reneé rapp called being repulsed by penises "the most lesbian thing" about her. that was 14 months ago. the internet just heard it. pull up a chair.

Photo: Reneé Rapp in Paris on the Bite Me tour. Louannrno, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Alex Cooper asked a simple question, about 45 minutes into the episode: "What is the most lesbian thing about you?"

Reneé Rapp's answer, on the episode's own upload, involved her girlfriend, the musician Towa Bird, who apparently told her she was "so much gayer" than Bird is. Rapp: "Are we dead ass right now?" Bird's reasoning, as Rapp tells it, was that Rapp is "so deeply, deeply, deeply repulsed by" penises. "And it's true," Rapp said. "It makes my stomach turn." She then brought up a dance trend involving them, said "I feel assaulted just by hearing it," and closed with: "I think that's the most lesbian thing about me is it makes me viscerally upset." Cooper moved on to her music.

wait, when was this

August 2025. The episode went up 14 months ago, and the coverage at the time was about other parts of it. Then, on Sunday, an account posted the clip with a transcript, and it took off: more than 11,000 likes by Wednesday. By Tuesday Them had an explainer up, which is how you know a discourse has reached its final form.

what people are actually mad about

Almost nobody is arguing that a lesbian owes anyone attraction to anything. The objection, as Them lays it out, is to the equation: if the most lesbian thing about you is disgust at penises, then where does that leave trans women, many of whom are lesbians? Most of the critics are careful to say they don't think she is a transphobe. They think she said a careless thing, on Call Her Daddy of all places.

The defense has some force too. Them itself notes Rapp's history of speaking up for trans people, and a girlfriend bit on a podcast is not a manifesto. Plenty of the people defending her are lesbians themselves who would quite like to be allowed to say "ew" in peace.

Our read: both camps are right about the thing they care about, and the best point in the whole fight came from someone asking a different question entirely. Neither Rapp, Cooper nor Bird has commented. Somewhere a podcast producer is checking the back catalog.

the internet reacts

mostly lesbians, mostly arguing with each other, mostly not calling her a villain.

lesbian lifts @lesbianliftsif 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. 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.11,788 likes Shay 🌈🌸✨ @ShayWoulahanThe craziest part about the Renee Rapp discourse is people were calling Miley Cyrus a lesbian last week because she said, on the same podcast, that she didn’t want to look at dick. But when Renee, an open lesbian, says it it’s a problem??3,915 likes Samantha Cartwright 🏳️‍⚧️ @sambburyPeople 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".3,647 likes