On Tuesday night, hundreds of transgender rights supporters gathered outside the University of Pittsburgh to oppose a discussion featuring Michael Knowles of The Daily Wire by throwing smoke bombs and yelling.
The Pitt College Republicans hosted a discussion in the O’Hara Student Center between writer Brad Polumbo and Knowles on the topic of “Should transgenderism be regulated by law?” Protesters yelled “Trans rights are human rights” from the audience as Knowles began her speech at the event, which was broadcast live on YouTube.
Knowles made a witty remark, “There they are.” It appears as though they had reached an agreement. The music has lost any sense of melody. I suppose there was a warmup.
Knowles, after the event got rolling, claimed that treating biological men as women just because they want to identify that way destroys women everywhere.
“If the law has nothing to say about what a woman is, then the law has nothing to say at all,” Knowles said. In other words, “either women have rights and legal protections as women, as they always have, or they don’t.”
The sensitive topic of guys utilizing women’s facilities came up during a conversation between Knowles and Polumbo. Polumbo, who calls himself a libertarian-conservative, stated that whomever owns a toilet should be free to select who is allowed to use it since it is a question of property rights and not a problem for the government.
“How are the military showers?” Knowles inquired.
While Polumbo was saying, “The military can have its policies,” Knowles chimed in, “That’s the government.”
Hundreds of pro-trans protestors gathered outside before the 7:30 p.m. event started, and the first of many “incendiary devices” was detonated. Pitt News reports that police described the object as a “combination of a firework and a smoke bomb.”
Over the following two hours, college buildings and residence halls were locked down and access was restricted as Pittsburgh municipal police officers joined campus police in an effort to maintain order. Nearly 90 minutes after the event concluded and Knowles left, at 10:30 p.m., order was apparently restored.
Activists in the transgender community are upset with Knowles because she has spoken out against chemical and surgical castration of kids and called for the “eradication” of the extreme ideology that holds that individuals may alter their genders. Activists made up a story claiming Knowles’s comments were the same as calling for the “genocide” of transsexual persons.
The hectic situation outside the student center at the University of Pittsburgh was tweeted about afterwards.
The tweet read, “At around 8:00 p.m. on April 18, 2023, the campus community was alerted via the Emergency Notification Service to an incident taking place outside of O’Hara Student Center.” Guests arriving for a speaker event and counter protestors were among the several groups congregating nearby.