Hunter Schafer is so ethereally stunning. If I were a producer on Amazon’s The Rings of Power, I would be bending over backwards to write a new elf character just to cast her. (And if Hunter does show up in season 3 — Amazon, I’ll accept payment in mithril.) Hunter was at the Spirit Awards last Saturday as a leading performance nominee for her indie horror film Cuckoo. While walking the blue carpet, Hunter chatted with E! about some news she’d broken on TikTok the day before. In a candid eight-minute video, Hunter explained that she’d just received her reissued passport, after losing it last year and completing all the necessary paperwork. Paperwork where Hunter clearly checked off her gender as female. She was aware of Trump’s inauguration day executive order insisting that government agencies only recognize gender assigned at birth, yet also knew that Trump blusters a lot. In her own words, Hunter thought: “I’ll believe it when I see it.” Yeah, well, she saw it on her new passport, which changed her gender to male.
Hunter Schafer is finding power in her voice.
After the Euphoria star revealed that her new United States passport listed her gender as male despite holding female-marked government documents for years, she shared why she decided to speak out.
“It was a sort of spur-of-the-moment thing,” Hunter exclusively told E! News on the Film Independent Spirit Awards red carpet Feb. 22. “I’m still processing what’s happened. But in the moment, I felt like it was important to share what was going on.”
The 26-year-old, who came out as transgender in the ninth grade, shared the update in a Feb. 21 TikTok Story after receiving her new passport.
“To specify,” she added, “my gender marker was first changed in my teens when I first got my driver’s license and then my passports following — all have been female since then.”
Hunter said that when she applied for a new passport after losing her in Spain last year, she marked her gender as female on the application. However, she revealed that when it was picked up, “the marker was changed to male.”
While Hunter stressed that her TikTok video wasn’t posted to “create drama” or “receive consolation,” she believed it was “worth posting the reality of the situation.”
The Cuckoo actress’ news comes one month after President Donald Trump signed a Jan. 20 executive order requiring agencies to only recognize genders assigned at birth. A spokesperson for the State Department told E! News in a statement that “due to privacy laws and restrictions, we do not comment on specific cases.”
However, the representative added, “The Department is implementing the President’s Executive Orders and executing on administration priorities. We are only issuing U.S. passports with a male or female sex marker that matches the applicant’s biological sex as defined in the Executive Order.”
But Hunter emphasized that she doesn’t “give a f–k that they put an M on my passport.”
She asserted, “It doesn’t change really anything about me or my transness.”
I understand Hunter wanting to diffuse the Trump administration’s power to hurt her, when she says she doesn’t “give a f–k that they put an M on my passport.” But how could she not? Less than a year ago, Hunter was speaking to GQ about wanting to let her body of work and success act as her trans advocacy, more than literally speaking about it in every interview. She’s fought so hard to become who she knew she was, and now she just wants to be. She probably could’ve taken that path had things gone differently in November. But they didn’t, and I think Hunter decided to make the TikTok video — which I’m so glad she did — because she realizes that living through this administration demands visibility, if not screaming from the rafters. She said “I’ll believe when I see it,” when it came to Trump’s worst promises. Sadly, I think that also goes for a lot of Trump voters (to be clear, I’m not saying Hunter is one). Now that everyone is seeing it, the question is: what are we doing about it? To quote Jane Fonda’s barn-burning SAG speech, “This is not a rehearsal.”
Photos credit: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon, Olivier Huitel/Avalon
I am SO SORRY for the MILLIONS who are being TRAUMATIZED by the INHUMANITY of the Republican Party…(I’m used to it…as I told my Mama the other night…We have been dealing with some form of Project 2025 since Reagan so this for me isn’t traumatizing…that happened DECADES ago 😡) I tried SO HARD ALL OF MY LIFE TO STOP IT…G-D KNOWS I DID😪
The FIGHT for humanity & decency must NEVER END!
Just another way in which both candidates were not the same. I despise the way the trans community is being treated. It’s unconscionable. I look forward to seeing Hunter in more roles.
This is what Nazi’s do. They pick out groups of people to blame for the problems they perceive in society. Then they dehumanize them. You know what comes next.
Good for Hunter to make those TikToks.
I really couldn’t believe it when I first heard about it. Why would people care about things that don’t affect them — like, what kind of books they read, what goes on in other people’s lives, or what gender they are.
What’s next? Food?
These disgusting phobes really are disgusting in their own little world. Too bad they can wield so much power in the real world right now, and that things they have broken will take decades to mend.
It’s particularly enraging to see all these MAGA men claiming they are transphobic because they want to “protect women” like eff OFF. We didn’t ask for you losers to protect us from fuck all and what exactly are you protecting us from…? ……trans women in the bathroom???
The world is burning and we’re supposed to be obsessing over a harmless 1% of the population. Gah. Just so sick of our current hellscape.
They don’t care if women die of treatable pregnancy complications. They don’t care if women are sexually assaulted as long as the predator was born on U.S. soil. They don’t care . . . about women.
Yeah, and the kicker is these same folks who want to “protect” women in bathrooms are also chanting the rapey “your body, my choice” and would assault a woman in a minute, then force her to carry the pregnancy to term.
You can’t put a serial sexual assaulter in office as POTUS, endorse him filling his cabinet with other sexual assaulters, watch him fire any high-ranking women in the military and other government positions, and then claim you’re about protecting women.
“The world is burning”
Right, and Felon47’s maladministration is fanning the flames.
Kyiv is less than 900 miles by air from my hometown, meaning the actual border to Ukraine is much closer.
“due to privacy laws and restrictions, we do not comment on specific cases.”
LOL oh suddenly this shit administration cares about protecting our privacy??
GMAFB. I knew this shit was coming even 4 years ago when I was visiting my midwestern in-laws. They were so bizarrely obsessed with trans people, particularly the issue of trans women in sports. I always look to them as a sort of bellwether for the general political climate because I’m in such a bubble here in Massachusetts….
Since Roe was overturned, trans people have become the Rethuglicans’ latest cultural red meat issue and it’s just so effin sad. Suddenly you have everyone from Bill Maher to Joe Rogan condemning the mere existence of trans people. It’s so vile but again, the cruelty is always the point.
On a very superficial note, Hunter is so pretty and has a ton of screen presence. I want only good things for her and I really do hope she has an enduring career in Hollywood, regardless of what these scumbags do to punish her for being her authentic self.
Great post Kitten! Yes they targeted Trans people after their attack on Dr. Seuss fell flat and everyone tired of their war on Christmas word salads. They had been looking for a group to pick on that would rile up the base and found one. Trans people existing is a thing where you can really exploit that base’s ignorance and easily manipulate them. It cracks me up when they couch as wanting to protect women in sports – like they give a shit about women – they elected a convicted sex offender FFS.
Same, it’s all the propaganda. Anyone who consumes right wing media content is obsessed with this.
Ahhh…nothing clarifies traditional gender roles more than calling someone who looks like a woman, who has female parts, who occupies female spaces (roles, etc.) a male. THAT’s not going to confuse kids or anything.
I never understood the right-wing obsession with forcing trans women to use the men’s bathroom. You want to live in a world where someone who looks like Hunter uses the men’s bathroom? I’m pretty sure they just have no clue what trans people look like (and obviously, not all can “pass” the way Hunter can. But many can!). When are they going to realize that this isn’t something you can enforce on any level without gross privacy violations for all?
Really good points. I always thought Roe would teeter on the brink because it was such a powerful political tool, but you’re right. When Roe fell, they pivoted quickly to attacking trans people. Two steps forward and three steps back.
How is this going to work in reality? She’s not a household name or an A lister so presumably every time she goes through customs or does anything in life that requires her to present her passport, she’s going to be interrogated and accused of identity theft or similar because staff won’t know who she is or that she’s trans. But then I suppose the cruelty is the point and the hope is that subjecting people to this will get them to detransition? I imagine there’ll be a lot more TikToks coming from people who have been mistreated by airport security and other staff.
It’s a highly valid concern, after all the EO is meant to make day to day life uncomfortable and dangerous for our trans siblings.
The majority of MAGA are happy because the cruelty is the point. They also want an easy way to identify Trans people so they can send them to camps. A lot of this is influenced by Thiel, Musk and company – White people who grew up in South Africa’s oppressive system of apartheid. Apartheid loved their documents – show us your passport – it’s how oppressors kept everyone underfoot. It was all about your documents which identified your race/tribe and that determined where you should be. Add to it the nazi ideology that has wormed its way into government (think 14 flags tweeted out by Trump at 14:14)
People often forget that the nazis also targeted the LGTBQ community and the disabled. People have no clue what’s coming and when you warn them they gaslight you calling you an alarmist and all your warnings are hyperbole.
I’m scared for Hunter. I’m terrified for everyone who voted for Harris and tried to stop this.
The very small MAGA segment that are in the Find Out Phase cause they re losing their jobs, their disability, or their insulin cost went through the roof, or they are realizing they won’t have access to vaccines as measles is on the rise, and understand they’ve been taken over by oligarchs, want you you feel sorry for them and are making this all about their personal victimhood “my daughter lost her job!!! She doesn’t work for DEI” (an actual post I shit you not) The others are choosing to “not talk about politics” after they burned their country to the ground.
But have we learned that reaching across the aisle to a group that literally wants to exterminate the other group for existing or asking for equal treatment doesn’t work? Probably not.
For decades now, I’ve likened the GOP with your neighbor’s unruly German Shepard that can’t keep his nose out of everyone’s crotch. I agreed with the Harris/Walz campaign using the word “weird,” but I think we need to start calling them what they are: perverts. They are obsessed with and hyper-focused on the crotches and bedrooms of others, and that’s what perverts do. They are voyeuristic perverts, plain and simple. Every time someone makes an homophobic or anti trans comment to me, my response has been, for years, “Eww! Why are you such a pervert? Why are you so obsessed with them? That’s just gross! Get your nose out of other people’s crotches, you pervert!” It shuts them up every time. Try it. But make sure your facial expression matches the word “EWW.” Look just as disgusted as you are.
That’s a good idea 🤔
I promise you, it works! We should all be doing it.
Just went through this with my kiddo who had an X on their passport, as opposed to M or F. When we renewed, it came back M. There was no place to put anything other than M or F. Their comment to me was that it doesn’t matter what it says – the passport is their ticket out should they need it. A direct quote from them that made me laugh: “I’ll be the butchiest butch who ever butched if I need to get through passport control.” LOL!
🙂.
Your kiddo sounds awesome!
My son is trans and we specifically had his name changed, social security changed and got his learner’s permit in our state with the M marker for male earlier in 2024 because we were worried. We used all of that new paperwork to renew his passport, filling it out with his new name and the M as the gender marker and submitted all of the paperwork in person in December. Since we weren’t traveling we couldn’t rush it but I was hopeful it would get through before the new administration but wasn’t too worried because I couldn’t imagine they would pass any laws making changes to how one could have the sex marker on identification. Well, right after the inauguration my other 2 children’s new passports came but my son’s was still “processing”. Then the EOs came out and I thought they would outright deny his application, which would be fine because we could just wait it out until this menace gets kicked out in 4 years. Well they didn’t deny it, they just changed the marker to F, even though we filled it all out and signed it in front of an agent! So now it has F for his sex on the passport but his driver’s license (state issued) will be M. It’s infuriating for many reasons, specifically because my son is not “out” as trans, he just lives as a boy and so this will out him if he has to use his passport for anything in front of friends or when getting a job. It can also put him in danger if he travels somewhere that is not friendly to the LGBTQ+ community. It could put him in danger in his own country at this point. The cruelty is indeed the point.
I am so sorry for your son. This is all so disheartening.
Omg, I’m so sorry and hate that this is happening. The cruelty is indeed the point. Wish your son all the safety and happiness possible in this current administration.
It was very smart and kind of you to do the paperwork early, I’m so sorry the admin are as stupid and cruel as they are. Wishing you & your family safety & tranquility, D – you sound like an amazing parent 💚💚 if only all queer kids had a guardian in their corner like you 💚💚
This makes me furious — your son doesn’t deserve ANY of this crap, and neither does any other trans person.
I’m glad he has you in his corner.
Could anyone recommend a trans right organisation that I can donate to today? I’m in the Uk and I’m feeling really pissed off about this, but just being outraged isn’t gonna help.
Lamda Legal, GLAAD and Human Rights Campaign are all wonderful organizations working really hard for all LGBTQ+ people in the US but right now focusing hard on the trans related issues and getting lawsuits together.
Thank you!!
The Trevor Project helps LGBTQ+ individuals struggling with thoughts of suicide. The despair makes its work more necessary than ever.
https://www.thetrevorproject.org/
Y’all did you SEE HER in the vintage John Paul Gautier on Drag Race!? It was so gorgeous and she was an awesome judge.
Did she vote for Kamala? I know she criticized Biden. The fact she admited she didn’t believe Trump would do what he said he was going to do, is why we are in the mess we are in now.
She is so beautiful. Ever since I first saw her, I thought she would be perfect to play Zelda in a Legend of Zelda movie.
I adore this girl so much – I met her while doing a random errand in Santa Monica. She was so beautiful in person, and one of the guys who worked at the store followed her out into the street to tell her he was a fan of her work on Euphoria. She was kind and generous in how she interacted with him, and in kind of an ageist way, I thought wow, Gen Z really has it together in terms of respecting identity. It makes me furious that trans people are being treated this way by our administration. I will never, ever understand why MAGA and Elon Musk are so terrified by normal people who just want to quietly go about their lives on their own terms.