This story originally appeared on Them.
A recirculated clip of lesbian pop star Renée Rapp has sparked a firestorm of renewed discourse on the sapphic internet.
In the clip, pulled from an August 2025 interview with Alex Cooper on her megapopular podcast Call Her Daddy, the host asks Rapp to disclose “the most lesbian thing” about her. Rapp responds by referring to a conversation she says she had with her girlfriend and fellow musician Towa Bird.
“Towa said this to me the other day. She was like, ‘You are so fucking gay. You are so much gayer than I am,’” she told Cooper. “And I was like, ‘Excuse me? What are you talking about? Look at you. Are we deadass right now? And she was like, ‘No, no, no. You are so much gayer than I am. You are so deeply, deeply, deeply repulsed by dick. It is insane.’”
She continued, “And it’s true. I can’t even. It makes my stomach turn. It makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t understand it. I can’t get behind it. I don’t like the shape. I don’t like the fact that it’s… I hate it. It makes me deeply upset and sick to my stomach.”
The original interview, posted over a year ago, did not initially elicit much discourse around this portion of Cooper and Rapp’s conversation. After the exchange was recirculated online by an X user on October 18 — via an account that frequently sows controversy by resharing inflammatory interview clips — queer and transgender people online began discussing the potentially harmful, anti-trans implications of strongly associating lesbianism with a repulsion to certain genitalia.
Below, we dig into the origin of the controversy, what people are saying about Rapp’s interview clip online, and how reductive takes on genitalia and queerness can inadvertently spread transphobia and, more specifically, transmisogyny.
How have people responded to the clip?
The main criticism of Rapp’s comments is that it ignores the existence of trans women, many of whom are lesbians with penises. Critics of Rapp say that while very few people would argue that cisgender (i.e. non-transgender) lesbians — or anyone for that matter — must be open to dating people with penises, the problem lies with the rhetoric expressed in the clip. If Rapp is indeed equating being a lesbian with outward disgust for a specific type of genitalia, critics have pointed out that the mere existence of trans women is being fundamentally ignored.
“If I may: some cis lesbians do not think about the implications of the ways in which they speak about penises because a lot of them do not think about trans women,” popular content creator Lesbian Lifts wrote on X. “I’m not saying I think she’s a transphobe; I just don’t think a lot of cis people think beyond their own gender. And when a lot of cis people don’t think beyond their own gender/sexuality, they end up saying transphobic shit and/or deeply offensive shit. to trans lesbians out there: you are beautiful and valid and no less of a lesbian.”
Beyond the basics of how the comment might be used to justify transphobia within lesbian spaces, critics, like popular poster Bimbotheory, pointed out the problems that stem from defining lesbianism via disgust for specific body parts rather than as a love for women.
“Gay people expressing desire through disgust is just reproducing how cisheteronormativity teaches straight people to express having straight desire through repulsion toward homosexuality,” she wrote on X. “The natural experience of bodies you’re not attracted to is neutrality—disgust is learned! The real woman lovers out there don’t spend their time fixated on people they’re not into—they spend their time talking about how hot the women they love are!”
“People are pointing out the unintentional transmisogyny here but I’m more interested in why so many cis lesbians say some variation of ‘I’'m a lesbian because I don't like men’ and not ‘I'm a lesbian because I love women,’” Samantha Cartwright, a gender-affirming vocal coach, added on X.
Why can this kind of language promote transmisogynistic attitudes?
Rapp has historically used her platform to speak up for trans people, and has described her friend circle to this very publication as a varied group including “nonbinary people, trans friends, [and] lesbians.” There is a strong chance she was speaking casually in an environment that encourages loose discussion of hot-button topics, and inadvertently echoed a transmisogynistic dog whistle that has been wielded by TERFs for decades. That’s why it’s important, many observers say, to separate the full weight of this conversation from a single podcast clip.
“i'm so sick of this bioessentialist shit man, i know renee probably doesn't consciously mean it but this kinda ‘lesbian is when vagina and when you hate dicks’ rhetoric only serves to normalize the extreme rise in terfism lately,” one person wrote on X.
The belief that some cis lesbians are disgusted or triggered by penises has long been used by TERFs to actively exclude trans women from lesbian spaces. In fact, Michigan Womyn’s Festival, a women’s music festival established in 1976, notoriously excluded trans women from attending and later explicitly considered, but did not adopt, a “no penis policy” as a stopgap measure for allowing trans women into the event.
Frequently, when TERFs are criticized for equating disdain for penises with lesbianism, they fire back with examples of cis lesbians who have been traumatized by cis men, and therefore should not be “told” to be attracted to trans women with penises. Much of this rhetoric has sprouted up on X in relation to the resurfaced clip of Rapp. It is worth noting that the abolition of all genital preference is not a popular line of argumentation among trans women and transfeminine people; rather, this appears to be a reactionary rhetorical device that exaggerates reality. The truth is that cisgender men by and large commit the majority of sexual violence against all women — and that trans women also face high rates of abuse, harrassment, and assault.
“For some cis lesbians—especially those who have lived through sexual violence—being told that they ‘ought’ to be attracted to trans women might trigger powerful, painful feelings about being coerced into unwanted sex,” Kai Cheng Tom wrote for Xtra in 2020. “Yet it is important to note that, in reality, the vast majority of sexual violence and harassment against cis women is not perpetrated by trans women.”
More so, equating lesbianism or queerness with disdain for a specific genitalia isn’t just harmful to trans people; it ignores the material fact that trans women are hyperscrutinized for their genitalia, regardless of whether they have had bottom surgery. In the same week that old clips of Rapp have reignited this discourse, figures as notable as rapper Azealia Banks are attacking Hunter Schafer on social media after the actress opened up about having bottom surgery.
Ultimately, making sweeping comments about lesbianism that exclude trans women based on their bodies isn’t just careless; it can implicitly perpetuate harmful attitudes that villainize trans women in particular.
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