Respect Yourself! Why Sisters Should Quit Matt Walsh

Women's liberation will not be served by trying to make "common cause" with a dedicated misogynist or gleaning crumbs from his table.

Over the last several days we’ve been treated on twitter to the humiliating spectacle of women, some feminist, others concerned only with gender identity policy and law, falling over themselves to advocate the work of a profoundly misogynistic male and to implore him to platform their views. That man is Matt Walsh, Daily Wire writer and podcaster, regular Fox News contributor, and author of The Unholy Trinity: Blocking the Left’s Assault on Life, Marriage and Gender. 

As might be assumed from the book title, Walsh opposes feminism, lesbian and gay rights, and transgenderism. In some of his most notorious tweets, Walsh has opined that a major bonus of overturning Roe v Wade is that it “would cause misery and suffering among the very worst people on earth,” that it is better for a 12-year old raped by her father to undertake pregnancy rather than abort so there is proof of the crime, and that feminism “is one of the worst things to ever happen to western civilization.”

Walsh released online June 1st his film entitled What Is A Woman? in which he asks the question of various persons on the street as well as a number of healthcare professionals. (Walsh also allegedly attempted to lure some trans-identified persons into participating, under false pretenses, through a newly created LLC, the Gender Unity Project.) In the film, Walsh reifies traditional gender roles, but also highlights the absurdity of gender identity ideology and the harms to children of medical transition.

For example in one scene he asks an “affirmation therapist:”

I like scented candles. I watch Sex and the City. How do I know I’m not a woman?

She replies with a vapid smile, “That’s a great question!”

In another scene, Walsh asks a pediatrician, who claims that puberty blockers are “completely reversible,” whether this drug has been used to chemically castrate sex offenders? (It has.) She replies:

You know what? I’m not sure we should continue with this interview.

Scenes like these are what gender identity critics and some feminists celebrated and thought ought to be widely shared. Many of these same women, however,  were aggrieved that Walsh failed to include any activists representing their position, and challenged his claim that he asked feminists to participate, but they had declined. 

It is indeed insulting that Walsh behaves as though he is some pioneer critiquing gender identity ideology, and that he and his minions delight in asking, where are all the feminists on this? For more than a decade, women have been trying to get their voices heard on the problem of trans-identified males increasingly treated in law and policy as if they are actually female. In 2011, in response to a regular United Nations Commission on the Status of Women call for information about human rights violations against women, lawyers Elizabeth Hungerford and Cathy Brennan wrote a letter advising of “the proliferation of legislation [in the US] designed to protect ‘gender identity’ and ‘gender expression’ that “undermines legal protections for females” in sex-segregated spaces such as restrooms, public showers, and women-only clubs, noting that this puts women at risk of male sexual violence.

Brennan, who had already been subject to harassment by trans activists due to her activism for legislation in Maryland to protect against LGB discrimination, reports that reaction to the UN letter “was swift and painful.”

Enabled by social media, I received hundreds of death threats. At least one of the people who threatened me, Anthony Casebeer, had real life consequences for his behavior, and was forced to resign from the Kentucky Fairness Alliance for threatening to kill me.  “Renowned” transgender activist Monica Roberts also was forced to apologize to me. The trans man who I had helped obtain a settlement agreed that I should die for daring to say out loud that the circular definition of Gender Identity made no sense.

Threats of violence against women speaking up against gender identity ideology have been commonplace for many years. While scores of women have been banned from twitter for comments as mild as “it’s not possible to change your sex,” trans activists have been given free rein on social media, including twitter, to issue violent threats with impunity.

So normalized is the threat of violence, that in 2018 San Francisco Public Library thought it worthwhile to put on an exhibit celebrating symbols of violence against so-called “terfs,” a slur meant to indicate “trans exclusionary radical feminists,” that included baseball bats, axes, and a tee shirt splattered with red paint to indicate blood. Canadian writer Meghan Murphy required police protection for speaking events at the Toronto and Vancouver public libraries in 2019. Kara Dansky reports having to work closely with police to ensure safety for a Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF) library panel in Seattle in 2020. 

In addition to silencing through threats of violence, many radical feminist events have been deplatformed, forced to find alternative, sometimes secret venues, going back at least ten years, when Radfem 2012 was deplatformed from London’s Conway Hall. Countless women have been banned or suspended from social media platforms for criticizing gender identity policy, including Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and even Wordpress. In 2018 Wordpress deleted Gender Identity Watch, Gender Trender, a popular radical feminist blog, and changed wording in some posts on 4thWaveNow, a blog for parents of trans-identifying children, before deleting that site as well. In 2020 the subreddit r/GenderCritical was banned entirely.¹

Given this history, women were understandably angered by Walsh’s high-handed appropriation of the issue and wilful disregard of their own efforts. What is incomprehensible, however, is the notion that feminists should promote this film and that they should have been included. Walsh’s film, while exposing some of the problems of gender identity ideology, also affirms traditional notions of gender. Feminists generally define gender as a set of sex role stereotypes; norms, characteristics, and expected behaviors, assigned on the basis of sex, that reinforce male supremacy. Walsh holds the religious right point of view; i.e. that sex role stereotypes are desirable and should not be separated from sex, and that feminist critique of gender has given rise to lesbian and gay rights, and to gender identity ideology, all of which they oppose. So, as one tweeter critical of advocating an alliance with Walsh put it: 

In order for me to make any common cause with Walsh, we would have to have a common cause… I can have no common cause with anyone who wants to oppress women.

Women who imagine that they can effectively advance a feminist case by appearing in his film or on his podcast are seriously deluding themselves. It is a bitter irony that the president of the US chapter of the Women’s Declaration International (WDI USA), Kara Dansky, had a major hand in providing Walsh the “what is a woman” question. During the Senate hearings in March on the nomination of Ketanji Brown Jackson for Supreme court justice, Dansky goaded Republicans on the committee to ask Jackson, “What is a woman?” When Senator Marsha Blackburn obliged, Dansky excitedly reported it on twitter, where it was immediately taken up by right wing media personalities, including Matt Walsh.

Walsh tweeted:

The what is a woman movement has begun. As I've said for years, this is the question that single-handedly destroys gender ideology.

Dansky tried in vain to get him and others to hear her assertion that women had been working on the gender identity issue for years and to allow her into the conversation. 

Walsh went on to make his What is a Woman? film and continued to discount and demean women who alternately chided him for not including them - and earnestly entreated him to have them on his podcast. 

When someone whose objectives are inimical to your own has resources and power much greater than yours in the public discourse, it is folly to assume you can avail yourself of their platform to effectively assert your interests. Walsh has stated very clearly that he is anti-feminist and we can safely assume he will continue to advance that agenda. Other right-wingers also continue to make use of the What is a Woman question for anti-feminist goals. Most recently, during a Congressional hearing on the future of abortion access, Representative Dan Bishop (NC) derailed the discussion, badgering those giving testimony to tell him, What is a woman?

Feminist promotion of Walsh’s work is an especially risky move at a moment when it appears the tide may be about to turn. Twitter has eased up on its policing of women critical of gender identity ideology and has even allowed some previously banned to return. The liberal New York Times recently featured an in-depth article about the problem of trans-identifying males in women’s sports written in a way that appeals to mainstream concerns. Dansky herself has reported that female Democratic lawmakers have been quietly meeting to discuss their concerns about gender identity law and policy.

Making common cause with Walsh, or in any way appearing to be “allied” with him, risks reinforcing the image that Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), and now WDI USA, through their cooperation with Council for National Policy groups like Women’s Independent Forum, Concerned Women for America, and Alliance Defending Freedom have created; i.e. that feminists concerned about gender identity policy are merely fronting for the radical right.

There is no advantage for women’s liberation to promoting Walsh’s work or begging him for a chance at exposure on his podcast. Sisters need to muster their self-respect and move on. He’s just not that into you.

1. After threat of legal action by Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF), who then owned Gender Identity Watch, Wordpress reinstated all the websites. 4thWaveNow moved their site to prevent future interference.