Were you startled in March 2022, when United States Supreme Court Justice nominee Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson responded to Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s request that she provide a definition of “woman” and Judge Jackson said, “I’m not a biologist”?
Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #98 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.
Senator Marsha Blackburn (R, TN) full questions to Judge Jackson was “Can you provide a definition for the word ‘woman’?” The confused chaos of contemporary America’s intellectual elite led Judge Jackson to give a wiggle room answer, actually a non-answer. Ironically, now Justice Jackson, were she asked this question today, would probably not say she’s not a biologist, not because she now can answer the question, but because the Left no longer trusts science, if it ever did.
“What is a woman?” Yes, we’ve come to this. American, or Western, culture has dipped so low in its sophisticated ignorance that we’ve talked ourselves into an intellectual cul-de-sac where one of the easiest and most obvious questions in life cannot be answered for fear of offending someone or otherwise creating a political backlash.
This is the context into which conservative commentator Matt Walsh stepped when he decided to produce and feature in his documentary, What Is a Woman? This film was released in June 2022, but I just watched it a few days ago.
Walsh’s documentary reminded me of actor Ben Stein’s 2008 film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which Stein attempted to engage intellectuals on their basic presuppositions about God, or at least an intelligence, but found that many of them could not or would not engage, and even the ones who did, eventually offered outlandish leaps of logic regarding their assumptions.
In his What Is a Woman film, Walsh travels around the United States, and also across the pond to the Maasai tribe in Africa, simply asking, “What is a woman?” This is a question he considers a defining question of our generation.
Walsh also asked, what is truth? He talks to people on the street, academics who purport to be experts in fields related to gender studies or psychology, medical and psychiatric doctors, elected politicians, transgender people and former transgender or so-called “de-transitioned” people, and counselors, most of whom disagree with his views, along with a couple of key older professionals who share Walsh’s values and concerns.
Since the film was released, predictably, liberal and left-leaning political sources have castigated Walsh and the documentary in harsh, nasty, and angry terms, accusing him of among other things, being a bigot, a hater, and a cheap provocateur. But nowhere in the documentary does Walsh attack anyone, act disrespectfully or dismissively toward them (though some of his interviewees and their supporters do this to him), or otherwise speak down to or angrily at anyone. In interviews, no matter how outrageous the person’s comments, Walsh keeps a straight and serious face.
Only near the end of the documentary, when Walsh gets a couple of minutes to speak to the Loudoun County School Board in Virginia, a district that has experienced sexual assaults on children, and a district one report called the epicenter of the parental rights movement, does Walsh speak forcefully or aggressively from a prepared text. Yet review after review calls him out for perceived bad behavior, and what is this? Walsh dares to ask questions, dares to say he believes in objective truth, dares to wonder aloud if sex surgeries on minors is indeed healthy and moral, and dares to believe those to whom he directs his questions might want to respond. Interestingly, more than one of his interviewees stopped or walked out on the interview.
To those who disagree with him, he produced a “right wing transphobic doc.” Another reviewer said, the film is “utterly devoid of curiosity or generosity. It’s fueled by anger and fear, and partisan calculation. Walsh poses like a wise man, but he’s a cyberbully.”
I don’t agree. In fact, I recommend you watch this film. It is worth the 90 minutes required, and since it is online, you can watch in segments as you have time if you need to do so. You can find it easily in your search engine, but to aid you I have posted a link to the film in the description of this podcast. (The full documentary is available at this link: https://rumble.com/v26fs5y-what-is-a-woman-full-documentary.html.)
It’s telling, I think, how Walsh is attacked, and I do mean verbally attacked in the abusive vocabulary, for exercising his free speech, not by making arguments, but simply for asking a question. Liberal and left sources decry Walsh’s question as illegitimate, disrespectful, threatening even for making people “feel unsafe,” and do not want to allow him to speak. Liberals and the left preach openness, tolerance, anything goes—unless you disagree with them. Then they become authoritarian in their demand that not simply your argument be refuted but that you be delegitimized, possibly silenced, preferably cancelled.
Several people with whom he talked, asked him, “Why do you care?” They wanted to know why he cared what a transgender person did or became, even a minor, why this should matter to him, because in their worldview, anyone should be permitted or even encouraged to do anything at any time. They see this as compassion and liberation, but this is undiagnosed anarchy. It’s what the Bible said of the days when Israel had no king, “Every man did that which was right in his own eyes,” (Judges 17:6).
Among other things, what the question, “Why do you care,” assumes is that individual behavior creates no ripple effects and in no way affects others. It assumes that people should be free to do whatever they wish, for by definition, this is “right.” It isa as Proverbs said, “Every way of a man is right in his own eyes,” (21:2).
But because people want to do something does not make it correct or good or moral. People are not islands. People who jettison personal morality affect everything about the people and culture around them.
Doing sex surgeries on children will affect their own health and well-being, their families, and their community for the rest of their lives. Promoting transgender ideology and actions is not just a matter of meeting the individual desires of a given person, because transgender behavior is fundamentally divisive and destructive to the foundational order of a free society. Why? Because society is binary and has been since creation.
But transgenders, in fact all LGBQ individuals, want what they want, so they reject God, reality, and life itself. Is this surprising? Heterosexuals who wish to sin do the same thing, reject God, reality, and sometimes life itself.
“Whether it’s the idolatry of climate, sexual politics or anything else, this estrangement from God is in keeping with the strategic goals of authoritarians. They do not wish to compete with God for the devotion of the people so it’s necessary to replace Him with something else. The result is ideological idolatry designed to estrange us from God in our personal and civic lives.”
“The ideologies of the left are about more than enacting policies that history has proved to be failures. They’re about dissolving our relationship with God in pursuit of a destructive agenda that cements power among a select group of elites at the expense of individual liberty. We need to understand this because to know and reject this American Idolatry is to reject tyranny.”
Tulsi Gabbard, former Democratic Congresswoman from Hawaii, said this about gender politics: "They are asking us to take something that is clearly not real and believe that it is real...Are we going to live in a society of common sense and reality or are we going to buy into this insanity and this fantasy?"
"We have leaders in the Democratic Party unfortunately and those in our society who are pushing this fantasy," she continued. "They are asking us to take something that is clearly not real and believe that it’s real. They're asking us to take something that is very clearly a mental illness that creates this delusion where you have people saying 'why, I’m a man in a woman’s body' and vice versa, and then doctors committing, in the case of children especially, this medical malpractice trying to turn this fantasy into reality and creating incredibly negative short and long-term consequences both physically and psychologically."
"Are we going to live in a society of common sense and reality or are we going buy into this insanity and this fantasy?" she asked rhetorically. "This is one of the reasons why I left the Democratic Party, because we have the Democratic Party today selling this fantasy and catering to it and giving credibility to this fantasy, these mental delusions all because they think it’ll give them more political power, a party that is willing to do anything, especially things that are damaging to children, all for the sake of political power should be frightening to everybody."
Matt Walsh’s question, “What is a woman?” is basic, but it opens a giant philosophic wormhole into which our culture has been drawn.
The entire sexual liberation movement, particularly as now manifested by LGBTQ+ politics with a focus on the point of the spear, transgender ideology, undermines a whole list of Judeo-Christian values that helped American culture flourish:
o Belief in a Sovereign God, as Thomas Jefferson noted in the Declaration of Independence, “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
o Belief in truth, as the Declaration of Independence began, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”
o Belief in God’s created order, including humanity, as in “So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them,” (Gen. 1:27).
o Belief that children belong to parents, that parents have authority and rights, as in “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him,” (Ps 127:3).
There’s more, but perhaps you get the picture. I know family and friends who do not like to talk about LGBTQ+ or gender issues, much less child sex trafficking, pornography, or similar perversions. I get this, and I respect it.
But I also think we are living in a time when Satan is launching a full-blown onslaught on the very foundations of families, churches, American society, and the potential for individual and religious freedom over and against tyranny. And it seems that many Christians are willingly uninformed and unaware.
Whether you agree with everything Matt Walsh, says or concludes, his What Is a Woman? documentary is worth your time. It is not a diatribe, not a right-wing screed, certainly not religious sermonizing. It just asks a question because it presumes truth exists.
It’s a question no one would have seriously asked just a decade ago. But now, the need to ask it reveals, yes, we’ve come to this.
Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com.
And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.
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