The Matt Walsh Show - July 07, 2025


Feminism Is A Twisted Ideology, Part 1 ｜ Proof For Your Liberal Friend


Episode Stats

Length

16 minutes

Words per Minute

194.79138

Word Count

3,296

Sentence Count

224

Misogynist Sentences

28

Hate Speech Sentences

4


Summary

A woman named Amy Alcon refuses to take her husband's name as a deal breaker, and thousands of people take offense. Is this a dealbreaker? Is it a deal-breaker? Should women be required to take their husbands' names?


Transcript

00:00:00.000 This is a good time to remember that feminism has killed far more people than the atomic bomb.
00:00:05.940 It is perhaps the most destructive force in human history.
00:00:08.600 Feminism's status as a historically destructive force is clear as day.
00:00:12.320 Once more, I find myself on the defensive side of the ball in this cancellation,
00:00:15.220 though as always, the objective is to make a play, get the turnover, put the offense on defense.
00:00:20.060 That's why I'm playing in the dime right now, six DBs on the field,
00:00:23.080 free safety, back deep, ready to grab the pick.
00:00:25.220 Kind of losing track of the point I was trying to make with this analogy.
00:00:28.220 Anyway, the point is this weekend, I was again the subject of outrage.
00:00:31.320 And this is embarrassing for me as someone who's normally quite meek and gentle and non-confrontational,
00:00:35.500 prefers to shrink away from the spotlight.
00:00:37.340 I also consider myself to be a people pleaser.
00:00:39.760 And I have other deluded ideas about my own personality, but we won't continue down that path right now.
00:00:44.080 What upset the internet this time is a discussion that began on this podcast on Friday.
00:00:48.240 I read a comment from a listener during the reading the comments segment of the show,
00:00:51.500 where he asked whether his fiance's refusal to take his name upon marriage
00:00:56.400 should be considered a red flag.
00:00:58.820 And I said that not only is it a red flag, but it's a deal breaker.
00:01:01.560 As a man, I would not marry a woman who didn't want to share my name.
00:01:05.900 I would recommend that other men draw the same line.
00:01:09.640 Now, I repeated this point on Twitter later that afternoon.
00:01:12.300 Everything that followed is therefore really the fault of the listener who brought this subject up.
00:01:16.620 I hope you're happy, sir.
00:01:17.720 Look at what you've done.
00:01:18.980 This is on you.
00:01:20.360 So over the course of the next three days, a familiar chain of events followed.
00:01:24.400 Thousands of people very upset that I would suggest that women ought to take their husband's name.
00:01:28.260 The fact that I would call this issue a deal breaker was all the more abhorrent to the outraged masses.
00:01:33.040 They've let me know that I'm a sexist, a misogynist, a bad husband, a tyrant, a bigot, a barbarian.
00:01:37.620 One guy said that my opinion on the subject is evidence that I might be murderous and actually a physical danger to my family.
00:01:43.760 Just because I want to share my name with them.
00:01:47.580 Others went a different direction saying that my perspective proves that I'm a sexually repressed virgin.
00:01:52.680 A fact that will no doubt come as a great shock to the mother of my four children.
00:01:56.880 But rather than give a general overview, I think it would be helpful in this case to read a few of these specific responses.
00:02:04.800 And this, I think, is a good representative sample.
00:02:07.400 I'm choosing only from the blue check squad, verified accounts, media people, authors, academics, and so on.
00:02:12.520 So here are a few of them.
00:02:14.000 Here's what they were saying.
00:02:16.500 Bethany says, I really don't hold much importance to my surname, a random name my granddad chose in a pub after moving to England.
00:02:23.280 My mom has a different surname now, too.
00:02:25.720 But I definitely would keep my name just to spite angry men.
00:02:30.400 Steph says, this is so toxic.
00:02:32.480 Women do not belong to men.
00:02:33.940 Therefore, it isn't a requirement for us to be branded with your surname.
00:02:37.020 It's a woman's choice.
00:02:38.300 It's rare to hear of men taking women's surnames.
00:02:40.260 So if you won't do the same for us, keep quiet.
00:02:42.440 LOL.
00:02:43.480 Rachel says, would consider it a deal breaker if any boyfriend expected me to take his name.
00:02:48.100 Women have their own identities.
00:02:49.240 Any man who expects a woman to give hers up for him without discussion clearly doesn't fully grasp that.
00:02:54.220 Heather says, damn, how do I break it to my fiancee that after 11 years we're going to have to end things because I'm not planning to change my name?
00:03:00.920 Is that something I do over text or?
00:03:03.660 And Amy says, I'm Amy Alcon.
00:03:05.480 I've always been Amy Alcon, and even if I weren't an author, et cetera, marriages may come and go.
00:03:10.700 I'm me for a lifetime, and my name reflects that.
00:03:14.560 Of course, the really funny thing about all this, and most of the rest of the responses from feminists on the subject,
00:03:19.500 is that they all seek to prove that they're strong and independent women by refusing to take their husband's names and instead keeping their father's names.
00:03:27.660 Quite literally participating in the patriarchy while pretending to dismantle it.
00:03:31.520 The other thing, almost as funny, is that each response only underscores rather than undermines the original point I was trying to make.
00:03:40.620 Bethany says that she would refuse to take her husband's name purely out of spite.
00:03:45.420 Now, fortunately for her, this probably won't ever come up.
00:03:48.160 I mean, she can actually force her cats to take whatever name she wants to give them.
00:03:51.840 But still, she confesses to being driven by spite.
00:03:55.480 Steph and Rachel see the unity of sharing a name as branding.
00:03:58.540 They would consider it a deal-breaker in the other direction if their future husband dared to request that they have a shared family name.
00:04:06.200 Heather says that she's getting married to her boyfriend after 11 years and doesn't plan to take his name.
00:04:11.020 11 years.
00:04:12.900 This is someone whose commitment issues are probably terminal at this point.
00:04:16.900 Doubly so for Amy Alcon, who says, again, marriages may come and go.
00:04:22.020 So you see in these answers, not just that cat ownership tends to make women very bitter, but also evidence of two other things.
00:04:30.940 One, that the trend to move away from sharing the husband's name is driven primarily by an ideologically fueled hatred of our cultural traditions.
00:04:40.120 And two, that it's a symptom of a society that fears commitment.
00:04:43.480 So let's talk about both of these in reverse order.
00:04:47.380 Starting with two.
00:04:49.220 Marriage, if it's anything worth doing, is the bonding of two people into one marital unit.
00:04:55.660 It is a union.
00:04:57.140 It is a decision to share your life and even in many ways to share your identity with somebody else.
00:05:02.660 It's not that you lose your identity when you get married, but rather that your identity is changed and it's bonded to this other person, fulfilled by them and by the love you share.
00:05:10.300 If this all sounds like a bunch of hocus pocus to you, that's fine, but please don't ever get married.
00:05:17.720 I mean, why would you?
00:05:18.420 If you don't believe in what I'm saying, then you don't believe in marriage.
00:05:22.120 And the worst thing you can do when you don't believe in marriage is get married.
00:05:25.900 If you do believe in marriage, then the very first thing you should do, the very first thing you should want to do, is come together under the same name.
00:05:34.840 Is this a symbolic move?
00:05:36.480 Yes, but marriage is symbolic.
00:05:38.200 It's real, but it's also symbolic.
00:05:40.960 Your name is real and also symbolic.
00:05:44.780 You know what?
00:05:45.480 So we know what sharing a name symbolizes.
00:05:47.540 It symbolizes unity, commitment, togetherness, a shared life.
00:05:51.060 What then does not sharing a name symbolize?
00:05:54.360 You can't say it symbolizes nothing.
00:05:55.940 It's going to symbolize something.
00:05:58.180 The decision to keep your own name is a symbolic gesture in its own right.
00:06:03.740 What is it symbolizing?
00:06:04.880 It symbolizes separation, detachment, disunion.
00:06:10.840 Names are important.
00:06:11.720 Everyone recognizes that at some level.
00:06:14.000 The left recognizes it, which is why they make such a big deal out of demanding that people respect the new name of a trans person after they, quote, transition.
00:06:21.780 To call somebody by their old name, their dead name, as it's called, is an egregious offense.
00:06:26.120 Why?
00:06:26.400 Because names matter.
00:06:27.280 The symbolism in a name is profound.
00:06:30.360 John Proctor in the Crucible would rather be marched to the gallows than sign his name on a false confession.
00:06:35.620 He was willing to give the false confession.
00:06:38.020 He was willing to have the whole town told that he gave it.
00:06:40.960 But he couldn't sign his name on the paper.
00:06:43.620 He chose death rather than that.
00:06:45.120 Why?
00:06:45.400 Because it's his name.
00:06:46.320 It's the name that his sons will carry down to their children and through the ages.
00:06:50.260 He couldn't stand to sully it.
00:06:51.680 In our deluded yet materialistic and utilitarian age, we don't understand things like dignity and symbolism.
00:06:58.080 We pretend not to even understand why the symbolism of a shared marital name is so crucial.
00:07:03.060 Yet the people on that side admit to the truth when they say something like marriage is come and go.
00:07:08.100 They see marriage as temporal and fleeting while names are deep and rich and permanent.
00:07:13.100 But marriage is supposed to be deep and rich and permanent also, which is why it should be formed under a shared name.
00:07:19.720 But then, why share the man's name and not the woman's?
00:07:25.000 Well, a big part of the answer for me is that I believe the man is supposed to be the head of the family.
00:07:29.900 That may be unfashionable to say, but I care about fashionable opinions about as much as I care about the outrage from childless cat ladies.
00:07:37.400 But putting that aside, here's another reason.
00:07:40.940 Because it's a significant and enduring cultural tradition.
00:07:44.140 As already established, we live in a utilitarian age and also a stupid and shallow age.
00:07:50.820 So we tend to look at tradition as totally unimportant, superfluous, or worse.
00:07:56.320 We think that it's noble to break traditions just for the sake of breaking them.
00:08:00.400 We hate traditions.
00:08:01.200 We feel oppressed by them.
00:08:02.680 Because traditions come from our ancestors.
00:08:04.960 And we think that our ancestors should have no say in how we live our lives,
00:08:08.060 even though we live in the civilization they gave us.
00:08:11.480 I reject that attitude.
00:08:13.200 I despise it, actually.
00:08:15.340 I think that if you're going to dismantle a tradition, you better have a good reason.
00:08:20.220 And the reason shouldn't be indifference or spite or half-baked notions of female empowerment.
00:08:27.060 You know, G.K. Chesterton said that there are many fences in the world that are worth tearing down.
00:08:31.820 But you damn well better understand why the fence was erected before you demolish it.
00:08:37.660 Tearing down fences on a whim because they obstruct the path you wanted to walk is foolish and arrogant
00:08:42.960 and a good way to get your face eaten by a Rottweiler.
00:08:45.980 A similar thing can be said about our cultural fences, our traditions,
00:08:50.240 which these days we dismantle with no notion as to why, no coherent reason.
00:08:54.860 And the result is that we lose the sturdy and beautiful things our ancestors gave us,
00:08:59.040 and we replace those things with nothing at all.
00:09:01.820 Sharing the husband's name is, among other things, a meaningful tradition dating back centuries.
00:09:07.200 You know, July is that perfect time when we're all thinking about vacation,
00:09:11.060 taking a break from work, soaking up for the best of summer.
00:09:13.980 Here's the thing.
00:09:14.600 While it's great to step back from the daily grind,
00:09:16.640 this isn't the time to take a break from your spiritual life.
00:09:19.680 I'll be honest, it's way too easy to let your prayer routine slide during these hot summer months.
00:09:24.040 It's exactly why I love Hallow so much.
00:09:26.260 They've got over 10,000 different prayers, meditations, and challenges
00:09:29.600 that make it really simple to build and stick with a prayer routine, even when life gets busy.
00:09:34.660 This month, they're doing something really special,
00:09:36.920 leading everyone through the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius with Fr. Timothy Gallagher.
00:09:41.960 It's all about imaginative prayer, which is pretty incredible if you've never tried it.
00:09:45.860 You'll be praying alongside some amazing voices, too.
00:09:48.020 Fr. Mike Schmitz, who hosts Bible in a Year,
00:09:50.020 and Sister Miriam James Heidland from the Abiding Together podcast.
00:09:56.640 Look, this July could be the perfect time to really dive into your prayer life
00:10:00.040 and experience that love, grace, mercy, and peace that only Jesus can bring.
00:10:04.180 Hallow has helped millions of people do exactly that
00:10:06.540 through their guided prayers and meditations, including my own family.
00:10:10.440 Right now, you can join millions of others who are praying every day on Hallow,
00:10:14.600 the number one Christian prayer app in the world.
00:10:16.480 Head to Hallow.com slash Matt Walsh and get three months completely free.
00:10:21.040 Like the media, I have not exactly been fawning over the huge box office numbers this past weekend,
00:10:26.160 but even I must admit that it's rather fascinating to see this kind of success for a film
00:10:30.240 that centers around one of the most devastating and deadly inventions in the history of the human race.
00:10:35.420 Indeed, it is not every day that audiences flock to see a movie about a weapon of mass destruction.
00:10:40.320 And of course, lots of people also went to see Oppenheimer.
00:10:43.220 But Barbie was the bigger film, and it tells the story of a vastly more destructive force.
00:10:48.820 I don't mean the Barbie doll, but rather feminism.
00:10:51.860 Not every man-made weapon of mass death is as obvious as a nuclear bomb.
00:10:55.660 Mushroom clouds are easy to comprehend and easy to see.
00:10:59.340 The significance is obvious, but the more abstract and tangible threats to human life can be far deadlier than nukes.
00:11:06.080 With that in mind, a few days ago, I tweeted this factually true statement.
00:11:09.320 Here it is, quote, This is a good time to remember that feminism has killed far more people than the atomic bomb.
00:11:14.660 It is perhaps the most destructive force in human history.
00:11:17.180 Trans ideology, its offshoot, is competing for the title.
00:11:21.180 That's what I wrote.
00:11:22.320 Predictably, there was outrage from the left.
00:11:24.300 That was always going to happen.
00:11:25.820 Of course, no matter what I said, I could tweet something really obvious like 2 plus 2 equals 4,
00:11:30.220 or something really innocuous like, I don't know, I enjoy pancakes.
00:11:33.540 And they still call me a bigot and report my account demanding that I be deplatformed.
00:11:38.040 So it was no surprise that this admittedly slightly more provocative statement meant that I would trend on the site for multiple days
00:11:45.020 as the outraged masses had a series of temper tantrums about it.
00:11:49.380 Now, I don't need to give you examples of their responses.
00:11:52.020 They're exactly what you expect.
00:11:53.560 Matt Walsh is a fascist.
00:11:54.720 He hates women.
00:11:55.320 He's a misogynist.
00:11:56.020 He's a sexist, et cetera, and so forth.
00:11:57.320 So the only mildly interesting feedback came from the so-called gender-critical feminists,
00:12:02.100 the feminists who opposed trans ideology,
00:12:04.120 who reacted to my statement as if it was some kind of deep betrayal against them.
00:12:09.560 You know, we're on the same side nominally on the trans issue,
00:12:12.360 which means that I am apparently required to pretend that feminism is good.
00:12:16.360 This is a contract that I signed, apparently, but I don't remember signing it.
00:12:20.100 We'll return to the gender-critical set in a few minutes.
00:12:22.720 Let's get first to the substance of my claim.
00:12:26.340 As far as that goes, feminism's status as a historically destructive force in human history
00:12:31.960 is clear as day.
00:12:33.760 To begin with, if you accept that unborn babies are human beings,
00:12:37.640 which obviously they are because they could be nothing else,
00:12:41.400 then we can directly blame feminism for 60 million deaths in the United States alone.
00:12:47.460 Now, when I pointed this out, Martina Navratilova,
00:12:49.720 tennis legend and outspoken feminist, responded,
00:12:52.760 a fetus is not a baby.
00:12:54.040 What a moronic thing to say.
00:12:55.300 You spout about language used by the trans lobby and then do the same,
00:12:59.180 calling embryos babies.
00:13:00.780 Hypocrite much?
00:13:02.720 Well, Martina, I guess I need to ask you an even more basic question
00:13:06.040 than the one that I ask trans activists.
00:13:08.120 And that question is, what is a human?
00:13:11.100 Can you answer that, Martina?
00:13:12.880 I bet you can't.
00:13:13.640 I guarantee you cannot come up with a coherent definition of human that excludes unborn children.
00:13:20.720 You cannot coherently define human or person in a way that allows you to be one,
00:13:27.480 but leaves unborn humans out in the cold.
00:13:29.860 The word fetus, Martina, simply means offspring.
00:13:33.280 You are pretending that there is some sort of innate definitional distinction between offspring and baby.
00:13:40.820 A distinction that you believe is so important that it gives us the moral right to destroy, quote,
00:13:45.560 fetuses en masse.
00:13:47.780 But a baby is the young offspring of two human parents.
00:13:51.780 They mean the same thing.
00:13:54.120 The only thing that the word baby does is stipulate which stage of development the offspring is currently going through.
00:14:00.040 A human in the womb is in a stage of human development.
00:14:03.140 A six-month-old baby outside the womb is in a stage of human development.
00:14:07.560 Same for teenagers.
00:14:09.080 Same for middle-aged former tennis players.
00:14:11.000 These are stages of development.
00:14:12.700 They are ages.
00:14:14.720 So if you say that it's okay to kill fetuses but not babies,
00:14:18.200 you might as well say that it's okay to kill 41-year-olds but not 42-year-olds.
00:14:21.780 The position makes no sense.
00:14:24.580 We're left with the harsh reality that abortion has killed 60 million human beings,
00:14:28.360 a death toll that can be laid squarely at the feet of feminism,
00:14:32.260 since feminism has made the defense and promotion of this atrocity into one of its core tenets.
00:14:37.360 That already puts it at least in the running for most destructive force,
00:14:42.780 competing perhaps only with communism.
00:14:45.040 But the distinction between feminism and communism is not absolute.
00:14:48.340 I mean, these are related ideologies at a minimum.
00:14:51.060 Marx and Engels called for the abolition of the nuclear family,
00:14:53.460 just as many modern feminists do.
00:14:54.840 We'll get to that in a second.
00:14:56.760 In the past century, feminists have succeeded in destroying millions of babies
00:15:02.640 and also the nuclear family to a degree that American communists could only dream of.
00:15:07.340 According to a study from Child Trends,
00:15:09.340 just 9% of children lived with single parents in the 1960s,
00:15:13.360 before the rise of modern feminism.
00:15:14.760 By 2012, that number had increased to nearly 30%.
00:15:17.920 In 2019, Pew found that the United States has the highest rate of children living in single-family homes
00:15:23.300 of any country in the world.
00:15:26.720 Divorce is a major driving factor for these numbers, of course.
00:15:29.280 From the 1960s to the 1980s, divorce rates in the U.S. more than doubled.
00:15:33.360 You'll often see studies showing that, in the last few years, divorce rates are down,
00:15:36.980 but that's only because many people aren't bothering to get married in the first place.
00:15:40.420 They've just given up on the whole institution.
00:15:42.020 Given what we're seeing, it's impossible to argue the family unit hasn't been dramatically weakened
00:15:48.820 due to the influence of feminism.
00:15:52.060 And weakened on purpose.
00:15:54.120 They've always been very clear that that's what they want to do.
00:15:58.660 Feminism set out to weaken and dismantle and destroy the nuclear family.
00:16:03.040 And then what do you know?
00:16:03.920 As feminism is ascendant, the nuclear family begins to fall apart.
00:16:08.400 And then what?
00:16:08.820 We look at that and say, oh, it must be a coincidence.
00:16:10.540 Those two things aren't related.
00:16:13.020 If you accept that the family is an essential building block of civilization,
00:16:17.120 then we're left with an ideology that has murdered enough children to fill 800 football stadiums
00:16:22.820 and eaten away at the very fabric of civilization in the process.
00:16:28.180 Feminism's defenders, even on the right, will point out that in spite of all this,
00:16:32.120 feminists gave us women's suffrage and they allowed women to take out mortgages and credit cards.
00:16:36.340 But even if I agreed that we needed feminism specifically to bring about those changes,
00:16:41.760 and I don't, they still don't begin to outweigh the cost.
00:16:46.340 If I could trade in women's suffrage to get back the 60 million humans that feminism killed,
00:16:51.280 I would do it in a heartbeat.
00:16:52.420 Any moral decent person would.