“They’re very untalented,” Frontlines Reporter Kalen D’Almeida said while covering the event.
Demonstrators wearing drag and revealing “BDSM” outfits staged a pop-up drag show on the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) campus on Tuesday evening to protest a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) event featuring children’s rights activist “Billboard Chris” and detransitioner Chloe Cole.
Students from the Cal Poly Pride Centers planned “counter-events” to protest the TPUSA chapter event open to anyone “feeling unsafe.” The protest gained the support of faculty member Maya Hislop, who encouraged her students to attend. Hislop sent an email to students calling the TPUSA event “dangerous.” She warned that the speakers, one of whom (Cole) formerly identified as a transgender male, might spread “lies” regarding transgenderism.
TPUSA contacted Cal Poly requesting clarity on the professor’s statements but did not receive a response.
When TPUSA Frontline’s Reporter Kalen D’Almeida arrived on Cal Poly’s campus at approximately 5:30 p.m., protesters had already begun gathering outside the event space.
By the time the event was scheduled to begin, hundreds of students and other individuals had assembled outside, creating what D’Almeida described as a “pop-up drag show” consisting of “exceptionally untalented,” individuals wearing revealing drag costumes. Several individuals attending the protest held signs reading, “Trans rights are not up for debate,” and “Trans Pride” among other slogans.
“Hundreds of students celebrating men in womanface,” Billboard Chris said on X (formerly Twitter) regarding the spontaneous drag-protest.
“They believe we’re all in drag [when] performing the stereotypes associated with our sex,” he said while speaking with D’Almedia. “So I guess I’m in drag tonight, performing masculinity with a little gender non-conformity because I’ve got my pink tie here. So they don’t know why they’re here,” he added. “They just know that there’s a party against a bunch of ‘bigots.'”
“This is the craziest protest I’ve ever had at one of my events,” Cole told D’Almeida. “I couldn’t describe all of it; I couldn’t make this stuff up.” D’Almeida added that the ordeal was “just bizarre.”
After the TPUSA chapter event began, one student was given the opportunity to participate in an open Q&A with Chris and Cole; he instead used the time to “read a story about ferrets,” according to Chris, which looked several pages long. The student was swiftly escorted from the room by security officers.
