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June 3, 2023

The Streisand effect and Matt Walsh’s ‘What Is A Woman?’

By Andrea Widburg

Last June, the Daily Wire debuted Matt Walsh’s What Is A Woman? Throughout the movie, Walsh politely asks both conservatives and leftists, especially leftists with medical degrees, “What is a woman?” The answers from the left are astonishing and revealing. Leftists boycotted the movie but, now, thanks to a really stupid move by leftists formerly employed at Twitter (who tried to block a 24-hour free window for the movie), the Streisand effect has sent the movie’s viewership into the stratosphere.

I won’t re-review What Is A Woman?, which I wrote about a year ago. The short version is that the movie is superb. Today, as the battle over so-called “transgenderism” heats up in America, the movie’s factual and cultural points are arguably more important than ever. Certainly, that’s what the Daily Wire thought, because it arranged with Twitter to have the movie screened for free over a 24-hour window at the start of the annual June slobber-fest over aberrant sexual behavior.

After Twitter agreed to let the movie be screened on its site, and right before its launch, Twitter informed the Daily Wire that the movie was “hateful conduct” because it included “misgendering.” Therefore, Twitter announced that it was restricting the movie’s visibility.

The kerfuffle ended with two high-level Twitter employees getting the boot. More importantly, having once again affirmed that Twitter is an open platform for legal content, Elon Musk then suggested that every parent should watch the film:

So far, it seems as if everyone is following Musk’s advice. Thanks to those leftist Twitter employees and the news cycle they created, the movie has received a much higher profile than it would have experienced if it had remained confined to conservative media—and if Musk hadn’t been forced to get involved, which then saw him recommend that parents view it. With all that free publicity, the Daily Wire has kept the movie free for the entire weekend, rather than the original 24-hour window beginning on June 3.

The result of all those factors is that, as of this writing, more than 130 million people have viewed at least a portion of the movie. That’s more than one-third of the total population of the United States.

What we’re witnessing is something known as the “Streisand effect,” which flowed from Barbra Streisand’s attempt to suppress a California Coastal Records Project photo of her house in Malibu. When the photo first appeared, no one really paid attention. However, once she filed suit, everyone checked it out. As Wikipedia says, “The Streisand effect is an example of psychological reactance, wherein once people are aware that some information is being kept from them, they are significantly more motivated to get and spread it.”

Barbra Streisand’s property was then and is now irrelevant. What Is A Woman?, however, is not, for it makes an important point about “transgender” madness at a time when Americans must have that point reinforced. If you couldn’t watch the movie in June 2022, when it was first released, I recommend that you seize the opportunity now. And if there are young people in your life who can be cajoled into viewing it with you, grab them and glue their eyes to the screen.

Image: Twitter screen grab (edited).

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