# What Is a Woman? *Released June 1, 2022 on DailyWire+. Directed by Justin Folk. Written by and starring [[Matt Walsh]]. 95 minutes. The Daily Wire claimed 170 million views across platforms. Briefly made available free on Twitter/X in June 2023 with [[Elon Musk]]'s promotion.* The most commercially successful and culturally influential piece of anti-trans media in American history — a documentary that took a single question ("What is a woman?"), posed it to gender studies professors, therapists, activists, and tribal elders, and used deadpan interview technique and selective editing to frame transgender identity as ideological delusion rather than medical reality. The film did not invent political [[Transphobia]], but it provided the mass-market content product that made opposition to gender-affirming care — particularly for minors — the most energized issue on the American right between 2022 and 2024. ## The Format Walsh's approach: travel the world with a camera crew, ask various people "What is a woman?", and present their answers in a way that makes academic and clinical perspectives appear absurd. **The interview technique:** Walsh maintains a deadpan, seemingly ingenuous affect — asking simple questions, requesting definitions, following up with "but what do you mean?" The format is designed to exploit a gap between academic gender theory (which uses specialized vocabulary and rejects essentialist categories) and common-sense intuition (which operates on binary sex categories). When a gender studies professor says "a woman is anyone who identifies as a woman," Walsh's silent reaction shot is the argument. **The editing:** The film intercuts academic interviews (made to look confused, evasive, or ideologically captured) with interviews among the Maasai people in Kenya (presented as common-sense, grounded, and amused by the question) — a juxtaposition that frames Western gender theory as the product of decadent civilization rather than scientific inquiry. **The expert selection:** The film does not engage with the strongest versions of the scientific and medical arguments for transgender identity. It selects interviewees who represent the most theory-heavy, jargon-laden, and easily caricatured versions of gender studies — and then presents their responses as representative of the entire field. ## Cultural Impact The film's influence extends well beyond its viewership: **State legislation:** Between 2022 and 2025, over 30 states introduced or passed legislation restricting gender-affirming care for minors, banning transgender athletes from sports, or restricting bathroom access. Walsh's documentary did not cause this legislative wave, but it provided the cultural product that energized the base, trained the vocabulary, and made the issue legible to voters who had not previously engaged with it. **The "groomer" narrative:** The film reinforced the broader [[Groomer Narrative]] — the claim that advocacy for transgender rights, particularly for minors, constitutes grooming or child abuse. Walsh's framing of gender-affirming care as "mutilation" and "experimentation on children" became the standard conservative vocabulary for the issue. **Twitter/X amplification:** In June 2023, the Daily Wire made the film temporarily available for free on Twitter/X. Elon Musk promoted it, tweeting "Every parent should watch this." The film trended globally, generating millions of additional views and introducing it to audiences outside the DailyWire+ subscriber base. ## The Daily Wire Strategy *What Is a Woman?* was the proof-of-concept for the Daily Wire's entertainment expansion strategy. The film demonstrated that culture-war documentary content could: - Drive DailyWire+ subscriptions (the film was initially paywalled) - Generate massive social media engagement (clip virality) - Produce real-world political impact (legislative energy) - Position the Daily Wire as a cultural production company, not just a news operation The success led to additional Daily Wire documentary and entertainment investments, including Walsh's follow-up projects and the *Lady Ballers* comedy (2023). ## Medical and Scientific Response Major medical organizations — including the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Endocrine Society, and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health — have published guidelines supporting gender-affirming care as evidence-based treatment. These organizations criticized the film for misrepresenting the scientific consensus. The film's defenders argue that the "scientific consensus" is itself the product of ideological capture — that medical institutions have been pressured into endorsing gender-affirming care by activist organizations rather than by evidence. This meta-argument (the institutions can't be trusted because the institutions have been captured) is a recurring pattern across conservative media and is structurally identical to the anti-CRT, anti-DEI, and anti-climate arguments documented elsewhere in the KB. ## Analytical Framework *What Is a Woman?* matters in this KB as a case study in how conservative media produces political outcomes: 1. **Market signal:** The film's commercial success (170M+ claimed views) demonstrated that anti-trans content has massive audience demand on the right — a signal that influenced editorial decisions across conservative media. 2. **Content-to-legislation pipeline:** The film's vocabulary and framing appear directly in state legislation introduced after its release. This is the conservative media-to-policy pipeline operating at its most efficient: a streaming documentary becomes the talking points that become the bills. 3. **The Daily Wire model:** The film proved that subscription-based conservative entertainment can compete with — and politically outperform — mainstream media. It validated [[Ben Shapiro]]'s bet that the Daily Wire could become a cultural production company rather than just a commentary operation. ## See Also - [[Matt Walsh]] — The creator and star - [[Ben Shapiro]] — Daily Wire co-founder whose company produced it - [[The Daily Wire]] — The media company that distributed it - [[Groomer Narrative]] — The broader narrative framework the film reinforces