Actress Hunter Schafer recently faced an unexpected challenge when she discovered that her newly issued passport carried a gender marker change from female to male. The alteration occurred after Schafer’s original passport was stolen during a filming project in Barcelona, subsequently leading to the issuance of a temporary passport. This unforeseen change has brought attention to the broader implications of President Donald Trump’s executive order from January 2022, which mandates that the U.S. government recognizes only a person’s biological sex at birth on official documents.
Schafer, who is transgender, expressed her frustration and concern about the situation. Her original passport listed her gender as female, but the new document lists her sex assigned at birth, male, without her consent. She suspects this will lead to uncomfortable situations while traveling abroad, where she may have to disclose her gender identity to authorities more frequently than desired. Schafer will face this reality next week as she travels internationally for the first time with her updated passport.
"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," said Schafer.
The executive order in question reversed a rule from the Biden administration that allowed individuals to select "X" as their gender marker on passports. Following Trump's directive, the State Department's Bureau of Consular Affairs announced its policy change, stating:
"We will no longer issue U.S. passports or Consular Reports of Birth Abroad (CRBAs) with an X marker. We will only issue passports with an M or F sex marker that match the customer's biological sex at birth."
Schafer's experience is not isolated. Seven individuals have filed a federal lawsuit challenging Trump's executive order, arguing it disregards their gender identity and forces them to conform to their sex assigned at birth on government-issued documents. The actress's ordeal serves as a poignant example of how these policy shifts affect people's lives, regardless of their status or identity.
"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, that 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," Schafer emphasized.
The actress shared her journey of having to correct the passport discrepancy upon returning to the United States. She visited the Federal Passport Agency in Los Angeles to address the issue, only to find the process unchanged from prior experiences. Despite completing all necessary paperwork specifying her gender as female, the new passport still reflected a male designation.
"As soon as I got back to the States, I had to get this fixed and get it replaced with a real, proper passport, which I went to the Federal Passport Agency today in LA and did. I've had to do this one time before. No part of the process was different. 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," Schafer recounted.
Schafer expressed her resilience in facing this bureaucratic obstacle, underscoring that while the gender marker change complicates matters, it does not alter her identity or transness.
"I don't go give a f
