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Hunter Schafer, who plays trans student Jules Vaughn in the hit HBO series Euphoria, has been left “shocked” after she received a new passport which incorrectly changed her gender marker to ‘M’ for ‘male’ following Donald Trump’s executive order on trans identities.
The 26-year-old, who also starred in the 2023 Hunger Games film The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, shared the news to her TikTok account on Friday, and said it was a “harsh reality check”.
After being inaugurated as US president on 20 January, Trump signed a long list of executive orders that same day, of which one of them was about “defending women from gender ideology extremism and restoring biological truth to the federal government”.
Section two of the order reads: “It is the policy of the United States to recognise two sexes, male and female. These sexes are not changeable and are grounded in fundamental and incontrovertible reality.”
Except it isn’t, not least because an individual can be intersex, where they have “differences in sex traits or reproductive anatomy” – according to the organisation InterACT, 1.7 per cent of the US population are born intersex.
The next section of the executive order places a duty on federal agencies to “enforce laws governing sex-based rights”, and Schafer said in her video that the Bureau of Consular Affairs has “frozen passport applications requesting a gender marker change” or “applications with the gender marker deferring from an applicant’s gender assigned at birth”.
This corresponds with text currently available on the Bureau’s website, which points to Trump’s executive order and reads: “We will only issue passports with an M or F sex marker that match the customer’s biological sex at birth.
“If you submit a passport application requesting an X marker or requesting a sex marker that differs from the sex marker at your birth, you may experience delays getting your passport.
“You may receive a letter or email requesting more information. We will issue you a new passport that matches your biological sex at birth, based on your supporting documents and our records about your previous passports.”
Schafer – who, like Jules, is trans - had her passport stolen after her car got broken into while filming in Barcelona last year, requiring her to ask for an emergency passport lasting a year.
However, after filling out a passport application in which she put her gender as 'female', she picked up the new passport on Friday only to find officials “had changed the marker to ‘male’”.
The actor explained: “I’m not making this post to fearmonger or to create, like, drama, or to 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.
“I was shocked, because I just didn’t think it was actually going to happen.”
Schafer went on to question whether agencies are now “required to cross reference birth certificates” with new passport applications, as she “never had my birth certificate changed”.
She continued: “I do believe this is a direct result of the administration our country is currently operating under, and I guess I’m just sort of scared of the way this stuff slowly gets implemented, because things just sort of start happening, as we’ve seen in historical rises of fascism and everything that this new administration kind of represents.
“There’s a lot of talk, and then things start happening, we start to normalise 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.
“No one - no matter their circumstance, no matter wealthy or white or pretty or whatever – is excluded. This is real.
“I also want to say: I don’t give a f*** that they put an M on my passport. It doesn’t change, really, anything about me or my transness, however it does make life a little harder.”
Schafer confirmed she would be using the new passport next week as she travels abroad for the first time with a passport containing an incorrect gender marker, but she is “pretty sure” it will involve “having to out myself [as trans] to border patrol agents … much more often than I would like to or is really necessary”.
On Twitter/X, one user has responded to Schafer’s video by once again pointing out that this is yet another move by Trump which does nothing to solve the ongoing issue around egg prices:
Others have described the ramifications from Trump’s executive order on gender as “evil”, “unnecessary” and “heartbreaking”:
And there’s also been tweets of people “sending deep love” to trans people following the news:
Concluding her eight-minute TikTok video, Schafer said: “Trans people are beautiful, we are never going to stop existing, I am never going to stop being trans, a letter on a passport can’t change that, and f*** this administration.”
Why not read…
- Exclusive: Baby Reindeer star explains how transphobic culture leads to violence after filming shocking scene
- Sydney Sweeney wants her Euphoria character to be even ‘crazier’ next season
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