Sorry, Hunter Schafer – a man without a penis is still a man

Hunter Schafer is a beautiful young man. Whether sweeping down the catwalk or showing off his plastic tits and cinched waist on screen, the transgender actor and model has doubtless left plenty of straight male admirers doing some sweaty-palmed soul-searching.

This week, the 27-year-old Euphoria star told Elle magazine that he has now undergone extreme cosmetic surgery, having his genitals chopped about to resemble a vulva. Or as he put it: ‘I just had bottom surgery in December, which was amazing, and I love it so much.’

For showbusiness hacks, it was a gift: Variety, Rolling Stone, People and Entertainment Weekly could dress a cock-and-balls story of self-mutilation in the soft-focus language of a very special ‘gender journey’. Such coverage is to be expected. Stories like those of Schafer are where the narcissism and superficiality of Hollywood meet the narcissism and superficiality of transgenderism.

But there is a dark side to Schafer’s ‘journey’. After socially transitioning at 14, while living at home with his Bible-thumping pastor parents, Schafer says he spent years trying to make his ‘previous body work’ before opting for the chop. In 2018, aged 19, Schafer posted a deranged diagram on Instagram, describing it as an attempt to work out ‘how we are supposed to know if dysphoria is real when we are actually just products of our environments’, and wondering whether he might have found beauty in his body had he let it proceed ‘in its natural progression’.

Schafer’s scrawl makes for a rich seam. His gender, he wrote, was ‘so influenced by a need to be used by men’. His sexuality was ‘an attraction, always to misogyny’. Gender dysphoria meant ‘not feeling femme enough [without] being a victim of rape’. Then comes the pièce de résistance: ‘The idea of being eaten used to arouse me.’

As Reduxx founder Genevieve Gluck reported, his ravings were so unhinged the Daily Mail initially linked them to the crimes of trans shooter Audrey Hale, mistaking it for a killer’s manifesto. What was revealed was perhaps the only true thing about Schafer. He showed what is at the heart of transgenderism – a young man’s searing and sexually warped fantasy to become the object of his own hatred and desire.

Uncomfortable though it may be for feminists to admit, under Hollywood lighting and with the expert make-up of his profession, Schafer passes as a very tall, slender woman. But this is nothing new. He is what would have once been advertised in the back pages of grubby magazines as a ‘trap’. And the men who drool over such men are known as gynandromorphiles (gamps) or, more colloquially, tranny-chasers. They’re no different from the creepy dudes who shag ‘shemales’ in Thailand.

Catwalks are packed with young men giving female modelling a punt, particularly the spawn of the celeb class. The fashion industry, dominated by gay male designers, seems especially partial to the twinky, femme-boy look. The roll-call runs from Elon Musk’s son, Vivian Wilson, to Kai Schreiber, son of actors Naomi Watts and Liev Schreiber. It is entirely unsurprising that the offspring of the uber-wealthy would find comfort in the controlled rebellion and guaranteed adulation offered by transgenderism.

To those who view ‘womanhood’ not simply as existing as an adult human female, but as being a performance of femininity, performing well means being valued as a sex object. OnlyFans is stacked with femme boys and shemales who’ve travelled through pornography addictions and sometimes grooming to take this path.

We vulva-havers, ovary carriers and menstruators spent decades railing against a world that told us appealing to men, being beautiful, was our duty, our sole worth. For a brief moment, we seemed to be winning, recognised as full human beings. Then along came the angry young men and their chasers, the groomers (of both sexes) and pretty boys, to remind us of our place. Still, a designer’s label and gushing headlines cannot turn the costume into the thing itself.