This is an I-Heart podcast.

Guaranteed Human.

Not a right-wing grievance-monger celebrity stage mom.

You know what I mean?

No, no.

Never any of those.

Wow.

There are no girls on the Internet as a production of IHeart Radio and Unbossed Creative.

I'm Bridget Todd, and this is There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Late last year, a graduate student instructor at the University of Oklahoma gave a student a failing grade on an assignment. We talked about it here on the podcast. It was a routine

academic decision, the kind of thing that happens across college campuses every single day.

But this particular zero would spark a national firestorm. The instructor was

Mel Kirth, a trans woman working as a teaching assistant while pursuing her graduate degree.

The student was Samantha Fulnecke, who had turned in an essay for Mel's psychology class that,

by multiple accounts, did not answer the assignment's question. Instead,

Bolniky wrote that the idea of multiple genders was demonic and severely harms American

youth. So Mel gave the assignment a zero. Another instructor agreed with that assessment.

Case closed, right? Not quite because within days, Bolniki 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

mediator. Meanwhile, the university placed Mel on administrative leave and

eventually removed her from her teaching duties. The grade was thrown out, and Samantha became

...