Pride Month post #12

[aadler]

After hearing about it for quite some time, I finally watched “What is a Woman” (currently viewable here).

Matt Walsh, the maker of the film and its speaker, presents it (quasi tongue-in-cheek) as a documentary, and within the film he behaves as if he’s a clueless wanderer earnestly trying to find someone who can answer the titular question: “What is a woman?” (Several times you see the same basic exchange repeated: “A woman is anybody who says they’re a woman.” “Okay, so what IS IT that they’re saying they are?”) There are essentially three classes of people shown in interviews:

1. People who follow the current trans trend, either expressly advocating it or blindly (or carefully, from fear of being ostracized if they deviate) following it. These people are pretty much united in refusing to provide any definition beyond ‘whoever says they are’, because they can dimly or clearly sense that an actual definition would be subject to question and examination that would open it to contradiction. In other words, they know what they’re saying is a lie, and they don’t dare stray into territory that would provide a rhetorical opening for the truth. At least two of them, a university instructor and an elected official, abruptly end the interview when they see their peril; the instructor gets huffy when Walsh says he’s just trying to determine what is the truth, and literally declares “truth” to be offensive.

2. Masai tribesmen, who give what are clearly, to them, simple and obvious answers to the basic question of what differentiates a woman from a man. (“A man has a penis, a woman has a vagina. A man fathers children, a woman gives birth to children.”)

3. People who oppose the current trans trend, and say explicitly that it’s bogus and harmful. This includes at least a couple of psychologists, and a female-to-male detransitioner who speaks eloquently of what she’s been through, what she still faces, and the hostility she’s subjected to by the people who used to celebrate her. (That last part is confusing to express, because this is a woman who ‘became’ a man, still looks and sorta-sounds like a man, but has accepted that she’s not a man and that the attempt to become one was not only misguided and futile, but actively damaging.)

Oh, and let’s not forget the Canadian father who was prosecuted for (and convicted of) child abuse because he said “she” in reference to his newly-trans pre-teen daughter

If you’re like me, you’ll go through phases of feeling in watching the film. The trans-yay supporters come across as silly and disingenuous, and there’s some entertainment in seeing them twist themselves into pretzels to avoid ever coming close to the truth. The Masai … well, that part is frankly embarrassing, because even though Walsh’s intent is obviously to show just how preposterous is the trans trend, presenting it to these honest, welcoming people starts to feel like an abuse of their hospitality. It’s in the last part that you find yourself getting angry, when it’s lined out how dishonest, damaging, and destructive is an ideology and set of practices that IS UTTER BULLSHIT FROM BEGINNING TO END.

It’s worth seeing, but it’s not a happy experience. Horrible harm is being done by some intensely stupid people, and they may not be evil (may not), but what they’re doing is.