Unpacking the Transphobic, Bad-Faith Controversy Around Drew Afualo and E.R. Fightmaster’s Viral Comments

TikTok has been abuzz this week with controversy surrounding Drew Afualo, a popular social media creator and podcast host known for her feminist content. Though her clips regularly go viral, often drawing adverse reactions from misogynistic men, this most recent controversy has prompted a response from several prominent transgender creators, including Zaya Perysian, Kayla Poyer, and Selyna Brillare. In a recently resurfaced clip from an April 2, 2025 episode of her podcast The Comment Section With Drew Afualo, Afualo and her guest, nonbinary actor and musician E.R. Fightmaster, briefly discuss the different ways they believe cisgender women and trans women view womanhood. Though the full interview had been wide-ranging, focusing on Fightmaster’s acting career, the 2024 presidential election, and fighting back against TERFs online, the now-viral clip was just 40 seconds, taken out of context. “My truest thought on this is I think trans women have a more beautiful understanding of what womanhood is,” Fightmaster says.The bad-faith recirculation of the clip by right wing MAGA accounts prompted some commenters to take Fightmaster’s words as the actor saying trans women are “better than” cis women. While some called for Afualo and Fightmaster to apologize to cis women for the comments made, others picked at certain parts of their statements, and some critics used them as an excuse to be overtly transmisogynistic towards trans women in general. This led prominent trans women on TikTok to share their own takes, especially given the fact that no trans women were present for the discussion, despite receiving a great deal of the blame and vitriol for the clip online.To understand the initial controversy and subsequent response, read below. What did Drew Afualo and E.R. Fightmaster say?In the conversation leading up to the now-viral clip, originally posted in April 2025, Afualo and Fightmaster discuss their public opposition to TERFs, or trans-exclusionary radical