I Watched What is a Woman So You Wouldn’t Have To

I’ve known about Matt Walsh’s recently released documentary What is a Woman since the beginning of the year. To be more specific, I first found out about the project on 2/10/2022 when the LGBT news website Pink News published an article talking about Matt’s attempts to trick people into appearing in his film. Still, I have remained quiet about the film, even after its trailer was released, because I wanted to see the final product before I made any judgement.

It should not surprise you to learn that What is a Woman is not a particularly interesting film. During the first half, Matt Walsh personally travels all across the country asking random people on the street if they can define what a woman is. Personally, I’ve never liked this “man on the street” style of interviews — if only because I do not accept the notion that the best way to find truth is through asking a random nudist in San Francisco Matt encountered at a coffee shop (as he does at one point) — but I will admit that they can occasionally provide entertaining results. (Penn and Teller: Bullshit commonly used these interviews to great results, whether it be through telling people that allowing snails on their face is a new form of alternative medicine or getting them to sign a petition that bans “dihydrogen monoxide.”) However, the biggest issue with these interviews is Matt is not getting any inherently ridiculous results — and even if he were, the sheer amount of times the same scenario plays out over the first half of the film causes these sections to lose any humor they might have had.

I have a question for those who enjoyed this movie: What is the appeal of watching the same scene over and over again? That is what a large chunk of the first half of the movie is — and it gets incredibly tedious. Going back to Bullshit, one of the reasons why those were commonly so funny was because they were putting a humorous twist on actual beliefs — and they didn’t drag way past the point anyone would find them funny. Matt is not putting a humorous twist on real beliefs, he’s just going on to people and asking them for definitions — which is simply not a compelling plot.

Matt does attempt to have a wider narrative, albeit one that basically just involves Matt wandering around to whatever people were fine with talking to him for ninety…