CNN —
Hunter Schafer has shared that the gender marker on her passport has been changed to list her as male.
The “Euphoria” actress posted a video on social media in which she explained that she had to get a new passport after her original was stolen while she was filming in Spain last year.
“Now, to specify, my gender markers were first changed in my teens, when I first got my driver’s license and then passports following all have been female since then,” the 26-year-old said. “Hasn’t really been a problem.”
But now, because of an executive order from the new presidential administration, her new passport has an “M” for male.
The “Cuckoo” star said she was “not making this post to fear-monger, 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’s happening,” she continued. “I was shocked. I just didn’t think it was actually going to happen.”
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Schafer added that she wants “to acknowledge my privilege, not only as a celebrity transwoman who is white,” and said she believes the fact she never changed her birth certificate may have contributed to the recent change.
“I don’t know exactly what changed as far as the processing goes, but this is the first time this has happened to me since I changed my gender marker,” Schafer said. “We’re coming up on a decade now, or something. And I do believe it 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.”
She also had some strong words for the administration.
“I also want to say, I don’t give a f**k that they put an ‘M’ on my passport,” she said. “It doesn’t change really anything about me or my transness, however it does make life a little harder.”
Schafer said she will be testing out how difficult it will be as she soon has to travel outside of the country for work with her new passport for the first time.
“I’m pretty sure it’s going to come along with having to out myself to border patrol agents… much more often than I would like to or is really necessary,” she said, adding that she’s also thinking about other trans people who this might be happening to.
Schafer not the only trans star speaking out.
While recently promoting her new series “Clean Slate” Laverne Cox discussed the importance of remaining visible as a trans performer, and telling trans stories as her community is “experiencing the most intense backlash against trans visibility that I’ve seen in my lifetime.”
“Executive orders limiting our rights, 26 states banned gender affirming care for young people, banning us from the military, from bathrooms… there’s this whole anti-trans thing, and we’re less than 1% of the population,” Cox said. “Someone in my comment section said, ‘They’re worried about the wrong 1%.’”
CNN’s Dan Heching and David Daniel contributed to this report.
