A UN committee has refused a screening of Matt Walsh’s documentary What is a Woman because the movie does not reflect the “values” of the UN Commission on the Status of Women.
The International Youth Coalition (IYc), a program of C-Fam (publisher of the Friday Fax) received a rejection from the committee to host a side event that would screen Walsh’s movie. The committee told IYc, “Unfortunately, your request to host an event has been denied as your event does not align with NGO CSW/NY’s values and/or mandate.”
In “What is a Woman”, political commentator Walsh searches the nooks and crannies of the world of gender ideology to find answers about womanhood. He talks to doctors who perform sex change operations, even on kids as young as 16, along psychologists who fully support the idea of sex change. He interviews a professor at the University of Tennessee who threatens repeatedly to end the interview when Walsh asks him “what is truth.” Walsh interviews a nearly naked homosexual on the streets of San Francisco. Everywhere Walsh goes, he asks the question “what is a woman.” None of the advocates for transsexualism are able to answer the question.
Two months ago, the NGO Committee issued new guidelines about participation in side-events the annual meeting of UN member states at the Commission on the Status of Women, among the largest UN gatherings. The guidelines say organizations must acknowledge “sexism, racism, classism, heterosexism, transphobia, global North domination and other institutionalized forms of oppression,” and “value and revere an intersectional approach to feminism.” Pro-life and pro-family groups have long known that the powers-that-be have been annoyed at the presence of dissenting groups. At the time they were issued, pro-life and pro-family groups complained as they seemed engineered to keep out voices that may dissent from feminist orthodoxy.
The NGO Committee on the status of women is made of “parallel events,” opportunities for hundreds of NGOs to host workshops, dialogues, and information on global women’s issues for the public during the UN’s Commission on the Status of Women. Any NGO that addresses the themes of the Commission are welcome to apply. In past years, many pro-life and family organizations, including C-Fam, have hosted events, but are now unwelcomed with the new guidelines.
When the new guidelines were issued, C-Fam gathered 600 NGO’s from 119 countries to sign a petition letter urging UN Women to allow pro-life and pro-family representation: “We believe it is urgent for UN Women and the Bureau of the Commission to confront NGO/CSW about its decision to ban organizations with traditional views on the family and women’s issues and to ask them to adopt viewpoint-neutral safety guidelines that will allow them to participate in the NGO/CSW Forum as they have for over twenty years.”
In its application to host an event, IYc followed Commission guidelines to “allow for education and galvanizing around different issues and topics within the feminist and women’s movement. IYc said, “the International Youth Coalition believes it is vital that young people, especially young women, are introduced to truthful ideas on their role in society in a world where technologies, social media, and cultural forces are committed to dangerously redefining women.”
Pro-life coalition members have urged UN Women “to ensure that organizations that hold traditional views about the family and women’s issues are not discriminated against in UN debates.”
They are not holding their breath.
