Matt Walsh Talks About His New Film: What Is a Woman?

BUCK: We have special guest up next, our friend Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire and the Matt Walsh Show. He has a movie that Clay and I have both seen, and it is very much worth for you to check out: What is a Woman? A simple question that apparently gets some very interesting answers. Matt, thanks for the making the time for us.

WALSH: Hey, thanks for talking to me. Great to be here.

BUCK: So can you just lay out for everybody first what the basic premise is here ’cause Clay and I watched it. We watched the whole thing, and there’s a lot of “wow” moments. But what did you do?

WALSH: What we did is we just asked simple questions. What is a Woman? is the question and the title, but that’s really sort of the doorway that we enter into to analyze and investigate gender ideology and so there are a few things we want to find out in the film. And, first of all, like what is this thing that’s taken over society, how pervasive is it, and then does it have any actual validity?

You know, what are the claims that the gender ideology proponents are making? Are those claims actually true? And so we do that just by asking a lot of very simple questions. And we knew this is what we decided going into this project that that took us a year to finish. But we said, like, we’re not going out to yell at people and get into arguments. Instead, we’re just gonna ask basic questions. Can the proponents of this thing, can they withstand any kind of scrutiny, any questions? What we found if you watch the film you’ll see that, no. Like, the slightest scrutiny at all and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down. And was pretty incredible to witness.

CLAY: Matt, I watched it last night. And the humor obviously is the sales pitch, at least the sales pitch that I have seen. And there are a lot of really funny parts in this movie. By the way, many of them unintentionally funny based on the answers that you’re getting. And you do a great job of playing a straight guy, right? Like, almost from a comedic purpose just following up logically with questions that arise. But as the movie goes on it becomes devastating.

It becomes, particularly, I think, insightful but almost just really sad as well. I thought it was well constructed, the craft and movement of emotions. I’m sure that was intentional. But while the humor might get the play, the devastating nature of what people are doing to their own bodies and to young kids’ bodies really starts to land a lot of powerful impact as the movie progresses.

And I don’t know if you set out to tell a serious story that could substantially impact public policy, but it feels like to me that’s what you delivered. When did that come in to play, and what was your intent? You said you worked on it for a year. I’m kind of fascinated by the creative process and how you arrived at the final version of this film.

WALSH: Oh, we definitely wanted to… We want to have an impact on the culture is what all of us are doing, and that’s what we hope that this film does. And the way that it’s kind of constructed, it’s intentional because kind of on the surface, a lot of this stuff is funny on the surface because it’s absurd. And we naturally laugh at absurd things, which, by the way, is the appropriate reaction, at least at first —

CLAY: Yes.

WALSH: — to something that’s absurd, and so that’s the first part of the film. You get to the absurdity. But then you get a little deeper and you say, “Wait a second, there’s something terrible and sinister and terrible happening underneath the absurdity,” and that’s what we get into in the latter half of the film. You know, where did all this come from, where did it start and we get to the sinister origins of it and how is it affecting people today?

And then we talk to people like, you know, Scott Nugent is someone who went through a gender transition and had a horrible experience with it, opening up and talking about it. That’s another interesting thing we found in the film is that the proponents of gender ideology are very evasive, didn’t want to talk about anything. The opponents, though, on the other hand, it was a remarkable contrast.

Because for them, they were very willing to talk and very raw and open and honest. And I think that probably tells you something, you know, on an issue what you’ve got side that doesn’t want to talk about it and the other side is willing to talk about it, it probably tells you who’s on the right side of it.

BUCK: Speaking to Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire. His movie What is a Woman? is excellent. You definitely want to hear many of the exchanges. Matt, you deal with the history of this trans ideology movement later on in the film which is really interesting. Kinsey and some of the others and the depraved ideology that some of them had and some of the actions that they took.

In the beginning, there’s some more humorous exchanges with people that are activists and the Women’s March. But this — I think of all of the moments that have gotten some attention, you sat down with a professor — and they had women’s and gender studies at my college, Matt, as a major that some people actually did major in; so it’s a real thing — a professor of women and gender studies, you asked him the question and this is how it went.

BUCK: (laughing) Matt, you can’t use the T-word, buddy. Truth.

CLAY: This is a University of Tennessee professor too. It ain’t like that’s Northeast or West Coast liberal. This is a state institution in a red state.

BUCK: Yeah, Matt, were taken aback by that? Tell us about it.

WALSH: Yeah, that was… Well, first of all, calling me condescending and rude? He couldn’t tell me what a woman is, probably couldn’t define the word “projection” either because there’s a lot of that going on in my interaction with him. You know what? This is what we found from not just him but all the so-called experts that there’s a lot of… They get very angry very quickly, and it doesn’t take much probing.

It wasn’t like I’m trapping them with these really hard questions and these gotcha moments. They may become gotcha moments, but they’re gotcha moments that they create. There’s like corners that they create for themselves that they back themselves into. Not anything I’m doing. And that’s one of the things that was really interesting is some of these interviews we kind of knew going in, “Okay, they’re gonna get a little tense at a certain point.”

But most of them got tense much sooner than I thought they would because what we discovered is that the moment you ask one real question… It doesn’t even matter what the question is. Forget about, “What is a Woman?” That’s at the end. The moment you ask any kind of real question where you reveal that you actually are maybe skeptical about what they’re claiming and so it’s an authentic real question —

Like, “I’m questioning what you’re saying. Please explain it.” The moment you do that they get very offended and angry because especially when they’re talking to me as this kind of flannel-clad bumpkin. I didn’t even go to college and I’m sitting there and it’s like, “Hold on, I’m the expert, you’re supposed to just listen to me and nod your head while I tell you things and that’s how this is supposed to go,” and when you don’t play that role, they don’t take it well.

CLAY: Matt one of the areas… You know I came out of sports. I know you’re a sports fan. You’ve been on the show before talking about it. I think you’re a Ravens fan, if I’m not mistaken, which is not a good thing to be, but I’ll give you a pass on that.

WALSH: (laughing)

CLAY: I’m a Titans fan and we’ve had some big battles over the years. But the breakdown here of women’s athletics is, to me, a crucible moment that becomes almost impossible for transgender activists to defend because it goes against everything that sports stand for, which is the best man or the best woman should win, not the best man who is identifying as a woman.

And you specifically dive into the Lia Thomas case, and we’ve written about this a lot at OutKick, we’ve certainly talked about it a lot at this show. But you had to do an interview with one of these Penn swimmers. And I’m glad you tracked her down. But she had to appear anonymously with a voice alteration, which is so incredibly compelling because she was terrified to say, “Hey, I should only be swimming against women,” for what might happen to her in the future.

WALSH: And she tells us… You know, you can kind of see why she wanted to be anonymous, and that’s — another thing, by the way, talk about the anger from the expert, there was also a lot of from other people we talked to from the sort of normal people, a lot of just fear because they live in this culture and they see what will happen to them, you know, if they make statements that are just plainly true, shouldn’t even be controversial.

But she also tells us, you know, the experience that the actual women on the team had and how they were treated and how they’ve been kind of conditioned. Fear has been conditioned in them. I was really kind of shocked when she told us that they were all sat down. They sat all of the women down and said, “Hey, you know, if you have a problem with this, then you can go to counseling. You can go to therapy. If you have a problem with a man in a locker room, you don’t want to see a penis in the locker room, you’re the one with the issue and you need to go to counseling for that.” I mean, the left loves using the term gaslighting. This is… Talk about gaslighting, that’s exactly what that is. And that’s what these women went through. It’s just outrageous.

BUCK: I mean, Matt, it’s fascinating ’cause you went not just — obviously you talk to folks on the street, but you also sought out medical and I guess sociology and gender study experts, whatever, academic and medical experts on the issue. They didn’t have answers to a whole lot questions that you asked. The most, of course, formidable one seems to be, What is a Woman?, the title of Matt’s movie, which you should all see. Clay and I have both watched it in full, really enjoyed it.

But, Matt, I just want to know. Does anyone…? Some things are said in the movie that just seems like, how could this even be possible? For example, one of the people you interview speaks I think, you know, with real honesty about how there are no long-term studies that look at the impact of puberty-blocking drugs as the part of a gender transition over the long-term. Does anyone challenge that? Are there claims that, “Oh, no, there actually are long-term studies that look at the medical impact of this,” never mind the psychiatric impact of it?

WALSH: No, there’s no real challenge to anything. There’s no engagement at all with what the other side is saying. There are assertions, and so we hear the assertions repeatedly in the film just like we’ve all heard it many times that puberty blockers are totally reversible and there are no side effects. So that’s the assertion. They’re happy to make that assertion. But then when you say, “Well, hold on, here’s the issue with the studies,” and you present actual evidence, then they just…

They either change the subject or they accuse you of transphobia or a very popular movie is to then say that you’re responsible for suicides. Just even talking about this, you’re causing trans people to commit suicide; it’s emotional blackmail. But they don’t — no, they don’t engage with it because they can’t. This is just a fact of the matter that we’ve never done this to kids before. Like, there’s never been a whole generation of kids, millions of them being put on these kind of drugs, physically healthy kids put on these kinds of drugs. Never happened before. So this is a generation of lab rats, of guinea pigs; that’s just the fact of the matter.

CLAY: Matt, what’s the reaction been? I saw last night you were tweeting that there was a denial of service going on. For people out there who may not be that aware of what happens on the internet, that’s basically when someone tries to flood your website to avoid you being able to distribute whatever your content is. It’s a form of aggressive censorship using technology. What has the impact been?

And has that been resolved? And do you feel like — ’cause I do — this movie is going to cross over outside of, you know, the audience that typically would consume it? I think the people like Dave Chappell and Ricky Gervais and people who have had transgender people after them for jokes are going to watch this, and it may well have that impact outside of just conservative circles. Do you get that sense? Have you gotten that indication at all yet?

WALSH: We certainly have gotten that. It’s only been out for, you know, less than a day just the reaction we’ve gotten from it has certainly indicated that. And that’s what we’re hoping for. I mean, that’s why we approached the film that way that we did. That’s why we made a film instead of just I talk about it on my show all the time but, you know, when you’re talking in conservative circles if kind of doesn’t make it beyond that so we wanted to make a piece of content, an actual film that people could engage with.

And so there’s been really tremendous reception from much of the public, but from the left it’s been kind of a microcosm of what we experienced in the film which is trying to shut down, trying to evade, trying to change the subject — and the first thing they did of course is this cyberattack to try to shut down the film, stop people from seeing it. Of course, it always backfires because we still have the film.

You know, our team has tamped down that attack and the film exists on the website. Anyone can go right now and watch it. So all they’ve done is really draw more attention, it caused a little bit of havoc on premiere at night. They just brought more attention to the film. So, ultimately, I think it backfires. But — and we’re expecting — looking. I don’t know what else the left is gonna do. I think we know that this kind of like the sacred cow and when you — it’s treacherous waters to wade into; so I don’t know what other tricks they might have up their sleeves to punish us for doing this, but whatever it is it’s worth it, as far as I’m concerned.

CLAY: Matt, good work. It’s a fantastic movie. I think people out there who are listening to us right now should go check it out. You can go to DailyWire.com and track it down. I also think, by the way, I saw you tweet the number of subscribers. All-time high. So people are obviously sharing and talking about this film in a substantial way.

WALSH: Yeah, and I really appreciate all the kind things you guys said about the film. Really appreciate it.

CLAY: Good work. He’s Matt Walsh. Go follow that movie, check it out. I guarantee you you’re gonna enjoy it. Buck and I have both seen it, What is a Woman?