BUFFALO, N.Y. — Less than a year ago, a white man from out of town drove into Buffalo before posting a white supremacist screed online that denounced, among other things, “transgenderism.” He then .
Eventually, Knowles took the stage to big cheers. Though he’d been invited to the university to give a speech about the “illogic of feminism,” he addressed all the uproar over his comments about trans people.
Knowles recited his speech at CPAC word for word and then explained how he wasn’t calling for genocide. “When one calls for eradicating cancer, one is not calling for murdering the cancer patient,” he said.
At various points during his speech and during a Q&A, Knowles seemed to suggest that so-called conversion therapy could be a solution for making trans people no longer be trans — an argument he’s also also seemed to make on Twitter.
“I think when you feel some kind of conflict between your biological sex and your perception of gender identity, then it is your obligation to bring your gender identity more into line with reality,” he said. “I think we don’t have the right to the fiction, to the delusion that a man can be a woman and a woman can become a man. I think if you’re a man, to quote Don Corleone, ‘you gotta act like a man,’ and when you’re a woman, you gotta act like a woman.”
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In 2019 NBC reported on a new study that found trans people who received so-called conversion therapy — a widely discredited practice — were more than twice as likely to have attempted suicide.
Michelle Williams, 24, a queer second-year Ph.D. student at University at Buffalo, said this is part of why Knowles’ call for eradicating “transgenderism” is so inherently violent.
“The logical end of what he’s saying is we’re eradicating access to gender-affirming care, we’re eradicating people’s ability to medically transition or socially transition,” Williams said. “When he says that he’s talking about the ideology, and not the people like maybe he’s not… calling for direct physical violence toward trans people directly, like out loud…but the material effect of what he is saying is, trans people aren’t going to be able to get care. And that is going to cause them physical harm.”
Knowles received a standing ovation at the end of his speech. As his fans left Slee Hall, they were greeted by a “walk of shame,” protesters on either side of police barricades shouting, jeering and flashing middle fingers. Some of Knowles’ trollish young fans delighted in the attention, smiling and filming themselves.
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Back at the student union, disco lights danced across the floor as queer students and their straight/cis friends cleaned up from a party they had thrown during a Knowles speech — a way of providing trans students who didn’t feel safe demonstrating a space to have some joy.
Clayton Shanahan, a medical student, was among the volunteers picking up popped balloons and wrapping up wires from the loudspeakers. The party had been great, they said, a celebration of transness and queerness.
Knowles’ eradication comments, Shanahan said, are ultimately absurd. Trans people have always existed and always will.
“You can’t eradicate transgender people,” they told HuffPost. “You can’t get rid of us. We are resilient, and we’re here to stay.”
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