Post-Woke Pre-War

Welcome back to yet another newsletter - and another set of book announcements.

Be Not Afraid, my horror comic with Lisandro Estherren, is out in June. Pre-order it at your comic shop so that stores will stock it!

My non-fiction book DILF: Did I Leave Feminism is due out in October. You can pre-order that at all the usual places, but the most ethical option is Bookshop.org.

You are not yet ready for DC Pride.

It’s hard to sum up the mindfuck that is living through the second Trump administration, but if I were to try to wrap it all up in one cinematic moment, it would be this: RTing stories about people being illegally deported to prison camps while wondering how mad I should be about The White Lotus. 

I should probably be mad about The White Lotus. The third season of the show, which just concluded, featured a long, uncomfortable monologue about Sam Rockwell about his desire to “be a little Asian girl,” this being the climactic and supposedly most perverse chapter of his drug-fueled sex tourism in Thailand. 

It was an obviously and wildly transphobic moment; the invocation of “autogynephilia,” the gobsmacked (and immediately memetic) Walton Goggins reactions to the idea of cross-dressing, the weird conflation of transness with yellowface or Dolezalian “trans-racialism.” But, because White Lotus creator Mike White is a Queer Showrunner, and because his output is prestige-y, and because gays and/or people with media careers enjoy live-tweeting his show on Sunday nights, everyone ignored it, until — a few days before the finale — Mike White went on gay conservative and “Trans Question” questioner Andrew Sullivan’s podcast to confirm that he believes “autogynephilia” is a real thing. Or, really, to say this: 

This idea of desire, where does it come from? In the sense that, it’s very clear, for some people, that, you know, it’s, a masculine man sees in a woman this feminine thing that he doesn’t have and he’s trying to get that, you know what I, and through sex, it’s, uh, you know, we’re made into two genders, and so, there’s just, I think it’s this, we’re hardwired to want to merge those two things, and I guess, that’s, that’s kind of what, I guess, sex drive is, and when you’re attracted to the thing you already have, it always begs the question, well, what is it that you’re looking f- you know, what is the what is the thing that is outside of you, if you inhabit it, then what is that other thing that you’re looking for, and then I think there’s so many different kinds of versions, there’s so many different kinds of versions, variations of self, like, desire, whatever, and I do think that like, some of the, uh, yeah, you talk about autogynephilic, or just like — each person has their own version of this, even a straight person with a woman, a straight guy with a woman, there’s a different thing each thing, there’s a different fetish. 

Now: One compelling argument is that Mike White did not say anything transphobic here, because Mike White did not say anything here. He’s not speaking so much as he is beatboxing to John Cage’s 4’33", or using ChatGPT to turn the Insane Clown Posse song about magnets into a Woody Allen monologue. 

On the other hand: Mike White, venerated showrunner, chose of his own free will to appear on Andrew "Child Sex-Changes" Sullivan’s podcast, in a moment when trans people are under legislative attack from the Trump administration, and respond — after several weeks of online discourse wherein trans women were forced to debunk the existence of “autogynephilia,” and gender-critical Helen Lewis types wrote articles welcoming Mike White to the #resistance against autogynephilia, meaning that Mike White had every opportunity and reason to learn what autogynephilia is and figure out where he stands — to a question about autogynephilia with inarticulate babbling assent. 

So, yes: Of course it’s transphobic, Mike White. You knew that. You had every reason to know that when you did it, and if you didn’t, you definitely know now, and you’re not doing anything to beat the allegations. Carrie Coon is out here martyring herself on the cross of trans rights and making unsolicited statements about how “the Trump administration has weaponized the cultural war against transgender people,” and sure, maybe she’s doing that out of the goodness of her heart, but it’s way more likely that she did not know you were going to choose this season to come out as transphobic, and she’s trying to do some damage control to her own reputation. If Carrie Coon is throwing bricks, Mike White, you can make one statement. Although I guess you did, and it was 

and then I think there’s so many different kinds of versions, there’s so many different kinds of versions, variations of self, like, desire, whatever, and I do think that like, some of the, uh, yeah, you talk about autogynephilic, or just like — each person has their own version 

So thanks for that.