This story originally appeared on Them.
Kim Petras is not having all the weird comments about Hunter Schafer’s body.
Model and actress Hunter Schafer opened up about her experience with bottom surgery in an Elle cover story published Monday. Unfortunately, in the short timeframe since the article’s publication, people have already taken advantage of Schafer’s vulnerability to make line-crossing comments about her body — and Kim Petras has thoughts.
“Reading some really weird ass shit on here about beautiful Hunter Schaffer talking about getting vaginoplasty,” the pop singer wrote on X. “And just wanna say it’s so brave of her to speak on this and it’s exposing so many of the gross ways in which trans women get fetishized.”
Petras continued, “The idea of someone aligning their body with how they feel on the inside and people saying YOU ARE WORTH LESS TO US NOW is what I wrote a song called brutalist about …”
The comments Petras is referring to largely seem to involve people — especially men with a sexual interest in transgender women — making the transphobic and fetishizing claim that Schafer, a world-renowned actress, is “worth” less now that she has undergone bottom surgery.
As another one of the most famous trans women in the world, Petras is no stranger to the scrutiny that comes with talking about these experiences in the public eye. Petras has previously opened up about her experience with transphobia as the first out trans woman to win a Grammy. In an interview earlier this year with FADER, the pop star said people use her history of receiving gender-affirming care and surgeries as an excuse to hurl transphobic insults about her body. Petras has been on the receiving end of such degrading comments since undergoing bottom surgery at age 16, prompting news coverage.
“I have people saying I ruined my body and I ruined my life,” she told the publication. “They don’t know me at all.”
Under her post on X defending Schafer, people flooded the comments section with support for both the actress and Petras, condemning all the transphobic comments.
“The hatred fetishization and politicization of trans women and our bodies is just a reflection of people with not just small minds but small souls it makes me sad seeing people (mostly straight men go figure) comment negatively about her as well it’s disgusting,” one commenter wrote.
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