their decision but didn't?
00:30:58.200Yeah, there was also evidence that after Mel gave her the zero, Mel actually went to another TA who there was two TAs for the class and they had split the class up like A through H or whatever.
00:31:14.440And, you know, you know, I through Z and whatever work to give them equal students.
00:31:21.540And so Mel went to the other TA who had the other half of the class and said, hey, I've given this a zero.
00:31:30.660Can you give it a look, too, and tell me whether you agree or not?1.00
00:31:40.020Said, I agree with your assessment.0.94
00:31:42.340Like, that looks like a zero to me as well.
00:31:45.580But she was not brought up into any of this.
00:31:48.560and you know she's not being punished and you know she wasn't complained about so it seems that
00:31:58.960this really is all about focusing on the trans person in the scenario and punishing them for
00:32:06.880giving the same grade that a cis white person was going to give as well i'm so glad that you
00:32:13.780made that point. I don't know if you can speak to this or not, but to me, just as somebody who's
00:32:19.300been in the classroom for many years, that's exactly, that's just exactly what's going on,
00:32:24.380in my opinion. I think that this is so clearly not about this one grade. I think it is so clearly
00:32:31.140about an attack on a trans person in academia, but also a political moment that's attempting to
00:32:41.180pushed queer voices and trans voices and those identities out of academia and out of institutional
00:32:48.680spaces. That is how I see it. That's my opinion. It is based on what you just said. It is hard for
00:32:55.240me to see this as anything else. I mean, it's kind of just a fact because the fact that she
00:33:00.940even brought Turning Point USA into this and connected them in when she emailed her complaint
00:33:07.640over is is telling because turning point usa literally has an entire website dedicated to
00:33:18.420outing queer people in academia and attacking them it they have it's a it's called the professor
00:33:26.640watch list and they have literally everyone on there is basically either queer or a person of0.81
00:33:33.740color that teaches things from a perspective that they don't believe we should be allowed to hear0.86
00:33:39.620it's all about control it's about kicking out anyone who's not a white christian nationalist
00:33:45.780and shoving them out of academia and it's all part of this broader ethnic cleansing project
00:33:52.900of the far right that's being currently headed up by president stephen miller and you know the rest
00:34:00.720of this regime and turning point usa is their private like non-profit out there doing the
00:34:07.440boots on the ground work that government can't do for them um also i we talked about this after
00:34:16.040charlie kirk's death turning points usa's professor watch list brought to you by charlie kirk and it's
00:34:22.860so funny to me that people are like oh really loved free speech girl where you know like oh
00:34:29.120Not the free speech of the professors that are on this watch list that are being threatened and silenced for what they have to say.
00:34:35.700Certainly not their free speech. No, not at all.
00:34:38.940It's it's the free speech to them means I'm allowed to say hate speech and anybody who criticizes me needs to be silenced.
00:34:48.560The people championing Samantha's cause and attacking Mel.
00:34:52.460Well, most of them have no official or formal connection to the University of Oklahoma.
00:34:57.420There's folks like Ryan Walters, the former Oklahoma state superintendent currently under an ethics investigation for alleged conflicts of interest.
00:35:05.580And then there's Samantha's mother, an attorney whose client list includes January 6th rioters.
00:35:12.380These are the voices claiming to defend academic freedom.
00:35:16.760So I'm curious, and this might be an Oklahoma thing.
00:35:20.760You talked about how Fulnicki immediately was CCing Turning Points USA. I find that so weird and revealing, as you said. But then you have these people who, as far as I can tell, have no real current connection to education in Oklahoma.
00:35:39.500like they're not elected officials like ryan walters what's going what does it mean when someone
00:35:45.740loops in all of these people who have they're not elected officials they have no real business
00:35:51.940weighing in on what's happening at this university i mean to me it was it gave away the game it said
00:35:58.160i i'm not just doing this because you know i want to see justice done in my case it's i want to bring
00:36:06.340attention to this because i want to become the next riley games right-wing star and do the media
00:36:13.860tour if you go to samantha's instagram it is just covered in pictures of all her various media
00:36:21.200appearances and you know i i don't think she has quite even the charisma of riley so i don't know
00:36:28.320that she's um you know gonna actually make it but it definitely seems to me that that was part of
00:36:35.820the play here like i can step on this trans ta to get my face out there and start trying to do
00:36:43.780the right-wing media gripped i don't know how much of that's you know the student herself or
00:36:49.580how much of it's her january 6 defending mom you know i i don't know who's behind it but
00:36:56.900i can tell you that in some of the raw footage of the interviews that she gave at least with
00:37:02.360local stations in oklahoma um news nine posted the whole like 30 minute long interview that they
00:37:10.220ended up only taking clips of for their news program onto their youtube channel and it's
00:37:16.840clear to me from watching the entire interview that her mom is sitting there next to her because
00:37:23.120the the interviewer occasionally looks to the person next to her to ask like well can i talk
00:37:29.500to her about this or that and it's pretty clearly her mom sitting there so i i to the degree i i do
00:37:36.980kind of wonder is mom leading this and pushing her to it is this her own thing it's it's really
00:37:43.920hard to tell not a right-wing grievance monger celebrity stage mom you know what i mean like
00:39:31.800Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable.0.98
00:39:36.320I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me.
00:39:40.780I started feeling that there was someone at the end of my bed, and I just started screaming.
00:39:47.860They are abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced.
00:39:52.320But these aren't stories about what's taken from them.
00:39:55.780They're stories about what it takes to make it out alive.
00:39:59.380Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:40:07.840If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home.
00:40:12.820This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse.
00:40:26.240I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having.
00:40:33.220I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed.
00:40:36.480From best-selling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table.
00:40:42.880It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is a Trojan horse.
00:40:50.800Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place.
00:40:59.960Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
00:41:42.360I am not deep enough into my investigation at this time
00:41:47.600to, you know, be able to say with certainty
00:41:51.400that I'm 100% believe it went this way or that way.
00:41:55.800There's a lot that still needs to be looked into.
00:41:59.460That certainly seems a possibility.0.93
00:42:01.700It also seems a possibility that she got a zero for doing a crappy job and then realized, wait, isn't that professor a trans person?0.59
00:42:13.520And is there a way I can flip this and turn this into something?
00:42:17.540I'm still trying to figure out when the plan got hooked up.
00:42:21.800Was it before the zero or after the zero?
00:42:24.320It was absolutely true that she wanted to use assignments in that class to push her viewpoint, because that was not the only time, you know, she had leaned on religion for some things she was trying to say in that class.
00:42:42.720It was just the first time she got a zero because her work was so poor.
00:42:47.720She actually had like a 90 something percent average in the class, even after the zero.
00:42:54.020So she was basically mad about an assignment that took her grade down a few points from an A to an A.
00:43:02.120If you had told me when I was in college that I could blow off an assignment, get a zero for it, but then have that grade thrown out, not wait against me.
00:43:11.660And then also become a celebrity in the process. I mean, I wasn't like a massive transphobe, so I probably wouldn't have done what Samantha did. But I guess what I'm saying is, doesn't this set a precedent that perhaps we do not want on college campuses? That anytime there is a grade complaint, you can just say, well, the professor who gave it to me, guess what? She's trans. And all of a sudden, national media figures are coming in to take your side?
00:43:40.100Absolutely. And that's why I took this case is because I think it's important that we start pushing back in every legal way that we can. I have my own problems with where our current legal and judicial situation, but it still exists for now.
00:43:59.680And, you know, even in Ruby Red, Oklahoma, I won a one point something million dollar verdict for a trans professor at Southeastern in 2017.
00:44:11.860And let me tell you, that jury we had, it's for the Western District of Oklahoma Federal Court.
00:44:18.920So this is the district of Oklahoma that covers like everything from Oklahoma City and West, like the entire Western half of the state, basically.
00:44:28.320and so that meant our jurors were not just from the city we had jurors who were coming in over
00:44:35.520an hour drive each way from rural towns outside of Oklahoma City and of course I researched all
00:44:43.040of our jurors as soon as we had our jury selected and I you know one of them was a pastor himself
00:44:50.240and another one was the wife of a pastor and we got a unanimous jury verdict on behalf of our
00:44:57.100professor. So I know that when people actually get the facts in a courtroom setting and can
00:45:06.240actually divorce it from everything that's going on politically, Oklahomans fundamentally believe
00:45:13.880in people being treated fairly, regardless of who they are, and do not abide somebody being
00:45:20.860treated unfairly nearly because of who they are. Wow. That takes me back to what we opened this
00:45:27.020conversation with of I this is like my own biases I would not have thought that folks coming in from
00:45:34.180rural Oklahoma to sit on this jury would have would have you know gone that way but it makes
00:45:39.480me happy to hear that even in places like ruby red Oklahoma folks still believe that like people
00:45:46.140deserve justice people deserve you know people have civil rights like that's the whole point of
00:45:50.840our country or ostensibly should be um that makes me feel good that that's that that you're that
00:45:55.520you're pushing forward cases that demonstrate that. Yeah. And it was fun, too, because being
00:46:01.600the local counsel on it, our trial team consisted of a trans man attorney, Ezra Young, who came in
00:46:08.900from New York, who was lead counsel. I was the Oklahoma on the ground local counsel. And then
00:46:16.000we brought in a third attorney who was a Latina lesbian woman from Texas. And our team came0.99
00:46:23.560together and we were like we have to talk to this jury in a way that we just meet them where they
00:46:31.920are and i we were and you know the national lords were telling us oh you're gonna have to you know
00:46:38.220teach all these people about trans and this and that and i was like no we don't i was like the
00:46:44.800last thing we want to do is spend hours of testimony on defining transgender it doesn't
00:46:51.940matter what they think that means. All they need to know is that this woman who happens to be trans
00:46:58.700was treated differently because of it. And so my co-counsel from Texas, she did our voir dire,
00:47:06.960which is the jury selection process. And instead of using jury selection as, you know, trying to
00:47:15.100pick just the perfect jurors, we kind of used it as a way to start already framing the case.
00:47:21.940and she did this really brilliantly and we had the jurors in there and she said
00:47:26.820how many of you all were in like cub scouts girl scouts boy scouts just hands are going up almost
00:47:35.100the entire jury raises their hand and she said now you know when you had to get a merit badge
00:47:41.340you know said you had to do a b and c and once you complete a b and c you get the badge for doing
00:47:48.940what you needed to do to earn that merit badge right heads are shaken well yeah of course
00:47:54.500don't you think it would be unfair if after you did a b and c and you got that merit badge
00:48:01.140somebody said to you well you can't have it because of who you are they were all like oh
00:48:06.620that's horrible yeah and so just we didn't need to know everybody was perfectly right on any
00:48:13.640perfect issue. It was getting it into their heads, the framing of like, you don't want to be treated
00:48:20.240unfairly and you don't want others to be treated unfairly. That is so brilliant. What a brilliant
00:48:27.320strategy. I do wonder, I don't even really know how to ask this. Does it ever feel like you have
00:48:35.040to walk this delicate walk of, you know, I agree, like meeting people where they're at, speaking to
00:48:42.320them and in their own language is very important and very persuasive does it ever feel burdensome
00:48:48.160that you that that's something that you even need to be working out like how how am I going to get
00:48:53.320in front of a jury and have this conversation in a way that's not going to automatically have them
00:48:56.680be like thinking xyz about me being being very mindful of how you present both yourself and
00:49:02.460these issues and your clients does that make sense yeah I mean it's it can be a little bit tiresome
00:49:07.960But it's, you know, it's unfortunately it's the work. And, you know, my job is ultimately harm reduction and doing the best I can to put my clients back into a situation that's, you know, somewhat equivalent to where they were before the bad thing happened to them.
00:49:26.860and you know you can't always do that but we try and you know we we have to make the arguments we
00:49:35.420have to make to try to bring people along and you know if that means connecting with them on that
00:49:42.240then that's what we do and you know it's actually I was I read um Steve Innskeep's book about
00:49:49.340Abraham Lincoln a couple years back and you know a big theme of that book was how
00:49:55.360So, yeah, Lincoln himself wanted to abolish slavery, but he also knew, like, I'm not going to bring people along just by telling them slavery is immoral.
00:50:06.320So he had to find arguments of meeting people where they were, like, oh, well, as long as there's slavery in the South, you know, they can keep getting away with not paying people good wages, and that's driving your wages down.
00:50:20.960And like, it sucks that you have to meet people like that sometimes, but that's just historically where the work gets done and how we move things forward.
00:50:33.540Given your work and given where we are in this moment in our country, are you hopeful?
00:50:40.320Are you are you do you have optimism or hope for for where we're headed and what's next?
00:50:45.560I do. In spite of everything, I am becoming more optimistic that we can get through this. That said, I do think it will get a lot worse before it gets better.
00:51:01.920But what we know of authoritarian regimes is that, you know, when they're lashing out in this kind of violence, it's because they know they're losing popular opinion and they're trying to stifle dissent and get us to think, oh, well, if they're going to shoot me, I better stay inside.
00:51:20.860And what I love about Minnesotans is, you know, they see two of their neighbors get shot and killed. And instead of saying, well, that means I need to stay in, it meant 30,000 more people signed up to become observers. Right.
00:51:37.000So these folks here in this state believe in our democratic system.
00:51:45.480And it's not really a coincidence that this is also the state that typically has the highest voter turnout every election.
00:51:54.080In the small town where I live, the November 2024 turnout for this town of 2,000 people that I live in was 97% turnout.
00:52:04.980And so these are people who believe in participating, who believe we have to have a voice. And so when some outside force comes in and tells them you don't get to have a voice, that only makes them buck up harder and say, oh, yeah.
00:52:22.760Oh, yeah. Minnesotans are outside and they're outside in like negative 10 degree weather.
00:52:29.720yeah we we're hearty folks we're it doesn't matter we got the right gear to wear we know
00:52:37.980how to stay warm i bet those those southern boys and ice don't know how to stay warm in it
00:52:43.900i love it i love it is there anything that folks listening can do
00:52:49.800to support your work or support mel in this moment
00:52:53.120you know i think just right now just keep an eye on the story um you know there were there was a
00:53:02.420moment i'm glad we brought this up there were some people who i think some might have been well
00:53:07.800meaning some might have been scammers but in the initial days after this story was getting national
00:53:14.540attention there were like four or five different gofundmes that popped up none of them were
00:53:20.400associated with either me or with mel so these were people who hadn't reached out to mel hadn't
00:53:27.140talked to any of us and were saying they were raising money for her so be be on the lookout
00:53:33.980we are not trying to raise money on this mel's not trying to get a handout i am working on a
00:53:41.000contingency basis so there she's not you know going in debt on attorney fees here
00:53:46.480so so we're okay what mel would like people to do who want to help is help in your local area so
00:53:55.780whoever your local lgbt organizations are or you know whoever around your community is helping
00:54:04.460people like mel donate to those folks because we're all gonna have to take care of our own
00:54:10.860backyards in this moment. And, you know, Mel just wants people to support their communities where
00:54:18.440they're at so that we can all have each other's back. Got a story about an interesting thing in
00:54:28.520tech or just want to say hi? You can reach us at hello at tangody.com. You can also find
00:54:33.180transcripts for today's episode at tangody.com. There Are No Girls on the Internet was created1.00
00:54:37.220by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. Jonathan Strickland
00:54:42.020is our executive producer. Tara Harrison is our producer and sound engineer. Michael Amato is our
00:54:46.900contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us
00:54:51.980on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
00:54:56.500Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.