What Is a Woman?
What Is a Woman? is a 2022 American documentary with a runtime of 95 minutes. The film was directed by Justin Folk and is hosted by conservative commentator Matt Walsh. The conservative media company The Daily Wire released it to subscribers on June 1, 2022, at the start of Pride Month.
What It Is About
Walsh asks a wide range of people what a woman is. Among others, he speaks with a therapist, a pediatrician, a gender studies professor, and politicians, aiming to show that, in his view, their answers go in circles. The film also covers puberty blockers, transgender young people, and transgender athletes competing in women's sports. Walsh made the film explicitly as an indictment of what he calls gender ideology.
Reception and Criticism
The reception was sharply divided. Conservative commentators praised the film, while journalistic and academic sources have called it anti-trans or transphobic. Several participants stated that they had been approached under false pretenses. In June 2023, the film attracted renewed attention when Elon Musk promoted it on Twitter. The documentary is included because it has strongly influenced the public debate about terms such as woman and gender, not as a neutral source. See also society.
Who Appears in It
Those interviewed include surgeon Marci Bowers, pediatrician Michelle Forcier, and professor Patrick Grzanka. Critical voices include psychiatrist Miriam Grossman, psychologist Jordan Peterson, sexologist Debra Soh, and Scott Newgent, a transgender man who has had negative experiences with his own transition. Walsh also travels to Kenya to ask members of a Maasai community the question. The film ends at home, where his wife answers that a woman is an adult human being of the female sex.
Recruitment and Screenings
Activist Eli Erlick revealed that the filmmakers had approached transgender people through a group called Gender Unity Project without telling them what kind of film it would be. The Daily Wire reported that its website had been hit by a digital attack at the time of the premiere; the news site The Daily Dot questioned that claim. Screenings at universities were accompanied by protests. At the University of Houston, police counted 435 attendees and approximately 400 protesters on October 13, 2022.
More on the Reception
Fact-checkers pointed out false claims in the film, including the debunked story about litter boxes in schools. Writer J.K. Rowling, by contrast, praised the film because, in her view, it exposes the incoherence of the theory of gender identity. Around the film's promotion on Twitter in June 2023, the company's head of trust and safety left the company. The sports segments in the film relate to the article about gender and sport.