TUSCALOOSA – Podcast host and conservative commentator Matt Walsh spoke at the University of Alabama (UA) Thursday night about his new documentary "What is a Woman?" which questions the logic of the gender ideology movement. 

Walsh hosts the Daily Wire's "The Matt Walsh Show" podcast and is also the author of a best-selling children's book, "Johhny the Walrus."

According to The Capstone Free Press, a conservative student newspaper at UA, the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) announced the event on September 27. Later that month, YAF volunteers collected data from pedestrians on campus, asking them, "what is a woman?"

The UA Student Government Association (SGA) approved $7,135.53 for the event on September 29, despite several attempts by SGA senators to delay a decision.

Earlier this month, posters promoting the event disappeared around UA's campus. A group of students poured water on chalk advertisements drawn on UA sidewalks by YAF members. 

The Capstone Free Press said they obtained screenshots of messages sent in a group message for the UA chapter of the Planned Parenthood Generation Action in which a group leader announced that she was organizing protests with "like-minded" campus organizations.

UA's Queer Student Organization announced on Instagram it would be protesting Walsh's presence on campus. They also put up posters around campus. 

According to Campus Reform, Walsh's campus tour also sparked protests at the University of Central Florida and the University of Houston. 

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported protesters gathered at his University Wisconsin-Madison event as well. Protesters vandalized campus property with profane graffiti.

On Twitter, YAF posted a video of protesters at the Madison campus shredding up and eating pages in the Bible.

About 50 to 60 protesters gathered at UA's quad preceding the event Thursday with signs, some of them containing vulgar insults and calling Walsh a pedophile.

"Matt Walsh wants to define a woman so badly because he hopes it will include underage girls," one of them read.

"Matt, tell your wife to call me when she wants a good time," another read.

The event began with a screening of the documentary, followed by a speech by Walsh. 

There, Walsh spoke against the hypocrisy of the gender ideology movement, especially those who seek gender-affirming care for minors, who he said are not mature enough to make such an unalterable decision.

"This is an especially egregious, heinous crime because kids can't choose to transition to other genders," Walsh said. "They cannot consent to being mutilated or drugged ... Take a three-year-old to Baskin-Robbins and ask him which flavor he prefers. He'll give you 14 different answers and collapse into tears."

Walsh accused the doctors that support gender ideology of hurting people and later suggested that some of them do it because it makes them more money. Trans people who have sex surgeries must receive artificial hormones for life, which Walsh said makes them a "patient for life."

"It's barbaric, and it's evil," Walsh said.

But this wasn't Walsh's only bone to pick with the movement.

He said gender ideology was "harmful, toxic and insane across the board" and "wages an assault against our knowledge of ourselves."

"A person cannot live in such a state," Walsh insisted. "They certainly cannot thrive or be happy in a state like this.

"It's no surprise that Americans are reporting record levels of anxiety when precisely at a time when these kinds of ideas are gaining ground.”

Walsh took the time to run through the most common objections to his position against gender ideologies, which he said include people saying sex and gender are the same, claiming infertile women and intersex people are proof that gender is fluid, suggesting that a binary concept of gender is just a western concept and claiming that if trans people are not affirmed, they will commit suicide.

"If through history there have been hundreds of millions of unaffirmed [trans children], should there not have been a constant staggering tragic epidemic … of [kids] killing themselves en masse?" Walsh asked.

"Childhood suicide is an issue now in relation to trans affirmation," he continued. "Trans affirmation causes childhood suicide." 

At the end of his speech, Walsh said he receives death threats for his research and position, but that won't silence him.

"Life can have no meaning apart from truth," Walsh said. "There's nothing to fight for aside from truth. There's nothing to live for … That's why I'm not going to give it up."

Walsh was hosted by the YAF, one of the largest conservative student organizations on UAs campus.

"Even in conservative states like Alabama, the Left's radical agenda has made its way into the universities," said a representative from YAF's national office. "That's why Young America's Foundation is proud to work with Matt Walsh and the Daily Wire to bring his important message of sanity and common sense to capacity crowds on college campuses across America."

UA YAF chapter president Wyatt Eichholz said he is grateful for a successful event and everyone who helped put it on.

"This was a lot of hard work from a lot of people," Eichholz said. "We had a lot of opposition, but the people who made this a success, we're super grateful for them. I think this is an important event, so I'm glad that this was able to happen. I know that the people who were opposing us didn't want to see it happen. And they put a lot of work in it, but all they really did was they showed us how important this issue really is. That's fuel for the fire, man. That's why we're really here."

To connect with the author of this story, or to comment, email will.blakely@1819news.com or find him on Twitter and Facebook.

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