Hunter Schafer, who has made her mark on HBO's hit show "Euphoria", recently shared on social media that her new passport has the wrong gender indicating male. This progress results from a Presidential Executive Order issued by the President of the United States, Donald Trump, on 20 January 2025, requiring federal records to accurately reflect the sex assigned at birth of an individual.
Schafer's Personal Experience
Schafer, a 26-year-old transgender woman, reported that she applied for a duplicate passport following her original being lost during a filming trip in Spain. Though the gender marker on driver's licenses in previous passports was changed to female during her teenage years, the newly issued passport carried a male gender marker. This, unfortunately, is the direct consequence of a new executive order that supports a rigid binary definition of sex and disregards gender identity.
Impact of the Executive Order
According to the executive order, which is called "Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Returning Biological Truth to the Federal Government", binary formulations of sex are set across all federal agencies. It also precomputes that gender is an immutable trait that is created at the moment of conception, and it requires every federal identification document, e.g., passports, to contain the gender assigned at birth. This policy has resulted in the postponement of applications seeking to include gender marker changes or nonbinary "X" markers on passports.
Schafer's Public Disappointment
Schafer broadcast on her videostream her disappointment and unease on behalf of the transgender community regarding the impact of this rule. She outlines the potential problems that transgender individuals may face when traveling abroad and notes contradictions between the gender assumed to be and the gender indicated in the passport that may cause inappropriate questioning and discrimination. According to Schafer, although her passport carried an incorrect gender designation, her gender identity as an MTF woman continued to be the same.
Legal Implications and Criticism of the Executive Order
As the ACLU lawsuit against the executive order has indicated, the executive order infringes upon constitutionally guaranteed rights and due process. The policy has also attracted much criticism for causing anxiety and despair among transgender, nonbinary, and intersex individuals, many of whose requests for a new passport have been rejected or driver's licenses canceled/lost.
Schafer's Advocacy for Transgender Rights
Schafer's case is just one illustration of the consequences of the policies of this administration for transgender people in real life. Her intention to share her story is to both educate the community on the struggles of the transgender community in light of the current federal policies and promote acknowledgment and acceptance of gender identity as part of formal documentation.
The Call for Change
Yet as the legal battle over the executive order plays itself out in the courts, advocates and those personally affected are calling for the enactment of policies that acknowledge and affirm the identities of transgender and nonbinary people, protecting and honoring their rights and dignity at all levels of public life.
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