CUA Is Asked “What Is A Woman”

Courtesy of CUA YAF

By John Maggio

On Tuesday, October 4th, author and conservative commentator for The Daily Wire, Matt Walsh, came to CUA to speak on his new documentary titled “What Is A Woman?”. The documentary displays Walsh asking “What is a woman” to different  people, including a gender-affirming therapist, a surgeon specializing in gender reassignment surgery, and conservative author and professor Dr. Jordan Peterson, all in an effort to get their answer to what he believes to be an increasingly polarized and unanswerable question.

CUA’s Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) is a chapter of Young America’s Foundation, and they invited Walsh to speak on campus. The event was split into three parts, with a showing of Walsh’s documentary being first, starting at 4:30 p.m. At 7:00 p.m., Walsh started his lecture inside the Pryz Great Room to about 750 listeners in the room. After the speech was an open mic Q&A portion for the audience. The entire lecture and Q&A was live streamed and posted to YouTube by Young America’s Foundation’s YouTube channel.

Walsh spoke about his film and the importance of the topic of the film: gender ideology. Walsh claimed that the people pushing these ideas about gender are more widespread than just what he considers a fringe group of “gender-study professors and weirdos on TikTok” . These “half-baked” ideas include that “gender is fluid”, that “sex is  not binary”of men and women anymore, that “transgenderism is a valid and healthy state of being”, and that there is an “infinite number of valid identities”. Walsh claims that any random man on the street will believe ideas such as those. The reason for that is because “the most powerful institutions” such as the medical, pharmaceutical, and educational fields all have become “fully enthralled” with these beliefs.

Walsh argues that these changes to the traditional concepts of gender are shaped by the ideas of many in the 20th century, namely the works of American biologist Alfred Kinsey and New Zealander psychologist John Money. The ultimate goal of this gender ideology is to “undermine, destroy, and erase truth itself” Walsh says. Leftism, to him, is to create a world without a “universal truth”, where “language, institution, science, and ever [DNA]” is to be changed to fit one’s truth. Walsh calls this ideology “the greatest evil the world has ever seen”.

 CatholicU College Democrats and other liberal organizations on campus declined to comment on the event. In the promotion for their general body meeting, which had previously been planned for the same night as the event, CUA Dems said that despite events like these, they hope to make the Catholic campus “a safe place for all communities of marginalization, especially the LGBTQ+ community” and stated that transphobia is not allowed at their meeting. The CUA Progressive Student Union (CUAPSU) released a statement, saying that they are “not surprised” that YAF continues to create a culture on campus that “promotes division over unity, discrimination over inclusivity, and fear over hope” by having Matt Walsh speak on campus. CUAllies, a LGBTQIA+/ally group that is not recognized by the university, had no comment on the event.

One attendant, Carmela Valdez of the Class of 2026, said that it is “sad” that we as a society “are concerned with what others do with their bodies”. She also based her opinion on her Catholic faith. She said that it is the teachings of the Catholic Church to “respect the body”.
One moment that caught the attention of the room was during the Q&A segment. An individual named Josh stated that Walsh said that “powerful institutions are at play… to spread this parasitic ideology”, referring to the ideology of transgenderism. Josh asked if Walsh is “willing to name” the people behind these institutions, claiming that these institutions seem to have “a Cohen, a -berg, a -stein”, common surnames or ending of surnames to those of Jewish origin. Josh then asked about Walsh’s “thoughts on the Jewish influence on gender ideology”. He was quickly booed by the audience. Walsh dismissed the question. The question was asked after the start of Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish faith.