US trans actress Hunter Schafer, known for her HBO hit show "Euphoria," has said that her passport gender marker was changed to male, slamming the Trump administration which has demonized any recognition of gender diversity. Schafer blamed the policies of US President Donald Trump for the modification of her gender marker -- despite having identity documents marked female "coming up on a decade now" -- in a TikTok story published Thursday evening and rebroadcast as a video Friday.
"I filled everything out just like I normally would. I put female and when it was picked up today and I opened it up, they had changed the marker to male," she said, brandishing her passport and explaining she had had to renew the document after it was stolen last year.
Trump in his first days in office declared the country would recognize only two genders -- men and women -- and has targeted transgender people in a slew of other orders.
According to the State Department, under an executive order on what the Trump administration calls "Gender Ideology Extremism," the Bureau of Consular Affairs would stop issuing identification documents with an "X" marker for non-binary people.
"We will only issue passports with an M or F sex marker that match the customer's biological sex at birth," the website says.
Schafer said her gender on her birth certificate hasn't been changed to female, leading her to believe that "the agencies who are in charge of passports...are now required to cross reference birth certificates."
"This is the first time this has happened to me since I changed my gender marker... and I do believe it is a direct result of the administration our country is currently operating under."
She said she was "shocked" to see the "M" on her passport and that she was spurred to post about it to "note the reality of the situation and that it is actually happening."
Despite her concerns, Schafer was defiant.
Trans people "are never going to stop existing. I'm never gonna stop being trans, a letter in a passport can't change that and fuck this administration," the actress in her twenties said, speaking firmly into the camera on her phone.
Transgender rights have become a hot-button issue in the United States, despite trans people being a small minority of the population. Republicans hammered Democrats on transgender issues ahead of the 2024 election, capitalizing on a broader culture war over LGBTQ rights.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
