here’s mike white (creator and sole writer/director of the white lotus) coming out to dogwhistle to terfs about sam rockwell’s autogynephilia monologue and the two genders on andrew sullivan’s racist, transphobic podcast pic.twitter.com/nrYkSDRo5X
— little lord fuckleroy (@_aetheling) April 2, 2025
Director/Actor/Writer/Producer Mike White appeared on conservative commentator Andrew Sullivan’s podcast to talk about his life, identity politics in writing, being on reality tv, and White Lotus. A certain segment in which they talk about Sam Rockwell’s infamous monologue in a recent episode has come under recent online scrutiny.
Sullivan: “Tell me the origins of that idea [Sam Rockwell coming out as an autogynephiliac]”
White: “The show this season is using these Buddhist concepts to talk about identity […] This idea of desire, where does it come from? In the sense, it’s very clear for some people that a masculine man sees in a woman this feminine thing that he doesn’t have, and he’s trying to get that and through sex– You know, we’re made into two genders, and so there’s just this– I think it’s just we’re hard wired to want to merge those things. That’s kind of what I guess sex drive is. And then when you’re attracted to the thing that you already have, it always begs the question, what is it that you’re looking for? What is the thing that is outside of you? If you inhabit it, then what is that other thing you’re looking for? And then I think there’s just so many different kinds of versions, variations, of self. Desire or whatever, and I do think that some of the– you talk about autogynephilic or just– Each person has their own version of this. Even a straight guy with a woman, it’s a different thing, each thing. There’s a different fetish within the fetish- [clip ends]”
source
It’s a cleaned up transcription because he says a bunch of filler words and starts and stops a lot
