Hunter Schafer is speaking out about the realities of Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order.
On February 20, the 26-year-old trans woman best known for her role in HBO’s hit drama Euphoria revealed that her passport now features a male gender classification directly following Trump’s restrictive executive order recognizing two “immutable” sexes assigned at birth.
“I don’t really post much these days, but I had a bit of a harsh reality check today, and felt like it’s important to share with whoever is listening,” she began her eight-minute TikTok story, which was later posted to her feed. According to the actor, she had to apply for a new passport after hers was stolen in Barcelona.
“I had to [replace my passport] one time before. No part of the process was different,” she explained. “I filled everything out just like I normally would. I put female. And when it was picked up today and I opened it up, they had changed the marker to male.”
While Schafer says the switch “doesn’t change really anything about me or my transness,” she wants to raise awareness about the realities transgender people are facing in Trump’s America. Here’s what we know.
Donald Trump signed a sweeping gender-based executive order on January 20.
After declaring that there are “only two genders” in his inaugural speech, Trump signed an expansive executive order that claims to restore “biological truth to the federal government.” The document declares the government only recognizes two sexes, male and female, claiming, “‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.’”
Featuring directives spanning across federal agencies, from the Department of Health and Human Services to the Department of Education, the executive order describes biological sex as “immutable,” which means unable to be changed. In her TikTok story video, Schafer specifically highlights the measure’s effecting government-issued identification documents.
Hunter Schafer shared her video on February 20.
“So I’m sure most of us remember on the first day of Trump’s presidency, he signed an executive order to declare only two genders recognized by the state: male and female assigned at birth,” she says before quoting the Bureau of Consular Affairs’ official website.
“The Bureau of Consular Affairs has frozen passport applications requesting a gender marker change or renewals or new applications with a gender marker differing from an applicant’s gender assigned at birth,” the website states.
“I do believe it is a direct result of the administration our country is currently operating under,” Schafer said of the change to her passport. “And I guess I’m just sort of scared of the way this stuff slowly gets implemented because things just sort of start happening.”
She continues, “I think, as we’ve seen in historical rises of fascism and this sort of, you know, everything that this new administration kind of represents—there’s a lot of talk, and then things start happening, and we start to normalize the circumstances we’re under. And I just feel like it’s important to share that it’s not just talk, that this is real and it’s happening, and no one, no matter their circumstance, no matter how wealthy or white or pretty or whatever, is excluded. This is real.”
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Schafer says she was “shocked” and hopes to raise awareness.
Early in her video, Schafer said her “initial reaction” to the executive order was somewhat apathetic. “My initial reaction to this, because our president is a lot of talk, was like, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’ And today I saw it on my new passport.”
Schafer explained that she first changed her gender marker when she got her driver’s license as a teenager and has not had any difficulty obtaining passports that reflect her gender identity until now. Though she’s unclear how passports are processed, Schafer suspects the Bureau of Consular Affairs may have cross-referenced her forms with her birth certificate, which she says has never been updated.
“I’m not making this post to fearmonger or to create drama or receive consolation. I don’t need it, but I do think it’s worth posting to sort of note the reality of the situation and that it is actually happening,” she tells viewers. “And I was shocked. I was shocked because I didn’t…I don’t know. I just didn’t think it was actually going to happen.”
“I want to acknowledge my privilege,” she continued, listing a number of factors such as her celebrity status, her whiteness, her thinness, and her adherence to contemporary beauty standards. “I can participate in all of that, and I pass. And it still happened,” she said.
What are the ramifications of this change?
“I also want to say I don’t give a fuck that they put an M on my passport,” Schafer declares in her video. “It doesn’t change really anything about me or my transness.”
Still, Schafer admits it “makes life a little harder” and imagines she’ll have to “out myself” to border patrol agents “much more often than I would like to or is really necessary.”
She also worries for other trans individuals who don’t share her personal circumstances.
Prior to Trump’s inauguration, the ACLU warned that Trump “would try to erase transgender people from public life entirely by using federal obscenity laws to criminalize gender nonconformity.” We are seeing this play out with Trump’s presidential decree, as well as further executive orders targeting trans people in the military, trans youth, and trans athletes.
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Schafer does want to make one thing clear: “Trans people are beautiful. We are never going to stop existing. I’m never going to stop being trans.”
“A letter and a passport can’t change that, and fuck this administration,” she said in the final moments of her video. ”I don’t really have an answer on what to do about this, but I feel it was important to share. This is real.”
This article may be updated. You can watch Schafer’s video here. It’s also been shared in multiple parts on X.com.
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