Can I offer you a different opinion?

Since this film came out it either got praised as the best thing ever or panned as the exact opposite, at least on the Internet. There is almost no in-between with this title it seems, so I would like to do exactly that.

Since this is a documentary and not an actual movie we don’t have to talk about the way it looks and is filmed and there are no actors obviously, the camera goes from the face of a person to another to show how they are dealing with the discussion, with some animated illustrations at some points. There’s some music but is just there, it might as well not be and you wouldn’t tell the difference.

Anyways with that out of the picture, let’s focus on the important. Unlike what has been written about this documentary, it is not unbiased, no documentary is. How could you say it is when the author is a well-known conservative and transphobic person that even published a book mocking transitions? And he included that in this film, and even a fragment where he explicitly calls transgender people sick freaks with mental health issues that want to corrupt children and tells them “we’re going to fight you” to their faces.

And there’s also a more subtle instance where he cuts the testimony of a humanities professor to make you think that he does not get to the point, you can even see on his face that he was getting impatient. I understand that you never use everything that a source tells you on an interview, but to cut exactly the part where, in your narrative, you show one side of the debate’s definition of the central topic you are handling?

If you can still say that this documentary is unbiased despite all these moments, then you are just as biased as it is. Walsh clearly takes a side and promotes an agenda. You could probably discuss whether or not it is a good agenda according to what you think is right or wrong, but to say that this documentary does not promote an agenda and is unbiased is simply a lie.

Another issue with it are the sources. Since Walsh wants to discuss the positions regarding gender in the States, it makes sense to go to both professionals and common people from both sides of the argument. Nothing wrong with that, but then he decides that asking people from his country might not be enough to cover the topic correctly, he decides to goes to some other places, and this is where the issues begin.

He goes to some countries in Europe, talks with like two sources and decides, this is what Europe has to say about gender. Excuse me, the whole European continent? He also goes to talk to ONE TRIBE on ONE COUNTRY in Africa and decides, this is what Africa thinks about this topic, ONE TRIBE equals Africa as a whole apparently. And don’t you love it that he deliberately goes to a far more conservative country than this own to ask about this? Why not come to a region that, for now, stands on a middle ground between progressive and conservative, like the rest of America (continent)?

Oh, the documentary also features Jordan Peterson and the author’s wife. Surely the inner circle of the maker are valid sources to trust, I wonder what they would say? Why is Ben Shapiro not in here? For the reaction video about it that they made together afterwards, that’s why.

There are also some really lame attempts at comedy where Walsh tries to annoy the people he is interviewing, and are so bad and fall so flat that they got a smile or a little chuckle out of me because of the awkwardness. Also, what a great interviewer to make his sources uncomfortable.

I did enjoy What is a Woman? In the end, in a so bad it’s good kind of way because of the failed attempts at being funny and the obvious bias, but I would never think of something as worth consuming because of how bad it is. And I do think this is a worth consuming product, despite all the things I said about it, but not for the reasons the man behind intended to.

The only actually good part of this thing that makes it worth watching are the questions, deliberately formulated from the point of view of the other side of the spectrum, even using their vocabulary, to try to make the interviewees fall for it, and using the Socratic method to make them fail in their arguments. This comes to prove that the right has pretty closed and simplistic points, while the left…don’t even have that. Every person from the left wing ideology either gets emotional quickly, can’t back up their points for more than two questions, ends up falling into circular reasoning, or all of that at once.

So, ironically, despite Walsh trying his best to show that there is no point to this debate and it is closed, the reason why I think this documentary is worth watching is because of the exact opposite, it shows that the topic needs to be more thought of and discussed from both sides, at least until they can formulate some actual arguments to back up what they say, specially the left, which this perfectly captures how bad it can be on the States.


6/10