“What Is a Woman?” is a 2022 American film about gender and transgender issues presented by conservative political commentator Matt Walsh, who is a columnist for The Daily Wire, which originally released the film. In the film, Walsh is asking people “What is a woman?” as a reaction to what he calls “gender ideology.”
Back in 2021, Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, Tesla, and recently, Twitter, made tweeted that “pronouns suck,” in response to another Twitter user’s comment about the importance of including gender pronouns in social media profiles. Musk’s tweet garnered considerable backlash from many individuals who felt it was dismissive or insensitive toward the transgender and non-binary communities.
In 2022, Matt Walsh released his documentary on Daily Wire’s subscription-only streaming service. And then, on June 2 this year, he tweeted: “Our film has been posted for a couple of hours. You cannot retweet it. It will not appear in anyone’s feed. It has been flagged as hate speech. It has been blacklisted from the trends list. It still has nearly 900 thousand views.”
To which Elon Musk responded: “Will be fixed tomorrow.”
And, indeed, on the morrow––that’s Friday to you and me––Musk retweeted the full version of the Daily Wire tweet of the video, with the endorsement: “Every parent should watch this.” So, here it is, for everyone to watch. There may be the occasional off-color word in the video, so, please, if you might be offended, don’t watch.
Every parent should watch this https://t.co/pIp6UP6vq8
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 2, 2023
In response, Twitter’s chief censor, Ella Irwin, resigned after less than seven months at the helm of Trust and Safety. As Twitter’s censor, Irwin oversaw the enforcement of content moderation policies. Musk, the new owner, eased restrictions and reinstated thousands of banned accounts. Irwin tweeted: “So, one or two people noticed that I left Twitter yesterday. I know there’s been a lot of speculation regarding what happened. Was I fired? Did I quit? Why?? Here’s what really happened:”
— TaraBull (@TaraBull808) June 3, 2023
Naturally, Musk was attacked all day Friday and Saturday as a transphobe, but that was only a little bit of the backlash Musk is and will be facing. According to CNN, the sudden vacancy could leave Twitter without content moderation just as later this month EU officials are going to review whether Twitter is compliant with a sweeping EU content moderation law that could eventually trigger millions of dollars in fines for Twitter if it’s found to be non-compliant.
They call it the Digital Services Act, and it will require Twitter to abide by tough content moderation standards no later than August. “It’s far from clear whether the company can meet those requirements by the deadline, and recent developments at Twitter seem to have further alarmed EU regulators in that respect,” CNN said.
“What is a woman?” discusses sex reassignment surgery, puberty blockers, transgender youth, and transgender athletes in women’s sports. It offers interviews with politicians, a pediatrician, a gender studies professor, a psychiatrist, a gender-affirming family and marriage therapist, a transgender opponent of medical transition for minors, a surgeon who specializes in gender-affirming surgery, a father of a 14-year-old transgender boy, and Jordan Peterson.
Walsh discusses the terms “non-binary” and “transgender” with a Maasai tribe in Kenya and talks to a gay man practicing public nudity in San Francisco.
“What is a woman?” also features a speech given by Walsh at a meeting of the Loudoun County School Board in Virginia where locals came to express their opinions on Policy 8040, which instructs staff members to use the preferred name and pronouns of transgender students and allows the students to use school bathrooms and locker rooms that align with their gender identity.
During his speech, Walsh says: “You are all child abusers. You prey upon impressionable children and indoctrinate them into your insane ideological cult, a cult which holds many fanatical views but none so deranged as the idea that boys are girls and girls are boys.”
At the end of the film, Walsh’s wife defines a woman as “an adult human female,” hands a jar to her husband, and says, “Who needs help opening this?”
