Why Is Everyone Talking About Renée Rapp on Call Her Daddy? The Controversy, Explained

A recirculated clip of lesbian pop star Renée Rapp has sparked a firestorm of renewed discourse on the sapphic internet. In the clip, pulled from an August 2025 interview with Alex Cooper on her megapopular podcast Call Her Daddy, the host asks Rapp to disclose “the most lesbian thing” about her. Rapp responds by referring to a conversation she says she had with her girlfriend and fellow musician Towa Bird. “Towa said this to me the other day. She was like, ‘You are so fucking gay. You are so much gayer than I am,’” she told Cooper. “And I was like, ‘Excuse me? What are you talking about? Look at you. Are we deadass right now? And she was like, ‘No, no, no. You are so much gayer than I am. You are so deeply, deeply, deeply repulsed by dick. It is insane.’” She continued, “And it’s true. I can’t even. It makes my stomach turn. It makes me sick to my stomach. I don’t understand it. I can’t get behind it. I don’t like the shape. I don’t like the fact that it’s… I hate it. It makes me deeply upset and sick to my stomach.” The original interview, posted over a year ago, did not initially elicit much discourse around this portion of Cooper and Rapp’s conversation. After the exchange was recirculated online by an X user on October 18 — via an account that frequently sows controversy by resharing inflammatory interview clips — queer and transgender people online began discussing the potentially harmful, anti-trans implications of strongly associating lesbianism with a repulsion to certain genitalia.Below, we dig into the origin of the controversy, what people are saying about Rapp’s interview clip online, and how reductive takes on genitalia and queerness can inadvertently spread transphobia and, more specifically, transmisogyny. How have people responded to the clip?The main criticism of Rapp’s comments is that it ignores the existence of trans women, many of whom are lesbians with penises. Critics of Rapp say that while