Hunter Schafer's Transgender Stereotypes

Transgender stereotyping has come a long way. It used to not be understood, let alone accepted. It has taken many years, and the world has started to comprehend the changes transgender individuals want to make. We often take changes like these and pay no mind to them, because it is only human nature to judge others unlike you. It is unknown to us, therefore we are apprehensive about it. Some people even speak out against it, because they fear change. But others have chosen to speak up for their decisions and actions. Those like Hunter Schafer, those that have taken a stand against transphobia. Hunter Schafer was born in 1999, as a boy. When she was five, she started to wear her older sister Hannah’s dresses. Her mom, Katy, has stated that from as young as two, Hunter was expressing a “persistent need for femininity”, as Hunter puts it. Katy Schafer uses the example of superheroes, saying Hunter would often choose the female heroes as opposed to the more masculine ones. Katy and her husband, Pastor Mac Schafer, saw their then son’s preschool teacher when Hunter was three. They asked if this was ‘normal’- for their son to be choosing pink and dresses,

This helped her parents to start to grasp her sexual orientation, but gender was another aspect. Her parents still felt that there was something missing from the story. After being introduced to the term “transgender”, Hunter told her parents she wanted to make the change. It took her telling them three times for the message to get through to Katy and Mac. It wasn’t that they didn’t accept her- they weren’t sure how to react. Katy told her daughter that “just because you’re an artist and just because you like pretty things, that doesn’t mean you’re transgender. It doesn’t mean you’re a girl." Hunter started using hormone therapy months later, to help block the male hormones. She is now able to pass as a cis-woman from a visual