What Is Autogynephilia? ‘White Lotus’ Goes Where Few Have Dared

A four-minute scene from Sunday’s episode of HBO‘s buzzy series “The White Lotus” has gone so viral that viewers are now simply calling it “that scene” as they discuss its meaning online.

The show, a black-comedy anthology series created by Mike White, follows the guests and staff of the fictional White Lotus resort chain over a week-long stay. While the plot is ostensibly a murder mystery, the three seasons have been lauded for their edgy and razor-sharp satirizations of privilege, wealth and the dark underbelly of elite society.

But episode five of season three, which takes place in an idyllic Thai vacation setting, contained a scene described as both an “acting masterclass” and a brave — or ignorant, depending on one’s view — illustration of a previously verboten topic that has roiled the conversation surrounding transgender identity and trans rights for years.

The scene involves a cameo from the Oscar-winning character actor Sam Rockwell, playing “Frank,” an old friend of season regular “Rick,” played by Walton Goggins. The pair meet up in a luxe Bangkok hotel to reconnect, when Rick asks Frank what he’s been up to in his adopted home of Thailand.

Frank delves into a monologue revealing his struggles with alcoholism and sex addiction that morphs into a revelation about his arousal and fascination with being thought of as an “Asian girl,” engaging in a series of sexual encounters with men in order to embody that fantasy, while women he hires look on.

“I’d look in her eyes while some guy was f***ing me and think, I am her, and I’m f***ing me,” he says in the candid exchange that left many viewers floored.

The monologue was quickly linked to autogynephilia (AGP) by none other than Dr. Ray Blanchard, the Canadian psychologist who coined the term in the 1980s during his studies of patients seeking what were then known as sex changes.

Blanchard theorized that some trans women — those assigned male at birth — experience sexual arousal at the idea of themselves as female, positing that gender transition in these cases is driven by an erotic fixation rather than an innate gender identity or sense of being “born in the wrong body.”

The term itself is Greek, meaning “love of oneself as a woman.”

Newsweek reached out to Blanchard for comment, while HBO declined to make White available for comment for this story.

The Debate Over AGP

Discussions about AGP ignited across social media following the episode, with heated conversations still taking place, three days later, on X, TikTok and Reddit.

Search interest in the term surged on Google shortly after the scene first aired, while transgender forums overwhelmingly dismissed the concept, arguing it was a bigoted misrepresentation of their lived experiences.

“Autogynephilia is not real. Of course people want to feel good about their body to feel sexy. Also, there is no true trans woman,” one Reddit post stated. Another echoed the sentiment, calling AGP a “flawed framework” and linking to an essay by writer and biologist Julia Serano, a vocal critic of the theory.

Serano, a trans woman and author of the book Whipping Girl, argues that AGP is often used to delegitimize trans identities, reducing gender transition to an erotic impulse rather than a deeply felt need.

“Blanchard’s model is built upon a number of incorrect and unfounded assumptions, and the data he offers to support it is deeply flawed due to methodological errors and biases,” Serano writes in The Case Against Autogynephilia, published in the International Journal of Transgenderism in 2010.

In the article, she further contends that the persistence of AGP theory has contributed to the pathologization of trans women, portraying them as sexual deviants.

Blanchard, for his part, maintains that opposition to AGP is largely ideological rather than scientific. In a 2019 interview, he argued that transgenderism has been “reframed as a political problem rather than a clinical problem,” leading to a “flat denial that autogynephilia exists.”

His theory has been supported by other clinicians, including Dr. Anne Lawrence, a transgender woman who argues that AGP is its own distinct sexual orientation that differs from transgenderism —characterized by one’s “erotic and romantic attraction to the idea of themselves as female.”

Lawrence said she agrees with Blanchard’s classification of two primary types of trans women: those who are exclusively attracted to men and transition early in life, and those who experience AGP and typically transition later.

A Polarizing Topic

One issue in the ongoing debate — coming at a time when the very concept of transgender identity has been under attack from President Trump and his allies— is whether AGP applies universally or describes only a subset of trans women.

Blanchard originally suggested that most trans women who are not exclusively attracted to men exhibit AGP tendencies. Critics strongly reject this categorization, asserting that it falsely groups trans women under a single sexual motive.

Natalie Wynn, a transgender woman and popular left-wing YouTuber known as ContraPoints, has addressed the debate on her channel, emphasizing that “the biggest problem with autogynephilia as a theory is that it pathologizes something that is actually very complex and personal.”

“It’s not just sexual—it’s existential. Reducing trans women’s identities to a sexual fetish is harmful and fundamentally dishonest,” she argues.

Serano and other pro-LGBTQ organizations have also highlighted the lack of empirical evidence supporting AGP as a clinical concept. They argue that Blanchard’s studies relied on self-reported arousal patterns, which are susceptible to bias.

When reached for comment by Newsweek, Serano said in a statement: “There was a time, years ago, when one could sincerely claim that Blanchard’s theory of autogynephilia was a ‘controversial yet viable’ model, or purely a matter of ‘scientific debate.’ But that day has long since passed. Subsequent research has yielded numerous lines of evidence that, taken together, disprove the theory.”

Defenders of AGP as a legitimate medical condition argue that much of the backlash stems from a cultural resistance to openly discussing sexual motivations behind gender transition. Blanchard has said the denial of autogynephilia has “become a canon of modern trans activism,” intertwined with broader culture-war politics.

The controversy surrounding AGP reflects the broader struggle between academic theories and lived experiences. Lawrence, the clinician, says that for some trans women, AGP provides a meaningful framework for their lives:

“Changing one’s body and living as a woman offers an identity, a program of action, and a sense of purpose. Being able to fully express one’s sexual orientation, without apology or shame, gives one’s life greater meaning and authenticity, perhaps especially when that sexual orientation is atypical,” she wrote in 2023.

“Autogynephilic transsexuals want to change their bodies to resemble the females to whom they are sexually oriented. Their gender dysphoria reflects their inability to do so.”

Yet critics like Serano and Wynn insist AGP is an outdated and harmful oversimplification of a complex and deeply personal topic.

The thrusting of the debate over AGP into mainstream conversation following the recent “White Lotus” episode reflects a larger shift happening in America, where transgender rights have become a central issue in the country’s culture wars. Some pundits have even floated the idea that a backlash to trans rights — captured by the most viral ad of the presidential campaign — was what delivered Donald Trump to the White House at the end.