In over eight minutes of video uploaded to her TikTok story, former Teen Vogue cover star and actor Hunter Schafer shared that her gender marker on her passport was changed to “male,” in accordance with a January executive order defining gender as one’s sex as assigned at birth, either male or female.
Following Trump’s rollout of anti-trans executive orders, Schafer, 26, said in the video, “I was, like, ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’” With her new, misgendering passport in hand, Schafer continued, “I was shocked because I didn’t know, I just didn’t think it was actually going to happen.” Describing it as a “harsh reality check,” Schafer explained that she was publicizing her story not to “fearmonger or to create drama or receive consolation — I don’t need it.”
Instead, Schafer said she was “scared of the way this stuff gets slowly implemented,” citing the precedent of “historical rises of fascism and everything this new administration represents.” As one historical point of reference, in 1933, following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as chancellor of Germany, Nazis targeted a sex research institute run and founded by Jewish gay pioneer Magnus Hirschfeld, resulting in the burning of over 20,000 books.
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“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,” Schafer continued. “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.” Acknowledging her privilege as a “celebrity, trans woman who is white and thin and adhere[s] to contemporary beauty standards,” she continued, “It still happened.”
Schafer describes preparing herself to have to out herself as trans to Border Patrol agents “more often than I would like to or than is really necessary,” adding, “Thinking about other trans women that this might also be happening to, or other trans people, the list only gets longer, as far as the intricacies [and] difficulty that this brings into real-life sh*t.”
In 2016, as a teenager, Schafer wrote for Teen Vogue about facing transphobic barriers from the government — specifically about the threat of a bathroom ban in her home state of North Carolina. The Trump administration has pushed trans bathroom bans in K-12 schools and federal buildings via executive orders. According to Schafer’s video, she changed her gender marker as a teenager on her driver’s license and passport to accurately reflect her gender as a woman. However, said Schafer, she hadn’t updated her birth certificate.
After a bag with her passport inside was stolen in 2024, Schafer said she worked to get her passport replaced. Upon retrieving her new passport — at this point in the video, Schafer shows her incorrectly marked passport to the camera — she saw her gender was changed to “male.”
As reported by the 19th’s Orion Rummler, trans people who applied for their passports close to the start of the current Trump administration have had their applications suspended and legal documents withheld. The State Department, which issues passports, has stopped allowing passports to be issued with “X” gender markers, a practice implemented under the Biden administration in 2022. In the weeks since the anti-trans executive orders were issued, multiple federal judges have “dismissed and questioned” their legal arguments, as reported by Rummler, with judges in some cases pausing their implementation.
The State Department and White House did not “immediately return requests for comment,” reported NBC News.
“I just wanna say, trans people are beautiful. We are never gonna stop existing,” Schafer’s video concluded. “I’m never gonna stop being trans. A letter on a passport can’t change that. F*ck 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. So, yeah. F*ck.”
