Matt Walsh Thinks He's Leading the Woman's Movement

[Delphinium20]

I've seen a lot of respected feminist posters excited about this documentary, which on its own may contain useful content. But I want to ask, why promote a misogynist just because he has the right talking points on gender ideology? Women are about to lose abortion rights in my country. Matt Walsh has said women who are pro-choice are "repulsive."

twitter.com/mattwalshblog/status/1521549440406155264?s=21&t=ItXp9--3s8_3_0S8LFNc9w

I urge you to check out this thread on Ovarit where women have documented all the work feminists have been doing already, and how Walsh ignores us. Walsh sees this GC issue not through feminist eyes, but as a way to push his own brand and claim himself leader of this issue. Please stop falling for it.

ovarit.com/o/Radfemmery/91809/matt-walsh-is-literal-proof-of-male-privilege-you-re-not-a-savior-and-many-women

I don't really get the point of this thread. Aren't you the one "promoting" Matt Walsh by starting another thread about him when there's already been a thread about his movie?

In that thread, some women said they'd watch the movie. Some women said they wouldn't. A discussion ensued. #

None of it was "promoting" his movie. It's just such a weird mentality to me, I know this is technically social media but nonetheless, people here often have conversations instead of striking poses and making pronouncements and "promoting" shit and participating in mass denunciation fests.

And by the way I agree that that Tweet is repulsive as is Walsh himself.

It's just this whole thing where people are being expected to have stances a and allegiances instead of conversations that I find very tiresome.

I completely agree OP. The man is not pro women in the slightest and personally as a feminist I can’t really get excited about much he does apparently in my name

It has been explained multiple times by multiple people on multiple threads on multiple occasions that agreement on one thing with one person like Walsh is in no way tacit approval of all of the things he says, thinks or does.

Three simple questions OP:

Matt Walsh thinks a woman is an adult human female. Do you agree with him?

Matt Walsh thinks children should not be given puberty blockers. Do you agree with him?

Matt Walsh thinks males should not be in women’s sport. Do you agree with him?

I don’t believe that Matt Walsh is doing anything in my name or represents anyone except Matt Walsh.

I will watch his piece when it comes out because I watch and read a wide range of views when I can. It helps to understand all aspects of the issue.

Would I ever ‘promote’ his video? No. Have I appreciated that he has been able to cut through the crap and ask questions because he is who he is, such as on Dr Phil… yes in some ways he is useful.

He is the equivalent of a shock jock on the radio. Sometimes he is right, many times he is wrong and horribly, horribly so. He has a different motivation to be involved in this issue and the reality is, he won’t be stopping because anyone of us on MN don’t support him.

It doesn’t mean that I ‘align’ myself with him and to suggest watching and discussing his work in this area will be me aligning with him, is the equivalent of an activist tactic.

Like Tasteful says, I’m sure Matt Walsh - someone I’d even never heard of until a couple of days ago - will be highly gratified to hear he now has 2 threads all about him.

The other thread is still current so, if you have an issue with some of the comments, why not take it up there and with the posters concerned, instead of creating a whole new thread to chastise us all?

I'm getting very suspicious with all this divide and conquer / shoot the messenger type stuff.

Too many people suddenly want to debate anything other than the actual debate.

Walsh is a conservative (small c) Catholic. He is also politically conservative.
He knows what a woman is and isn’t afraid to say it. Unlike a lot of men he also isn’t afraid to speak up.
His Catholic faith is completely at odds with a abortion- like the majority of Catholics.
He also most definitely isn’t a feminist although like GC feminists he knows a woman is an adult human female.
You may not agree with everything he believes in. Times like this need sometimes strange Allie’s and at least he’s trying to expose the erasure of women. He’s opinions/beliefs are also based on sound, philosophical and religious foundations. He can explain they whys and wherefore of what he thinks. Unlike many on the other side who say a women is anyone who thinks they are a woman.

Exactly, this whole rhetoric of hive mind thinking is infuriating.
Every thought and every opinion cannot be always the same.

This was my thinking too.

Dunno who Matt Walsh is, don’t care. Strongly disagree with the idea that we should ignore sense just because it’s spoken by someone deemed ‘unpopular’. This ain’t school. It’s a debate about women’s rights and the extent to which men should be allowed to trample on them. I will listen to sense wherever I hear it.

Women are about to lose abortion rights in my country. Matt Walsh has said women who are pro-choice are "repulsive."

Perhaps splitting hairs but the tweet says pro abortion not pro choice and if you've been following this stuff on tiktok etc I'd say there is a difference (especially the extreme liberals in the US who are just as active and vocal about getting gender ideology into kindergartens - it goes far beyond respecting other people's choices just as their TRA goes far beyond respecting other people's choices).

I'm pro choice, despite the fact I could never personally have one unless for medical reasons, and I find some of the pro abortion stuff... repulsive? Sickening? I admit it. If that makes me any less of a feminist then I'm not particularly sorry for that, I've given years to furthering the cause in other ways that align more with my beliefs (like getting young girls into well paid careers in engineering and trade apprenticeships). Shoot me.

MW probably isn't pro-choice (he's catholic and conservative as pp mentioned) but he does have the right to find abortions repulsive. Many grown adults can recognise his right to believe that (and their right to disagree) and still agree with him on another issue.

He has literally said these two quotes below (edited so MNHQ don't delete), he is a disgusting man.

If a 12 year old (retracted) by her father and the father takes her to get an abortion, the evidence of the crime will be destroyed and he will go on (retracted) his victim for years. If however the child is born, his crime will be discovered and she will be rescued from the abuse.

&

I want Roe to be overturned because abortion is an atrocity that kills millions of children. But also it is a major bonus that its overturning would cause misery and suffering among the very worst people on Earth. I will be glad for that.

The UK is not the US.

We are not just divided by a common language any more. If the US wants to carry on down this road of being anti-women and anti-abortion and pro-militia then it is so different from the UK that the OP's proposition about supposed 'aligning' becomes pointless.

Oh FFS stop policing what women can and cannot agree with. It’s tedious.

What I wonder is, why is Matt Walsh women's problem, and what are they supposed to do about him?

He's making his film and book regardless. I don't think a feminist boycott is going to be terribly successful. Feminists have enough ongoing problems getting their own messaging out without trying to block the messages of other people.

Main thing to do is to try to make sure he doesn't end up displacing our own most visible voices like Posie Parker and Kara Dansky - they're currently getting airtime in US media. But that won't be achieved by not talking about him in feminist forums. Indeed, we need to be keeping an eye on him, and shadowing him to try to make sure that people noticing this stuff because of him also have a chance of noticing feminists.

I saw Sall Grover getting his attention on Twitter the other day - this sort of thing seems worthwhile and productive - highlighting alternative feminist content.

twitter.com/salltweets/status/1525579886743547905
twitter.com/salltweets/status/1525607824901873665
twitter.com/salltweets/status/1525614102063640577

Doesn't this just show that gender ideology is a bipartisan issue? I don't know the guy, I'm not sure what sharing one view really has to do with anything?

And it’s always one way isn’t it? It’s always how agreeing with something, (like biological reality 🙄) with someone like Walsh will somehow have a negative impact on us, our politics, and our goals. Why is it us that are the easily led sheeple in this scenario? Why is no one touting the possibility that Walsh, by agreeing with us is going to be the one who has HIS mind changed on other things? Plenty of men have had their eyes opened to widespread sexism and misogyny after starting with gender ideology. It’s not beyond the realms of possibility that Walsh’s awful tweets about abortion are something he changes HIS mind on.

But no, it’s us that are the simpering fools, just waiting to be led down a dark path. Give it a rest.

You don’t see a load of conservatives hand wringing about Walsh agreeing with left wing feminists, lest he abandon his conservative positions either.

Plenty of men have had their eyes opened to widespread sexism and misogyny after starting with gender ideology.

100% this. That's a far more real path that men go down than women suddenly deciding to agree with conservatives about abortion.

Feminists should be making hay here. People talk about this being an "open goal" for conservative politicians, but it's an even more of an open goal for feminists, because it's not just a strategical arbitrary attack point, it's a vivid illustration of the need for the entire feminist movement.

Going to have to break out Jane Clare Jones again:

twitter.com/SoniaPoulton/status/1138028847138562049

"In some ways, they've done us a favour, right? Because it's like the greatest patriarchal unconcealment that you can imagine."

This polarisation is really tedious. We call out extreme trans activists for their absolutism and their constant attempts to discredit our voices because the disinformation of ‘right wing’ funding and ‘look who you are aligning with’. Yet those same people using that rhetoric never look at who they ‘align’ with because they want to take the moral high ground.

The scale of the audience that Matt Walsh has is massive. He will certainly not be changing his views on things. His success is based on being loud and opinionated. To him even arguing against him, feeds his reach.

There will always be people taking advantage that this is now a hot topic to feed their success. Look at two male YouTubers in Manchester this weekend. They are likely to have had very different motivations to the feminists or have some alignment. They were using the event to further their own voices.

As a group we can attempt to shape it. All we can do though is released statements to refute where these people are wrong and redirect. And not get into dramatic rebuttal (video or written) cycles. Stay factual and non-dramatic and stay on target.

My concern really is about this constant policing of who we should and shouldn’t listen to/follow/discuss. This constant push to be ‘pure’ and ‘look who you align with’.

Water is wet after all.

NotBadConsidering

Great optimism. That sounds like a challenge. Let’s all work on changing a shock jock’s views. I like it! (In theory… I won’t be actually be getting into his comments hoping to be heard)

You wouldn't encourage someone to read/watch him, if they are uncritical types who swallow all they are shown.
Your average person can process that people are complicated and have opinions, some of which they may agree with and some of which they won't.

Oh good another Matt Walsh thread 😁

I love the idea GC feminists should ignore him, as if that will show him, make feminists more prominent & win the day.
It's hilarious, and Monty Pythonesque.

Of course he's not a feminist, he actually anti feminism and thinks it harms women, so that's hardly a gotcha revelation!

He is extreme on anti abortion: no abortion at all, & doesn't hold back on his opinion of why.

I don't for a minute believe it's because he's a misogynist.
That's such a lame accusation and label to throw around.
As lame as transphobic.

Many feminists here hold an extreme view on abortion: no restrictions at all until birth, & don't hold back on their opinions on why.

I don't for a minute think it's because they hate babies.
That would be a stupid lame accusation.

It's actually very funny to watch this confusion between two extreme sides realise they agree on something else.
The only difference with Matt Walsh is he doesn't give a crap, isn't hand wringing, and is just getting on with doing his own thing.

Or maybe he does have a social media thread somewhere where he's worrying the feminists agree with him on Trans kids.

Mumsnet FWR favourite Tucker Carlson was in the news yesterday

A white supremacist mass shooter in Buffalo killed 10 people and wounded another three — 11 of whom were Black — and left behind a manifesto that clearly indicated he had been inspired to commit his crime by the "Great Replacement Theory”.

The accused Buffalo shooter's manifesto echoes ideas that are becoming fairly standard in conservative ideology, thanks in no small part to Fox News host Tucker Carlson.

Mr Carlson, who helms the most-watched political opinion programme in the country, has frequently pushed the Great Replacement Theory during his shows. A compilation of him touting the ideas recently went viral on social media.
^^
Adherents to the Great Replacement Theory believe that there is a concentrated effort by liberals to replace white Americans as the dominant cultural force in the country by importing people of colour and immigrants, who Mr Carlson says are "obedient" and will vote for Democrats.

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/tucker-carlson-video-great-replacement-theory-b2080264.html

The only things I think when I see threads like this are:

That's America, where religion and 'freedom' means something very different than it does here in the UK

If those people who I would normally vehemently disagree with agree that a woman is an adult human female; children should not be given puberty blockers and males should not be in women’s sport then those who disagree must be off the scale illogical!

Basically if my historical enemy is also the enemy of my new enemy then my new enemy is utterly batshit!

Correct. It is the kneejerk tribalism that brought us to where we are now.