Matt Walsh — Conservative political and social commentator at The Daily Wire, Catholic author, and creator of the documentary What Is a Woman?
The gist
Matt Walsh joins Joe Rogan to discuss his documentary What Is a Woman?, which probes the incoherence he sees in modern gender ideology by getting advocates, doctors, and ordinary people to define the word woman. They cover transgender medicine on minors, puberty blockers, detransitioners, profit and ideological incentives in the medical field, and the social-contagion theory of rising trans identification. Walsh argues institutions rather than the public have been captured, while the numbers favor the opposite view. The conversation also touches free speech, social media censorship, and Donald Trump as a turning point. It closes with an extended, civil but unresolved debate over whether marriage is fundamentally a procreative man-woman union and how that bears on gay marriage and divorce.
Big reveals
- Congressman Mark Takano walked out mid-interview when Walsh asked how to balance competing claims over women's restrooms and locker rooms.
- Walsh says Lupron, used as a puberty blocker on children, was originally a prostate-cancer drug also used to chemically castrate sex offenders.
- Walsh claims Vanderbilt Hospital announced a pause on gender surgeries for minors after his Libs of TikTok-style reporting on it.
- At a Nashville rally, 18-year-old detransitioner Chloe Cole, who had a double mastectomy at 16, was screamed at and called a fascist by counter-protesters.
- To test claims of cross-cultural precedent, Walsh took the film to a traditional African tribe who had never encountered the ideas.
- Walsh says WPATH presented a eunuch identity, wanting genitals amputated without identifying as female, as a valid gender identity.
- The Daily Wire gained 300,000 subscribers in a couple of weeks from the film, a 50% jump over the 600,000 gained in the prior five years.
Things worth remembering
- Walsh traces transgender issues exploding into the mainstream to Bruce Jenner becoming Caitlyn Jenner.
- He attributes the invention of the phrase gender identity to Kinsey and John Money in the mid-20th century.
- He links a New Jersey prison gender self-ID policy to George Soros's Open Society Foundations.
- Walsh claims Oregon allows prescribing testosterone to girls as young as 15 without parental consent.
- He says the term two-spirit was coined in 1990 by a gay activist, not an ancient Native American tradition.
- Walsh started in small-market radio for about eight years, then blogging, then Glenn Beck's The Blaze, before The Daily Wire.
- Walsh is 36, grew up Catholic outside Baltimore with five siblings, and does not send his own kids to public school.
- He defines a woman as someone who by her nature can conceive and bear children, applying the same logic to defining marriage.
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What Is a Woman?
Matt Walsh
“I think it's one of the most eye opening things that's ever been done on this whole gender confusion thing that we're going through right now” — Joe Rogan 00:00:33Find it on Amazon
The Unholy Trinity
Matt Walsh
“I wrote a book uh back in I don't know it's like 2016 called the Unholy Trinity about their three-pronged assault on life marriage and gender” — Matt Walsh 01:44:09Find it on Amazon
Irreversible Damage
Abigail Shrier
“Abigail shri's written about this in her great book uh and and there that's the social contagion they pick it up from society” — Matt Walsh 00:08:19Find it on Amazon