The Daily Signal - Best of 2022: Matt Walsh on "What Is a Woman?"

Episode Date: December 30, 2022

This week, we are looking back at our, and your, favorite episodes from 2022. What is a woman? Seems like a pretty simple question. But in today’s America, the left thinks females aren’t the only ones who count as women anymore. Stories abound of biological males not only invading women’s private spaces such as bathrooms and locker rooms, but dominating in women’s sports. All of this comes with the support of radical leftists and activists in medicine. Worse, those medical doctors aren’t just focused on treating adults. Transgender ideologues have targeted children. Matt Walsh, author, podcast host, and filmmaker with The Daily Wire, has released a documentary film titled “What Is a Woman?” that he hopes will expose the worst aspects of gender ideology. “You feel like you’re staring into the pit of hell, honestly. I mean, you’re looking at pure evil when you consider what they’re doing to these kids, and they know what they’re doing,” Walsh says. “They have to know what they’re doing, because they’re the doctors and they know what it entails. They know that this stuff is obviously irreversible and they also know that kids can’t actually consent to any of this stuff.” Walsh adds: Kids don’t know what they’re doing. They’re not looking five, 10 years into the future. I mean, even before you get to surgery and that’s horrific enough, you’ve got the drugs, the hormone drugs, the so-called puberty blockers, and those drugs among other consequences, they also have the effect of sterilizing kids. Walsh joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to discuss his film and what gender activists are doing to kids, and offer solutions on how to escape this post-truth environment. Enjoy the show! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Daily Signal's best of 2022 podcast series. Today is December 30th. I'm Virginia Allen. And this is the Daily Signal's last podcast for 2022. Thank you so much for joining us this year, whether you listened to every episode all year long or maybe this is your first. Thank you for making the Daily Signal podcast a part of your year. And we are ending the year on a strong note. Our listeners who have been with us for a while will recognize. a familiar voice on the show today. Doug Blair co-hosted the Daily Signal podcast with me for over a

year before he jumped into a new and exciting opportunity here in D.C. But today, we are tuning into an interview Doug did with journalist and podcast host Michael Walsh. They sat down in June to discuss Walsh's documentary, What is a Woman? Let's see if Doug and Matt Walsh can answer that question within the next 20 minutes. So let's go ahead and get to their conversation after this. Five days a week, two episode formats, one mission, to deliver the news you care about and analysis on the biggest issues facing America. The Daily Signal podcast brings you two episodes every day in the same podcast feed. Each morning catch interviews with policymakers, leading experts, and conservative activists as we discuss some of the greatest challenges facing our country and offers solutions for a brighter future. And every weekday at 5 p.m.

We bring you the top news of the day. These are the headlines you care about. Subscribe to the Daily Signal podcast wherever you get your podcast, so you never miss out on our morning interviews or evening news. My guest today is Matt Walsh, author, podcast host, and now filmmaker with The DailyWire. His new documentary, What Is a Woman, is available now on DailyWire.com. Matt, welcome to the show.

Hey, thanks for having me. Of course. So I watched the movie, and like I was saying, it was incredible. I think one of the first things, though, that comes to mind about this documentary is that it was so frustrating to watch it and to see these people as they kind of avoided the questions. Many of the people had so many contradictory opinions about gender identity and women that it was tough not just getting really pissed off. How did you feel as you were talking to these people? I felt probably much the way you did watching it. It was a very frustrating experience in a lot of ways.

And there were plenty of times, and for a couple interviews in particular, where I wanted it to, you know, you want to start arguing with them and shouting and screaming and doing all that. But we kind of knew going into this that, you know, that's one way to approach it is just to go out and yell at everybody and get into arguments. But that's like what I do in podcast every day, right? That's kind of what we thought would be more effective is just to let them talk, just to ask some basic questions, let them talk. and if gender ideology sort of hang itself in the process, because the theory that kind of precipitated the film is that gender ideology is this kind of house of cards that cannot withstand even the slightest scrutiny.

And all it takes is really basic questions to reveal the fundamental absurdity underlying the entire thing. And I think that was kind of borne out throughout the course of the film. That does bring to mind one of the college professors that you spoke to in Tennessee, who kept basically going back to like, why are you asking me this question? Or like, he had this circular definition of what a woman was. Does that seem to be relatively common where they either can't answer the question so they try to deflect back on you or they try to reflexively just say, oh, a woman is a woman. Did that crop up a lot?

Yeah, both of those things. There's the kind of suspicion and defensiveness that really made its way to these interviews pretty early on. And going into the interviews, I had some questions I wanted to ask, basic questions, and obviously knowing there'd be follow-ups. And there were certain questions I planned to ask that I thought would, OK, this might be a little bit of a tough one. Maybe things will get a little tense here. What I found is that the interviews got tense way earlier than I thought they would, because

really any question that you ask, I mean, any question you ask these people, if you ask it with real skepticism, like you actually want to know, it's not just a setup for them to get into a talking Any question all like that makes them defensive, but also makes them suspicious, because they live in a world where, well, nobody ever actually really questions this stuff. And so if you're answering, if you're asking any actual questions, then it makes them suspicious that, oh, you must not be,

you must not be on our side. So a lot of that. And then also, as far as a circular definition, that if there was, if there is an answer to the question from the gender ideology proponents, it's the one that the professor gave, which is that, a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman. I got that same thing, a version of it so many times. And of course, it's kind of disturbing to get it from a college professor of all people because

he should know that it's just a, it's a logically invalid definition. It's not a, it's a definition that doesn't tell you anything at all about what you're defining. And yet this is what, you know, this is this is the best they could do, basically. Right. Another thing that kind of cropped up a lot is that anybody who asked these types of questions was, I think the quote was a dinosaur or a bigot. That seemed to be a pretty common refrain amongst these leftists that anybody who questioned the ideology had a bad motive. Yeah, that was first said by Marcy Bowers, a quote-unquote sex change surgeon, or as they call now a gender affirmation surgery, big scare quotes around that. And what was what I was told there was that, well, actually nobody opposes this

at all. Like everybody's on my side. And then when I said, well, there are a few. few people that, oh, yeah, those are the dinosaurs. But you get that because for these people, like in the world that they live in, and in the circles where they spend most of their time, it's true that nobody, everybody agrees. There is no alternative perspective, which is one of the reasons why I say that I'm not usually

a very optimistic person, but I have some optimism when it comes to gender ideology because I think it's very beatable. because it's so logically absurd. And also because the people who are the proponents of this stuff, they're very weak because they haven't been tested. You know, they've been insulated from criticism, from skepticism. And so it doesn't take much to bring it all down, I think.

One of the things, too, that really struck me about this conversation was when the conversations you were having is that children became involved very, very quickly. You spoke with Michelle Forsier, who is a pediatrician. you spoke specifically about puberty blockers and a lot of these are the drugs. And then the other doctor you spoke to as well was talking about giving vaginalplastys, which is creating a fake vagina out of tissue at 16. How did that make you feel when you were discussing with doctors what they were doing to children? You feel like you're staring into the pit of hell, honestly.

I mean, you're looking at pure evil when you consider what they're doing to these kids and they know, they know what they're doing. They have to know what they're doing because they're the doctors, and they know what it entails. They know that this stuff is obviously irreversible. And they also know that kids can't actually consent to any of this stuff. Kids don't know what they're doing. They're not looking, you know, five, ten years in the future.

I mean, even before you get to surgery, and that's horrific enough, but even before you get to that, you've got the drugs, the hormone drugs, the so-called puberty blockers. And those drugs, among other consequences, they also have the effect of sterilizing kids. And so how could a kid actually consent to being sterile for the rest of the lives? You know, never had never, never reproducing. They don't even understand what that is. They are making decisions for their future self, for their adult self, that their adult self is going to have to live with,

but who did not actually consent to this, because these decisions are made when you're, when you're so, young and your brain is underdeveloped. And so all those things are going through my head. And all the people that are behind this, they know all of this. But that's another thing we get into the film is there's so much money involved. It's not only a monetary kind of motivation behind it, but that's certainly part of it. There's billions of dollars involved in this. And so they've got a real incentive to, you know, keep the train moving.

That does bring up the question. When I was watching, you talk to these people, it seemed like most of them were sort of true believers. You had that female therapist at the beginning who seemed very engaged with the ideology. Do you think that this is more a true believer syndrome, or do you believe that there is a large financial motivation behind a lot of what these people do? I think it's both. You know, it probably is more of a case-by-case basis. There certainly are true believers, but I think even for the true believers, I wonder, you know, deep down in their hearts if they really believe what they're saying.

I think that there's one thing that we find with gender ideology, it's kind of interesting is that there's this, you know, they're trying to trick the world, but also they have to fool themselves in a way. That's one of the reasons why

the gender ideology of proponents, you know, they're really into this affirmation. You have to affirm, constantly affirm. And if you fail to affirm someone in the way that they want to be affirmed, it's like, it's about to murder. It's the worst thing you could possibly do.

And why is that? Because I, you know, as a man myself, even though I when talking to the therapist, I was wondering if I was a woman. In reality, I, you know, I know that I'm a man. So if somebody were to walk up to me and call me a her or call me a woman, it wouldn't cause any, I would just think that they were crazy. It wouldn't cause any kind of crisis for me whatsoever because I'm fully situated in my maleness and I'm totally confident in it.

But when you need affirmation constantly from the world, I think that tells us that's underneath everything, underneath all the pretensions, there's a deep question down there. So I think that's true, even of the true believers. And then the monetary motivation, I think, is more on like when you expand to the kind of institutional level, that's where you find the monetary motivations, I think. One of the things that really struck me, too, is when you spoke with Dr. Forsier, you mentioned Luzprom, the drug that is used to, in your words, chemically castrate pedophiles and rapists. Did they seem to have any concerns about how those drugs were used both on children and on people we kind of want to keep sexually away from society? No, there are no concerns at all.

That's the thing about the puberty blockers. This is just doctrinal now on the left that you're not allowed to question it. They're wonderful. They're great. They have no consequences. As Forsy-A told me, I think the way she put it was it's like putting a pause on music. And then you can pick it up, turn the music back on and pick up where the last note left off. That's not true, by the way, of any drug at all.

I mean, every drug you take, there are side effects, there are consequences. There's a little bit of a bargain involved in any drug that you take whatsoever. And the idea that blocking puberty would be the one exception where everything is fine, there are no side of it. But this is what they say because they cannot, if they were to admit that, hey, you know, there can be some complicated. There are some side effects. There will be some long-term effects. If they admit that, then that just starts a whole conversation that they don't want to have.

So instead they have this total fanciful version of it. But, you know, I said that Leupron's a chemical castration. I also presented the dictionary definition of chemical castration to Dr. Fourciate to show that, like, by definition, puberty blockers are chemical castration. That's what they are. And that's why, as you alluded to, I mean, they are actually used in that way.

in that way to chemically class straight sex offenders. Right. I mean, there are consequences to this. And I think there was no person that kind of made more sense with than Kelly or Scott Nugent, who is a biological woman who had gone through. It seemed like endless amounts of surgeries to transition to be a man. How did that story resonate with you? And how do you think that kind of represents the greater story of transgenderism that the left doesn't want to talk about?

Yeah, that was, I think, the most powerful. interview that we did, certainly sitting in the room, it was quite affecting. And also, it was also refreshing, talking to her in a certain way. The story is quite tragic, but refreshing just in the sense of, well, here's someone who will actually talk and be honest and answer questions. Because up to that point, I got nothing but talking to the so-called experts. And even a lot of the regular joke on the street, you get a lot of evasiveness, a lot of ambiguity and everything. And then you sit down with Nugent and it's just straight to the point, let's talk about it. Here's what happened. We're all open, honest. And so, which takes a lot of courage, of course, especially someone in that

world. I mean, I mean, I don't want to speak for her, but Nugent's not, I don't think it would identify as a, you know, right wing conservative or anything like that. So a lot of social consequences at all as well. And yeah, the story is just like, here's what happened to me. Here's what's involved in it. And I thought it was very powerful when she said that a couple of times, that this is this is experimental surgery. We don't really know what's involved with the drugs, the surgery. We've never done this to people, certainly on this scale, and at such young ages before ever in history. So it is all, it's like a generation of lab rats that we have. Right. This seems to be more of an American phenomenon. You obviously traveled to Africa.

and spoke with some Maasai tribes people, and they seemed completely lost that we were even having this type of discussion. Did that seem like a thing that was more like it's America only or maybe America and the West? Where did you find that this was sort of most pronounced this type of gender ideology? I think it's definitely the West.

It's certainly up in Canada. We went up to Canada too. We talked to people up there. I mean, in Canada, it's actually, it's even worse than it is in the United States. And I think that's the case in a lot of Europe also. But once you get out of, the kind of western the modern western liberal bubble and you go out to the rest of the world you find

that it's not just that they disagree with these ideas it's like it's it's in every sense literally in every other sense or you're speaking of another language they don't even have the concepts and so when we talked to the masai tribe um one of the things that we thought going there would be that would be interesting is just even even the trying to communicate these ideas through a translator to somebody else. And we found that also, that they just don't even have the words describe this. So you're kind of kind of describe it. And yeah, they, I think they were quite horrified to hear what's what's happening in the West. They also happened to think that I was, you know, they thought that I was an actual proponent of these. I was actually confused. So they were

patient about it, but they kind of, they kind of thought I was sort of a confused child. And they proceeded to, you know, educate me. But it was also really, it was interesting to hear their kind of basic insights into the nature of reality. And also for me to be put in the position of having to explain these ideas to a group of people who don't have the same shared sort of frame of reference that we do. And I think that if you want to reveal the fundamental absurdity of any belief system, one way you could do that is about trying to explain it to somebody who's never heard of it before. And so we certainly noticed that.

Mm-hmm. It fell apart. One of the things that kind of horrified me in this was when you talked about Dr. Kinsey and Dr. Money, this idea that the scientists who, I mean, committed horrible crimes against children. It seems like they don't have a lot of press on them, though. It doesn't really seem like there's that much attention to what they did. You kind of briefly attacked it in the film, like maybe why they're not as well-known, but why do you think specifically, like, these two characters were so essential to the modern gender identity? theology and transgender debate are just such an unknown, an unknown property. I think it's because some of it is just the basic fact that, unfortunately in this country, we don't talk a lot about history. I think that there's a kind of shallowness and people's understandings of a lot of things, where pretty much anything comes from. And it goes into, we spend all our time just like watching Netflix and on the internet and everything. But deeper than that, it's just that these two guys are so,

So, I mean, they're monstrous. Their, their stories are so horrifying. And in particular, the way that they were both focused on children, they were very, Albert Kinsey, especially, very explicit about wanting to sexualize children. And John Money as well. And so that's very inconvenient for the left, especially when they're spending all this time saying that the whole groomer thing is a right-wing conspiracy theory. Well, I mean, the godfathers of this movement were.

Died in the wool groomers. This is what they did to children in particular. So there's no incentive to get into the details. I mean, where are you going to hear it? The school system obviously isn't going to talk about. The school system, you know, they have gender ideology, which is from John Money, comprehensive sex ed, which is from Alfred Kinsey.

So they're teaching those things. They don't want to get into the details of where this stuff came from because that's going to shock and horrify everybody. Right. As we're going to wrap, I kind of want to talk about two things, which is where do we go from here, and then is it even possible to come back from the edge? So first of all,

one of the recurring themes of the movie is that people just deny biological reality. They just deny that it exists. Is there a possibility to get back to an idea where we have shared truth and shared reality, or are we stuck in this, Your Truth, My Truth World? I have to believe that it's possible.

I mean, if it wasn't possible, then there would be no, if it was impossible to make any progress at all in any of those issues, then there's no point even talking about it. There's no point making films about it. I do think that it's possible. But one thing, we have to start by letting everyone see how bad it's gotten,

like what the actual situation is. And that's one thing we want to achieve. That's not the only thing we want to achieve with the film, but that's one of the things for people to watch it and see, this stuff is ubiquitous. It's pervasive. It's everywhere. It's toxic.

It's dangerous and all of that. So you've got to start with that kind of confrontation if you want to make any progress. I do think that ultimately, you know, gender ideology broadly, it's beatable. It's not something that we're going to, it's not a victory that we're going to achieve in the next few days or even a few years. But it is, it's such a flimsy, hollow thing that's, and cannot withstand any scrutiny whatsoever, which means that we can beat it, but that requires us to actually kind of like stand up, look it in the face, ask some basic questions. questions of it and you watch it all fall apart.

What I found talking to people on the street especially is I didn't find as much confusion, there was some of that, but it was less confusion and more fear. People are just terrified to talk about this, which the fact that they're terrified tells you that they know the truth. That's why they're afraid. So we got to get people over that, I think. And so the more of us who talk about this and getting out in the open, I think it creates a kind of strength in numbers, I suppose.

And then I guess the final question would be, do you hope? that what I guess what do you hope that viewers will take away from this movie? The first thing is like I said that that's just to see to see the situation as it is because I think that we've been and this is especially going back this goes back years. We've been kind of as conservatives bearing our heads of the sand a little bit and telling ourselves that oh, this is all out on the fringes. It's a fad. It's a this is just crazy weird TikTok people. No, this is absolutely everywhere. So I hope that's the first thing to take away.

It's like, this is real. This is the world we live in now. But then also to take away the fact that, you know, this is a battle that can be won if we ask some questions. And here are some questions we can ask and maybe take that with you when the next time you're in a conversation about this with someone. Rather than trying to like get into an argument where you're making competing assertions, just get them talking about it a little bit. get them, try to, try to actually understand what they're saying because, you know, if you ask these questions, then maybe they'll start to understand that, oh, what they're saying doesn't really make any sense at all.

Well, that was Matt Walsh, author, podcast host, and now filmmaker with the Daily Wire. His new documentary, What Is a Woman? It's available now on DailyWire.com. Matt, very much appreciate your time. Love the movie. Thank you so much for coming. Appreciate it. Thank you.

And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you so much for joining us this week for the Daily Signal's Best of 2022 podcast series. We hope that you all enjoyed these highlights from the year. We are so excited to keep bringing you all interviews with leading voices in D.C. And across the conservative movement as we jump into 2023. We're off on Monday in celebration of New Year's Day. But we're going to be hitting the ground running on January 3rd. That's Tuesday with you all.

We're so excited for that. In the meantime, if you have never taken a moment to leave us a review or rating on Apple Podcasts, please do so before the end of the year. Every time that we receive a rating and a review, that helps us to reach more listeners. And we also just love hearing and reading your feedback. It's so helpful for us. Thank you again for listening and making us a part of your Christmas season. Happy New Year's.

Stay safe. We'll be back with you all on Tuesday, January 3rd. Happy New Year. The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Blewey and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen, Samantha Acheris, and Jillian Richards. Sound design by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visitdailySignal.com.