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I first met Hunter Schafer through Cuckoo, a formidable and offbeat horror film that soon became popular through word of mouth. I must admit that I had my doubts about Schafer as an actress - Hollywood is so immersed in a war of agendas between liberal and conservative, between tolerance and integration versus staunchly traditional values marked by religion - that I thought she was a phenomenon of the so-called Woke culture, someone who gets exposure just for being a trans girl. Nothing could be further from the truth. Schafer is pure talent and charisma, she has great expressiveness, and if I had any doubts about her acting qualities, they were soon instantly dispelled.
A great performer earns admiration: and when that happens, labels don't matter. I come from a very conservative generation where gays and lesbians were marginalized - more so during the military dictatorships that affected my generation in the 1970s in Latin America - but my vision has changed a lot over time, especially when I started to move away from the thinking of my parents and grandparents raised in other eras. My wife, who is deeply religious, has also opened her mind simply because times have changed and one cannot be a dinosaur who does not admit that people have the right to be happy with their sexuality, have a partner, have a family... and even many of those non-traditional families love their children more (and are better parents) than conventional heterosexual families. For example, we have had talks with my teenage daughter saying that, if one day she were to introduce us to a girlfriend, we would have no problem accepting her and integrating her into our family. We have gay and lesbian friends, and they are much more noble people - who are present in the most complicated moments of our lives - than many straight “friends” who boast of being correctness in person.
That's why I find Hunter Schafer so admirable. Not only succeeding at a young age - as actress, as model, as activist -, but fighting against prejudice and becoming an icon of tolerance and the LGBT community.
That's why I find it so endearing that Schafer has girlfriends (!). Here is a person with no strings attached, who simply seeks to be happy with the person next to him, male or female. Considering that a huge percentage of the population is plagued by prejudices and is quick to make value judgments even on issues that do not affect them in the least - except for putting themselves in a position of false moral superiority with the ability to judge anyone -, Schafer's is a brave, uninhibited attitude, a messenger of freedom in all its forms. If you add to that his impressive resume - Euphoria, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, Kinds of Kindness - and his activism, not only in LGBT causes but protesting the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas in favor of a ceasefire, you find an admirable person in every sense of the word, someone who brings value to the world by using the voice that brought him fame to call attention to inequality and injustice... a formidable complement to an exquisite performer who won my admiration beyond any label.
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