Teeny Chirichillo of Survivor season 47 has come out as a transgender man after previously identifying as nonbinary. His pronouns are he/they.

Teeny Chirichillo is a freelance writer who became a fan favorite on last year’s season of Survivor and was the franchise’s first out non-binary contestant.

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Recently, he opened up in a candid essay for Cosmopolitan about how his experience on Survivor and being exposed to the public view made him come to terms with his gender identity.

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Chirichillo originally intended to conceal parts of his identity he felt were too vulnerable for public consumption. 

“Before flying out [to compete in the show], I made a choice: I wasn’t ready to launch into labeling myself any which way for the first time on national television,” Chirichillo wrote.

Before appearing on the show, they read comments on fan websites wondering if what pronouns Chirichillo would use, what gender the show’s administrators would consider them as, and if he had “tboy swag or nonbinary tea.”

“The invasive questions about my biology, prompted by my androgyny, weren’t what made my shrunken stomach sink though — if anything, those are the posts I return to. What made me dizzy was the pressure for me to represent as the first openly nonbinary Survivor player.”

Chirichillo himself admits that this strategy didn’t succeed as he thought it would. He said his lack of clarity began to affect commentators of the show with the same confusion he felt inside.

The Survivor contestant opened up about how his internal conflict with his gender identity and public speculation manifested his one-sided rivalry with Sam Phalen, who he would lose the fire-making challenge to at the end of the final four, bringing Chirichillo’s time on the show to an end.

“As the season went on, I knew all too well, I’d felt extreme resentment toward a fellow castmate, which I only realized and owned was dysphoria-induced jealousy in the final stages of the game.” Chirichillo wrote.

The public pressure became more apparent after filming was complete. Chirichillo commented that, in every Survivor podcast, when discussing Chirichillo, there were two to three minutes spent debating what pronouns current-day Chirichillo goes by.

Chirichillo had previously decided to go by any/all pronouns, stating, “[It] feels easier than derailing our conversation into the personalized gender studies curriculum that cycles through my head almost constantly.”

Throughout this time, he asked himself how long he could “whatever” his way through the topic of his gender identity.

With his newfound free time post-Survivor, Chirichillo pursued a journey of self-discovery, allowing him to conclude that he was a closeted trans guy.

Chirichillo kept what he refers to as “artifacts,” memories and keepsakes from the past. These included a laundry list of typical transmasculine Gen-Z stereotypes described as a “museum of my own transness,” like Wattpad fanfiction from the perspective of male characters, trans YouTubers he used to watch, and reading a bunch of trans memoirs.

Having come out, he admitted he’s now thinking about his friends’ and family’s future reactions if they misgender him, how his girlfriend will navigate talking about him as her boyfriend, the cost of testosterone without health insurance, how much he’ll miss the girls’ bathroom if he starts to “pass” as a cis man, and whether he event wants to outwardly present as a cis man.

“I’m thinking about all the trans people who have been brave enough to live in their authenticity through the horrors of our past and current political state and how much I admire and thank them for paving the way for me,” he wrote.

Competing in Survivor was a lifelong dream for Chirichillo. After accomplishing that, it seems that the former contestant is ready to begin a new chapter in his life and ends his essay on a touching note: “What I really want is to give the Teeny who wore all Tony Hawk line boy clothes to elementary school a fist bump and tell him that we’re back.”

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