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Cake day: March 12th, 2025

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  • The assignment called for students to write a clear and thoughtful 650 word response to a scholarly article about gender expectations in society. According to screenshots shared by Turning Point USA’s local chapter, Fulnecky wrote in her essay that the article irritated her, and described how God created men and women differently. “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,” she wrote.

    Mel Curth, a graduate teaching assistant, wrote as part of the grading process that she had deducted points because Fulnecky submitted a “paper that does not answer the questions for this assignment, contradicts itself, heavily uses personal ideology over empirical evidence in a scientific class, and is at times offensive,” according to the screenshots of her messages.

    Quotes and links are directly from the article.

    It appears to me that the student did not complete the assignment according to the instructions. Rather, she attempted to generally contrast the conclusions of gender studies with the Bible. Although, personally, I might have thrown in a few points for word count, spacing, and completion which is more than some students are capable of.

    It’s pretty disturbing how deliberately and blindly obtuse people become when given the opportunity to cheer for their team.


  • I would like to dispute the primary supposition here that pornography is harmful. The use of pornography is nearly universal, and most of the harms that it supposedly causes are symptoms of other issues, or are invented to impose control of sexuality. The ability to reach out with the power of the law to impose religious edicts or project sexual hangups is one of the most esoteric, yet effective, forms of political control available other than violence. If you can control the way that people express their sexuality, you can probably also control their views through the monetization and restriction of sex.

    Sexuality and privacy are human rights, and the creation of and access to pornography is protected by the first and fourth amendments under which so-called “age verification” is an unnecessary and excessive burden. If the idea is to prevent access to children, ask yourself why now all adults must now have their access prevented or interrupted.

    Furthermore, it is not the state’s role to control childhood sexual development, and the idea that porn is harmful to minors is debatable at best and dubious at worst. Access to objectionable material is solely at the discretion of parents. The fact that they cannot effectively manage this is a symptom of another problem.

    When Meta shows teenage girls makeup ads after they delete their selfies, or streaming apps are flooded with violent movies that are easily accessible to minors, this is acceptable. But when I want to watch porn it’s now my job to “protect minors” by compromising my privacy and security?

    The real “danger” here is the availability of ideas that do not align with state power.