Hunter Schafer, one of Hollywood’s most visible transgender stars, said she was issued a U.S. passport with a male gender marker after her original passport, which listed her gender as female, was stolen.
Schafer, whose acting credits include HBO’s “Euphoria” and Amazon’s upcoming “Blade Runner 2099,” said Friday in a video on her TikTok Story that her passport was changed in compliance with one of President Trump’s executive orders targeting transgender Americans.
The order, which Trump signed on Jan. 20 during his first hours back in office, declares that the federal government recognizes only two genders, male and female, and broadly prohibits federal dollars from being spent on what he and his administration call “gender ideology.”
Government-issued identity documents should reflect a person’s sex “at conception” rather than their gender identity, according to the order, a provision that prompted the State Department to suspend processing passport applications from Americans seeking to change their gender marker.
A group of seven transgender and nonbinary Americans sued the Trump administration this month over the passport policy, which they said was motivated by “impermissible animus.”
Schafer, 26, said Friday that her passport and driver’s license had identified her gender as female since she was a teenager. She said she never amended her birth certificate, which could help explain why she was issued a male passport.
The State Department did not immediately return a request for comment.
“I’m not making this post to fearmonger, or to create drama or receive consolation — I don’t need it,” Schafer said Friday. “But I do think it’s worth posting to sort of note the reality of the situation and that it’s happening.”
“I don’t give a f— that they put ‘M’ on my passport; it doesn’t change anything about me or my transness,” she added. “However, it does make my life a little harder.”
Schafer said she is traveling out of the country next week and is worried about “having to out myself” to U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers. “Thinking about other trans women who this might also be happening to, or other trans people, the list only gets longer as far as the intricacies that come along with the difficulty that this brings into real life s—,” she said of the new policy.
“Trans people are beautiful. We are never going to stop existing,” Schafer said. “I am never going to stop being trans, a letter on a passport can’t change that. And f— this administration. I don’t really have an answer on what to do about this, but I feel it was important to share. This is real.”
Since returning to office last month, Trump has issued a bevy of executive orders seeking to roll back transgender rights, including orders to ban trans athletes from girls’ and women’s sports, end federal support for gender-affirming care for transgender children and teens under 19 and prevent trans Americans from serving openly in the military.
