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Unknown A
Hunter Schaefer, the little known actress. You might know about her if you're at all familiar with what Hideo Kojima tweets about who. I can't help you with your removal from pop culture. She was in Dune Part two. Was she? Oh, I don't know. I'm also pretty removed from pop culture. She was in Euphoria. Yeah, I knew that. That I was aware of. She. She wasn't in Dune. Okay. Yeah, I didn't think so.
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Unknown B
Hello, Internet. I don't really post much these days, but I had a bit of a harsh reality check today and felt like it's important to share with whoever is listening. So I'm sure most of us remember on, I think the first day of Trump's presidency, he like, signed an executive order to declare only two genders recognized by the state, male and female, assigned at birth.
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Unknown A
And as a result, don't be weird. In fairness, I think that with Hunter Schaefer not saying, wow, so pretty is the weird thing to do. But it's okay, guys, we know. We know she's pretty. It's all right. You're kind of virtue signaling for the crowd. We know it's pretty. It's a pretty well known thing. Factoid, I would say result of this.
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Unknown B
Which I wrote down because I want to get it right. The Bureau of Consular affairs has frozen passport applications requesting a gender marker change or renewals or new applications with a gender marker deferring from an applicant's gender assigned at birth. So my initial reaction to this, because our president, you know, is a lot of talk, was like, I'll believe it when I see it. And today I saw it on my new passport.
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Unknown A
They mailed Hunter Schaefer's damn passport and she updated it. I mean, the administration's been doing this. It's just, you know, I'm happy to see it, you know, talked about publicly. Data. What now she's a trans woman. So it says M. Now see male.
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Unknown B
So now to specify I. My gender markers were first changed in my teens when I first got my driver's license and then passport.
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Unknown A
Imagine a customs agent from a different country looking at this confusion. Well, I mean, what you're basically doing is mandating that trans people have IDs that out them as trans. Like you no longer have the ability to pass any time your ID is presented. Because obviously Hunter Schaefer presenting an ID that says she's male would out that she's trans. Not. Well, she's. She's a public figure, so that's known but you understand the point. You know, it obvious it doesn't like, aid in understanding of the world. There's no reason for identification to have your gender, by the way, like, it, like, there's no. It's. That's not how the government tracks you. It's not like, you know, with your name and Social Security number and all of the identification on your passport. The government's like, okay, that's almost enough information to pin this person down, but we really need to know what their gender slash sex is.
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Unknown A
It's the. It's a. It's, it's. It's a holdover from the days when an ID card and like identification at a checkpoint was literally like a guy looking at a document and looking at you and vibe checking it. Which is how this is how things were for thousands of years up until we developed, you know, modern record keeping and computers and stuff. Pretty much following.
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Unknown B
All have been female since then. Hasn't really been a problem. However, last year when I was filming in Barcelona, beautiful city, our car got broken into and my bag got stolen. And inside of that was my passport, which was supposed to last me, like, you know, up until my 30s.
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Unknown A
That sucks.
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Unknown B
And so I got an emergency passport, which was very simple at the time. It's basically just a copy of my old passport, but temporary and only supposed to be used within the year. So 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. Sorry about the desync 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.
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Unknown A
It hurts my mind. I'm gonna look away. Hold on.
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Unknown B
When it was picked up, 2 minutes.
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Unknown A
And 50 seconds in one moment. Hopefully this isn't desynced.
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Unknown B
And I opened it up, they had changed the marker to mail. I'm not making this post to fearmonger or to create like 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 is actually happening. And I was shocked. I was shocked because I didn't, I don't know, I just didn't think it was actually going to happen. And like, I want to acknowledge my.
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Unknown A
I am really glad that she's talking about this. Obviously, like, one of the biggest weapons that we have against the rise of fascism is the fact that modern media makes it Much easier to empathize with members of minority groups. Right. Like In Germany, after 33, you know, you. You don't exactly have, like, oh, here's like, a Jew who, you know, every day like a billion people tune in and they love their stuff or whatever, and here's like, them speaking out against it. And they're so polit. They're so, like, socially beloved that going against them would be, you know, would cause a massive uproar or whatever like, that there are circumstantial differences. You know, it's very, very, very important to. To talk about this stuff. I'm really glad that she is a privilege, but, like, why would you not think it's going to happen? Laura, please don't be a.
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Unknown A
What are you, like, what are you trying to, like, nitpick what she's saying? Listen, what do you mean? It's a common human reaction to, like, you know, you. You live your life as a celebrity who's like, let's say, transitioned very gracefully and has lived with that. And now suddenly it's being revoked and it kind of feels surreal, like. Oh, it feels surreal. Haven't you been paying attention? This isn't like the IRS guy or whatever who voted for this. Come on.
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Unknown B
Like, not only as a, like, famous or like, celebrity trans woman who is white and thin and can adhere to, like, contemporary beauty standards. And I can participate in all of that and I pass. And it's still happened. And, yeah, I never had my birth certificate changed, so this has led me to believe that I think the agent.
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Unknown A
Oh, right. We're watching these in segments now.
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Unknown B
Agencies who are in charge of passports and this sort of thing are now required to cross reference birth certificates or I. I don't know exactly what. Or what changed as far as the processing goes, but this is the first time, excuse me, this has happened to me since I changed my gender marker. 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, like, slowly gets implemented or very quickly, you know, because things just sort of, like, start happening, I think as we've seen in, like, historical rises of fascism and this sort of, you know, you know, everything that this new administration kind of represents. You know, there's a lot of talk and then things start happening and we get.
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Unknown B
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.
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Unknown A
You can tell she doesn't really feel comfortable talking about this or I guess, I don't know. Not like, necessarily in that she's in a state of shock or whatever. I guess it's just like, there's a huge difference between talking about people's rights in, like, an abstract sense where you're. Well, I shouldn't say abstract. She's trans after all. More like you're pushing back against bigotry and. And, like, a social pushback. You know, you're kind of, like, normalizing. There's a big difference between that and just like, oh, I wake up, it turns out the government just invalidated my id, you know, that kind of thing. There's like a very, very big difference.
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Unknown B
That this is real and it's happening, and no one segments, no matter their circumstance, no matter how wealthy or white or pretty or whatever, is excluded. This is real. I also want to say, I don't give a fuck that they put an M on my passport. It doesn't change really anything about me or my transness. However, it does make life a little harder, personally, I think. I mean, I haven't tested it out yet. I'll find out next week when I have to travel abroad for the first time with my new passport. But I'm pretty sure it's gonna come along with having to out myself to, like, border patrol agents and that whole gig much more often than I would like to or is really necessary. And this is just my personal circumstance. And thinking about other trans women who this might also be happening to, or other trans people, you know, the.
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Unknown B
The list only gets longer as far as the intricacies that come along with the difficulty that this brings into, like, real life shit. This is getting very long. But I just want to say trans people are beautiful. We are never going to stop existing. I'm never going to stop being trans. A letter and a passport can't change that. And this administration and I don't really have an answer on what to do about this, but I feel it was important to share. This is real.
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Unknown A
It is a good point. Even Hunter Schaefer, one of the most privileged trans people, still being affected by this shit nearly as much as anyone. Yeah. And normally the oppression of members of minority groups is kind of relegated along class lines. Right. Like, there's nothing in the books that allows the government to discriminate against black people directly. Usually what you do if you want racist outcomes is you discriminate by class. And then you make sure that based on, like, Adjacency or cultural signifiers or redlining or whatever, that black people are more likely to be poor. You know, a lot of the attacks that are done against black people are done via that abstraction. Whereas this attack against trans people is done directly. Like there's no, there's no like, you know, putting it through the phony filter of American meritocracy where it's like, you know. Well, actually it's not we're targeting trans people.
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Unknown A
It's that you need to pass this labyrinthine gender identity test that requires consistent, like, you know, identification unchanged going back to your birth. And if you can't do that, then da da, da. But it's not about trans people. It's just about, like, legitimizing documents or whatever. Oh, see, it's not just about trans people. It turns out these people who had like, fraudulent documents from the 90s because they wanted to, like, I don't know, get into a club early or something like that, they're also not allowed to do blah, blah, blah, like, you understand what I'm talking about? It's a. It's very direct. It's very direct.
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Unknown B
So yeah, that's true.
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Unknown A
I'm kind of surprised in the lead up to the election, prominent trans people weren't super loud about. I mean, how many prominent trans people are there really? Like, most prominent trans people are like. I mean, apart from a few. It's like Internet activists. You know, there aren't that many of them. Right. You've got Elliot Page and Hunter Schaefer, Caitlyn Jenner, who's been very loud. Laverne Cox, Blair White. Well, I'm saying non Internet figures, but yeah, Drag Race probably has a few. And I bet you that most all of them are pretty progressive. Buck Angel. No one gives a shit about Buck angel anymore. Whatever. Patty Harrison's one. Yeah, I don't know who that is. Tbh. Caitlyn Jenner and Elliot Page are annoying anyway. Whoa. What did Elliot Page do to deserve him getting put in the same sentence as Caitlyn Jenner? I thought Elliot Page was just straight chillin'being, chillin beyond two souls.
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Unknown A
Well, that wasn't his fault. That was David Cage's fault. I've heard people say he's a mid actor, but who cares? Can you imagine how difficult it must be to be an actor and then transition and then still be an actor? Like, so not only are you transitioning, but you then have to like, remodel your entire acting ability, like your whole, like, all your whole, like, profession and skill set realigned. That's. To me, this seems impossible. I could just. Unbelievable. I couldn't imagine, like, would you still take female roles? I don't, you know, no. Hate to the man's range. I don't really think Elliot Page is cut out for female roles, you know, I mean, no, no hate to him or anything. I just, I feel like the audience would be a little bit confused. Oh, yeah. He is going to be in the Odyssey, isn't he?
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Unknown A
Right. What Odyssey? Christopher Nolan, the Odyssey. They're doing. They're doing Odyssey adaptation. Everyone is going to be in the Odyssey. Homer's. Well, Christopher Nolan, the. The original story by Christopher Nolan.