When Oscar-winner Sam Rockwell made a surprise appearance on the latest episode of the popular series The White Lotus only to deliver one of the most unhinged, brilliant monologues on television in years, it seemed like the entire internet was watching.
The season 3 episode titled "Full Moon Party," Rick (Walton Goggins) continues to seek the revenge fantasy he's had about confronting his father's murderer, when he meets up with an old friend, Frank (Rockwell).
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Rick is surprised to see that the formerly wild Frank is now a sober Buddhist, and over the next several minutes, Frank goes into deep detail explaining how he got there.
Frank explains that he moved to Thailand because he "always had a thing for Asian girls," and that when he got there, he acted "like a kid in a candy store."
However, no amount of partying and meaningless sex satisfied him, so he started wondering where his life was going.
"Why do I feel the need to f*ck all these women? What is desire? The form of this cute Asian girl, why does it have this grip on me? Because she's the opposite of me? Is she gonna complete me in some way? I realized I could f--- a million women and I'd still never be satisfied. Maybe, maybe what I really want is to be one of these Asian girls. You know?"
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After taking home a ladyboy one night and letting her top, Frank says "it got in my head that what I really wanted was to be one of these Asian girls getting f*cked by me."
So, naturally, he started dressing up in lingerie and perfume, and finding men that look like him to have sex with him.
"Are we our forms? Am I a middle aged white guy on the inside too? Or inside, could I be an Asian girl?" he asked. "I don't know. Guess I was trying to fuck my way to the answer. Then I realized I gotta stop the drugs, the girls, trying to be a girl, I got into Buddhism which is all about spirit versus form, detaching from self, getting off the never ending carousel of lust and suffering."
It was a powerful and mesmerizing speech on the danger of indulging your wildest desires and the cyclical futility of trying to satisfy unquenchable urges on your own.
When you have that many eyes watching one scene, of course people are going to interpret it in different ways. Some are celebrating the idea of Rockwell playing a trans character — after all, he did say he wanted to be a woman, right? Others have pointed out that his monologue is more reminiscent of the kind of things chasers and crossdressers say to trans women. After all, trans women don't want to be women of other races, they want to be themselves as women.
A third group has even pointed out that the character represents both, and is a depiction of the "chaser to gender dysphoric" pipeline. However, many TERFs have also latched onto the scene, claiming that it shows the true nature of "trans-identified males" and autogynephilia.
Autogynephilia is theory posited by psychologist Ray Blanchard in 1989, where he proposed that trans women fall into two distinct categories: heterosexual trans women who transition because of homosexuality, and others who transition due to "misdirected heterosexual sex drive" and a paraphilia that makes them aroused by the idea of being women.
His theory implies that it is a "male" specific phenomenon, and that cis women wouldn't be turned on by the thought of themselves as women. However, studies have shown that up to 93 percent of cis women have experienced "erotic arousal to the thought or image of oneself as a woman."
As Julia Serano said in her paper "Autogynephilia: A scientific review, feminist analysis, and alternative 'embodiment fantasies' model" in The Sociological Review, "autogynephilia theory relies on essentialist, heteronormative, and male-centric presumptions about women and LGBTQ+ people."
The theory also relies on tying trans women's gender identities to their sexual orientations. As Charles Moser said, Blanchard's Autogynephilia theory "implies that sexual orientation and gender identity are not independent concepts."
"Are all gender manifestations secondary to sexual orientation?" Moser follows up. "Are all gay men somewhat feminine and all lesbians somewhat masculine? Are all feminine heterosexual men and masculine heterosexual women denying their homosexuality?" (per "Blanchard's Autogynephilia Theory: A Critique" in Journal of Homosexuality.)
"While contemporary scientific and medical communities have largely moved on from the theory, autogynephilia has been increasingly promoted by anti-transgender activists," Serano writes.
Now, TERFs are looking to the latest White Lotus episode and proudly waving their autogynephilia flag once more.
Lisa Selin Davis, who calls herself a "gender culture war reporter," even wrote an article on UnHerd titled "Did The White Lotus challenge the trans narrative on autogynephilia?"
In it, she claims that the monologue "introduced viewers to one of the most controversial ideas in the cultural battle over all things trans: autogynephilia."
Davis argues that if only Frank had "grown up in a world that admitted autogynephilia existed" he might not have had to give up his vices, including sex, completely missing the point of the monologue.
Others online are praising the episode for explaining the whole "AGP trans identified male thing in all its fetishy addict glory," and saying that "Scenes like this mark an important cultural development that cannot be understated."
"For years making these observations got you labeled a BIGOT / TERF / PHOBE, but whether they meant for it to happen or not: 'transgenderism is a fetish' is mainstream now," said @TrvthfvTreason on X.
"The depiction of transsexual and AGP in #TheWhiteLotus #WhiteLotus Season 3 is brilliant," Lottie Lewis (@LottieHistory on X) said. "A middle aged man turned on by the thought of being a woman, getting penetrated by himself. It's a truly creepy and mesmerising scene, something mainstream TV hasn't dared to do in years."
The truth about the scene is much simpler than all of this.
Rockwell was simply playing a single fictional character in a TV show. HIs monologue doesn't represent real life trans people. His character doesn't represent real life trans people. He certainly doesn't represent a widely discredited pseudoscientific theory from the 80s.
He doesn't represent real life at all. He exists in the heightened reality of The White Lotus.
We shouldn't be too hard on the TERFs, however, media literacy has never been their strong suit. And after all, they always prefer a hypothetical trans person to a real one.
HBO's The White Lotus season 3 drops new episodes every Sunday on Max.
TERFs are totally missing the point of Sam Rockwell's White Lotus monologue
Walton Goggins and Sam Rockwell on 'The White Lotus' season 3.
Transphobes claim that the scene exposes trans women in all their "fetish-y addict glory."
Mey Rude
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.
Mey Rude is a journalist and cultural critic who has been covering queer news for a decade. The transgender, Latina lesbian lives in Los Angeles with her fiancée.