Autogynophilia (AGP) is a debunked pseudo-science concept that trans women are motivated to transition primarily as a sexual fetish, and Mike White confirmed on a podcast with the anti-trans conservative Andrew Sullivan that the Sam Rockwell monologue in s03e05 is autogynophilic.
Here is a clip from the podcast on Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/Fauxmoi/comments/1joh7dd/creator_of_white_lotus_mike_white_appears_on/
For more about autogynophilia, see Julia Serano's article on the topic.
(see also Julia Serano's post on the White Lotus episode before Mike White went on to confirm he meant to reference AGP)
This comes after Mike White removed a scene mentioning a non-binary character from the show after Trump won the election:
“You originally found out that her daughter was actually nonbinary, maybe trans, and going by they/them,” Coon said. “You see Laurie struggling to explain it to her friends, struggling to use they/them pronouns, struggling with the language, which was all interesting.”
“It was only a short scene, but for me, it did make the question of whether Kate voted for Trump so much more provocative and personally offensive to Laurie, considering who her child is in the world,” Coon added.
According to the actor, Trump’s re-election made series creator Mike White hesitate about including that character detail in the final cut.
“The season was written before the election. And considering the way the Trump administration has weaponized the cultural war against transgender people even more since then, when the time came to cut the episode down, Mike felt that the scene was so small and the topic so big that it wasn’t the right way to engage in that conversation,” Coon continued.
Coon also said that White handles his characters with nuance: “They’re not just one thing.”
In another article it was clarified the scene was cut due to a political "vibe shift":
“The Trump thing becomes much more offensive to Laurie because of her daughter, but this was before Trump was reelected and before this war on the trans community was escalated,” Coon said, despite the fact that Republicans have been filing anti-trans legislation at the state level for the entirety of the 2020s. The actor added, “Mike felt that it was actually too political, or too far, or too distracting.”
White responded, saying that that conversation “felt right in March of last year.”
“Now, there’s a vibe shift. I don’t think that it was radical, but that’s not the kind of attention I want,” he said. “The politics of it could overwhelm whatever ideas I’m trying to talk about. And a lot of it was about time. Every episode is bulging at 60 minutes.”
I also got the sense from this season that conservative Christianity was given a more serious place, a kind of reverence, alongside Buddhism (which is a departure from the previous two seasons). There is the relevance of the Christian choir to the husband character, but there is also a Trump supporting conservative character:
In the far-ranging conversation, the cast discussed the reveal in episode three that Leslie Bibb’s character, Kate Bohr, is a Republican. “I do think people like Meghan McCain and her community are really gratified to see a conservative person on television,” Coon said.
The characters are bad, yes, but it's a thin line between satire and representation. In conjunction with going on a conservative podcast and using anti-trans terminology, there is a sense that Mike White is at best naive and negligent, and at worst bigoted.
Regardless of Mike White's character, meanwhile the anti-trans movement is claiming White Lotus for themselves and using the show to help push AGP into the public consciousness, are attempting to use the moment to promote their junk science ideas that trans women are just fetishists.
