Survivor star Teeny Chirichillo has come out as trans “after a lifetime of suppressing and then exploring the boyhood in [his] soul”.
The 24-year-old competed on season 47 of the reality competition show and recalled how the public speculated on his gender identity during his time on the series before he even came to terms with his own identity.
“My lack of clarity seemed to bleed through the screen and infect all of the commentators of the show with the same confusion I was feeling inside,” the reality star wrote in an essay on Cosmopolitan.
“I was she on TV, but in every Survivor podcast, there were two to three minutes spent debating what current-day Teeny wanted to go by, usually landing on the safe choice of they/them. Queer and trans people were messaging me with preemptive gratitude, while I had guilty flashbacks to declaring myself as the leader of the all-girls alliance.”
He added that he felt “pressure for me to represent as the first openly nonbinary Survivor player”.
He said: “But on my backpack, wedged under the plane seat, was a pink ribbon — given to me by the production team — because I’d never declared anything that would indicate I wasn’t a cisgender girl. Before flying out, I made a choice: I wasn’t ready to launch into labeling myself any which way for the first time on national television.”
Although he began to open up to his castmates behind the scenes of the series and previously added “she/they/he” pronouns to his Instagram profile, Chirichillo said he is now finally ready to embrace his trans identity.
“How long can I ‘whatever’ my way through it? My noncommitment to a label like nonbinary and my lack of attachment to the policing of my own pronouns is because, until right now, I had been a closeted trans guy,” Chirichillo wrote.
“I don’t expect everyone to reach the same level of ease with my gender that I’ve arrived at after a lifetime of suppressing and then exploring the boyhood in my soul. But I know who I am,” he said.
“As I adjust to life on the flip side of living one childhood dream, 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,” he concluded.
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