"What is a Woman?" A Movie That Should Be Reviewed More, For One Thing

Matt Walsh pranks the pants off America's silliest intellectuals, and the sad thing is, it wasn't hard at all

Several months ago I interviewed a feminist writer named Kara Dansky as part of the “Meet the Censored” series. The piece was written and edited, but I kept putting off publication, telling myself each week the time wasn’t right.

In truth I was afraid of dealing with blowback from trans activists. It was the first time I was scared away from a topic. I apologized to Kara this week and am running the interview concurrent with this review. The point being: if even a serial gobbler of negative attention like me is nervous about publishing someone else’s opinions on a subject — remember, just co-signing the infamous Harper’s letter with J.K. Rowling ended up costing Substack’s Matt Yglesias a spot at a company he co-founded, Vox — that means no one with even a theoretical link to left-liberal audiences will want to go near this topic voluntarily.

Which brings us to Matt Walsh’s new movie, What is a Woman?, simultaneously the most talked-about and most ignored documentary in the world. The movie, which tries and fails to get trans activists, academics, and medical professionals to offer a definition of womanhood, is both trending and more or less totally un-reviewed. The most prominent outlets who’ve admitted to watching it have names like the Christian Post and Spectator Australia, despite a 96% audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is narrated by Walsh and distributed by Ben Shapiro’s conservative Daily Wire, which is crucial to understanding why it will be a success even if — especially if — no mainstream reviewers touch it.