(LifeSiteNews) — The new film What a Woman Is starring Father Chad Ripperger explores the Satanic roots of feminism and promotes a return to Christian patriarchy.
The documentary film was published on December 10, 2025, on Candace Owens’ website and explores the roots of feminism while offering prescriptions for how Christian men and women ought to live according to God’s design, rejecting all forms of feminism.
The film was co-produced by Catholic author and YouTuber Timothy Gordon, known for his defense of Christian patriarchy and sharp criticism of feminism. Gordon told LifeSiteNews that the film is meant to be a sequel to Matt Walsh’s huge success film What is a Woman? that exposed the evil and absurdity of transgender ideology.
He said that feminism is a type of “functional gender dysphoria” that is “much more pervasive” and also afflicts the majority of practicing Catholics, while relatively few people are directly afflicted by actual gender dysphoria:
The primary theme of the film is that feminism has been misdefined, and once the viewer understands the proper definition of feminism, i.e., functional or behavioral gender dysphoria, one sees that it is the biggest problem in Christendom, in culture, and in politics. It’s the biggest problem and the foundation of all leftism.
The film features a clip from a 2007 interview with businessman and filmmaker Aaron Russo, in which he recalled a conversation with his friend, Nicholas (Nick) Rockefeller, about feminism and women’s liberation.
Russo said that Rockefeller told him the American family dynasty funded the women’s liberation movement in order to tax the female half of the population and to get women out of the home to break up the family, and so that children would be given over to state education at an early age in order to be indoctrinated.
“The kids start looking to the state as the family, at the school, at the officials, as their family, not to the parents teaching them,” Russo said.
One of the interviewees in the documentary film, Orthodox author and apologist Jay Dyer, stated that “there is an intimate relationship between feminism and witchcraft,” which he said is historically documented.
The narrator said of the pioneers of the first wave of feminism, which goes back to the 1848 document called the Declaration of Sentiments, “most spent their fair share of time at the séance table.”
“These women were theosophists, occultists, Satanists, atheists, and if by chance they were Christian, they were so with sufficient caveats that they professed a new, unrecognizable creed.”
Fr. Ripperger, who repeatedly appears as an interviewee throughout the documentary, explains that feminism traces its roots back to the sin of Eve in the Garden of Eden.
“When Satan presented to her [Eve] … ‘You’ll be like the gods,’ etc., there were two things that he was essentially presenting to her,” Ripperger said. “One is self-sufficiency: She can save herself or obtain this thing on her own. That gave women a desire to have self-sufficiency independently of Adam.”
“The second part of it is that it also then engendered in her a desire to control her destiny and her outcome in her own life, independent again of Adam,” he added.
In the film, Gordon mentions the “paradox of declining female happiness,” which modern scholars are perplexed by, since they expected women to get happier after advancements in “women’s liberation,” but instead, women’s happiness declined significantly after the 1950s.
The film strongly advocates for a return to traditional gender roles, with the husband providing for the family and the wife taking care of the children and not working outside the home, unless demanded by absolute necessity.
Gordon spoke to LifeSiteNews and quoted Scripture and Tradition, and specifically the Catechism of the Council of Trent (Roman Catechism) as the origin for this clear prescription.
“To train their children in the practice of virtue and to pay particular attention to their domestic concerns should also be especial objects of their attention,” The Roman Catechism states of women. “The wife should love to remain at home, unless compelled by necessity to go out; and she should never presume to leave home without her husband’s consent.”
“Again, and in this the conjugal union chiefly consists, let wives never forget that next to God they are to love their husbands, to esteem them above all others, yielding to them in all things not inconsistent with Christian piety, a willing and ready obedience.”
Some parts of the film have proved controversial, even among traditionally minded Christians. One such moment is referred to as “diapergate.” Megha Lillywhite, who is also featured in the documentary, caused a firestorm online when she sent the following post: “If a man is ever changing diapers, there is something seriously wrong with the relationship or with the order of the home. It is a sign the family has much bigger problems.”
Lillywhite’s statement caused massive backlash online, including from traditional Catholics.
However, the filmmakers used this statement to explain their view that traditional gender roles in Christian marriage are crucial and should be upheld whenever possible.
Gordon told LifeSiteNews that there could be rare exceptions where husbands are required to take over women’s tasks or vice versa, but that should only occur when necessity demands it.
“Exception makes bad law,” Gordon said. “99 percent of the time in 99 percent of the homes, men ought to be working, earning bread, and then coming home prepared with energy to do their real vocational tasks which go far beyond just earning bread,” which include praying and playing with their children.
The documentary What a Woman is can be purchased for $ 1.99 on CandaceOwens.com.