This well-researched and eye-opening book by author and filmmaker Matt Walsh expands, explains, and builds on his excellent documentary, also called “What is a Woman?” Readers who have seen the film will recognize some of the characters, but will be amazed at the additional wealth of information and real life stories the book provides. Those who haven’t seen the film will want to do so after reading this alarming but informative book.

The story begins the same way Walsh began his documentary, by recounting his experiences with his camera crew on the streets of various U.S. cities asking the question, “What is a Woman?” He consistently failed to get a straight answer, no matter where he went or who he interviewed. From a man and woman in New York City he heard that “gender is fluid.” The couple confessed they didn’t know if there was “a picture-perfect way to describe a woman.” A female in Hollywood, California told Walsh a woman is “a choice, an option.”

For eight months, Walsh devoted nearly all of his waking hours in effort to find the answer to a question he thought for most of his life was common knowledge. But as he discovered in his long journey, “the world’s most credentialed experts and powerful public personalities have started telling us that men can become women and women can become men, or even that people can become something in between a man and a woman.”

Walsh’s journey led him down increasingly dark and ominous paths. He relates that “anyone with sanity and a spine can see pretty quickly that gender theory is a load of bull. But the ideology has taken hold so thoroughly and so quickly that it’s easy to assume there must be something to it. That assumption, it turns out, is wrong.”

While the same cast of characters that appeared in the film also populates the book, readers will learn more about them and meet still others. From the “real roots of gender theory,” cultivated early on by the German physician Magnus Hirschfeld, who is considered “the primogenitor of the gay rights movement,” to early sexologist Harry Benjamin, an expert in endocrinology, to the notorious Alfred Kinsey, to the lesser known but pivotal figure of John Money, who started out as a researcher at the Kinsey Institute and, according to Walsh, is “the father of what we now recognize as gender theory.” Walsh provides important details about the work of these early purveyors of sexual perversion, noting that most, if not all, experienced difficult childhoods with abusive and/or absent fathers and broken homes.

This reviewer learned a great deal from Walsh’s book. For example, transgender proponents actually cite the Bible to justify their weird presumption that male and female differences aren’t “baked into human existence.” Walsh writes that he first heard this from “gender surgeon Dr. Marci Bowers, who specializes in so-called ‘bottom surgery,’ (and no, that does not mean surgery on the buttocks).” Dr. Bowers was born a man but transitioned to a “woman.” He told Walsh that “even in biblical times there are references to individuals who are probably trans.” He cited the existence of eunuchs, claiming “there are 58 references to eunuchs [in the Bible], which are castrated males, which acts to feminize a person.”

As a Christian who is familiar with the Bible, Walsh revisited the passages Bowers cited, only to find, as he suspected, Bowers’ interpretation was wrong. Eunuchs are certainly mentioned, but most were castrated against their will and in any case had nothing to do with transgenderism. Bowers emphasized a passage in Matthew 19 where Jesus refers to eunuchs, but as theologians have determined, Jesus is referring to men choosing to become eunuchs for reasons of celibacy, which He neither condemns nor condones in the passage.

Perhaps one of the most sobering lessons for conservatives in What is a Woman? is the fact that the transgender cult is not based on science or good data or best practices, yet its purveyors are radical believers that push the agenda with religious fervor, albeit with a shocking lack of clarity. As an example, Walsh describes the influential transgender proponent Judith Butler, a graduate of Yale University who settled in as a philosopher at UC Berkeley. Butler wrote: “There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender... Identity is performatively constituted by the very ‘expressions’ that are said to be its results.” Huh?

In 1997, Butler wrote this gem: “We do things with language, produce effects with language, and we do things to language, but language is also the thing that we do. Language is a name for our doing: both ‘what’ we do (the name for the action that we characteristically perform) and that which we affect, the act and its consequences.”

While the above quotes make no sense to the average person, the transgender lobby has effectively used language to change our culture. Women who give birth are now “birthing persons.” Breast feeding is referred to as “chest feeding.” And most ominous is the contention that any refusal to acknowledge or acquiesce to a child’s (or anyone’s) suggestion that he or she is “in the wrong body” is akin to violence against that person. Even a suggestion that other factors may be in play is dismissed with scorn and derision. As Walsh observes: “It doesn’t matter why someone says he or she is transgender, only that you accept it.”

For those who refuse acceptance, the consequences can be grave. The process begins with secrecy in the schools, where teachers and administrators recruit students through various means into the transgender rabbit hole without parental knowledge. When a child “comes out” to his or her parents, they are often prevented from intervening lest the child be taken from them depending on state laws. Especially heartbreaking are the instances when one parent opposes the transition and the other is willing to allow it. In many states, the pro-transgender parent prevails and the child and the other parent lose. Walsh shows that individuals have lost their jobs and had their lives ruined because they dared to push back on the transgender agenda.

Throughout the book, Walsh intersperses the ramblings and pronouncements of the pro-transgender “experts” with factual accounts from real professionals like Dr. Miriam Grossman, “a certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist.” Grossman has researched the history of transgenderism and sex education, and is a leading voice for sanity in a world where madness reigns. In a wide-ranging discussion with Walsh, Grossman was able to provide historical, professional, and anecdotal information on the progression of the transgender cult.

The author features other real-life characters, including a young woman whose achievements in the sport of track after years of hard work were surpassed by men competing against her as “women.” And Walsh skillfully weaves the story of Scott Newgent, a woman who “transitioned to a man,” who describes the sad and painful details of her many surgeries and the side effects of her chemical transitioning, exposing the bitter reality of human attempts to thwart creation and the natural order. These first-person accounts make What is a Woman? extraordinarily interesting and absorbing.

As Walsh found out during his trip to Africa, which he chronicles in his documentary and describes in the Epilogue of his book, “the moment you step out of the mind prison socially constructed all around us, you see just how much gender ideology is a product of western privilege, luxury, and decadence. Without a society that can support the likes of professional sexologists, phalloplasty surgeons, gender studies professors, and queer affirming counselors, gender ideology would have never been invented.”

Walsh’s description of his interaction with the Massai people, who live simply and traditionally without western comforts as their ancestors have done for countless generations, is both absorbing and touching. The villagers described themselves as “happy and friendly,” yet Walsh reports that their lives are difficult and poverty-stricken. But they know the difference between male and female, and find happiness in their families, their animals, and the little else they have.

Reading What is a Woman? may provoke outrage. It may cause readers to throw up their hands in frustration that the transgender insanity has gone this far. But knowledge is power, and Walsh’s book provides invaluable knowledge and insight, which should inspire and empower all of us to fight back.

To read the entire book, go here to order!

The Education Reporter Book Review is a project of America’s Future, Inc. To find out more about America’s Future, visit AmericasFuture.net.

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