Fans of “Survivor” alum Teeny Chirichillo will be excited for the former player’s next chapter.
Chirichillo has come out as transgender, announcing the decision through a lengthy opinion piece in Cosmopolitan.
What’s more is the experience on “Survivor” led Chirichillo to a point where he felt he needed to do this.
Nonbinary Era
The piece begins the moment when Chirichillo was flying home from Fiji, uncomfortably scraping through social media posts discussing how the producers would present the contestant on the show.
“…I waded through debates over my pronouns, whether I would “count” as a girl or a boy or both or neither, if I had a penis, and (my personal favorite) if I had tboy swag or nonbinary tea,” Chirichillo writes. “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 the whole ordeal distressing was the potential representation as the first open nonbinary player on the show.
On one of the first nights on Fiji, Chirichillo spent time with fellow teammate Sol Yi who posed what turned out to be an important question: “I wanted to ask you before the game started if you want me to use different pronouns than she/her,” he said.
Prior to arriving for the show, Chirichillo told himself it wasn’t the time to take the step into labeling himself. Worse yet, he didn’t want his pronouns to be a distraction to his tribe. This caused inner turmoil which led to Chirichillo opening up to his team about a top surgery consultation he had before leaving for Fiji.
Chirichillo would ultimately take part in the surgery, posing on the cover of Them Magazine after the fact.
Players of Queer Past
“Survivor” has had a handful of queer players.
Famously, Zeke Smith was outed as a trans person by fellow contestant Jeff Varner on season 34’s “Game Changers.” An uproar caused ripples throughout the internet, with discussions popping up all over. Smith took to write his own op-ed in The Hollywood Reporter in which he described how transitioning affected his life before and after the show as well as the ramifications of the outing during the tribal council.
Season 42’s Jackson Fox was officially the first openly trans player for the show before being quickly removed from the show due to failure to disclose he was taking lithium medication.
Season 41’s Evvie Jagoda transitioned after participating on the show. Since then, they have used their platform to bring a spotlight to trans healthcare access.
One Person, Two Lives
As season 47 began to air, Chirichillo could see that not making a decision on pronouns ended up being a distraction regardless – at least on his part. He wanted to take to social media to explain his status then and now. Regardless, the nondisclosure agreement he signed didn’t allow for anything to be said at the time.
“Throughout all of this sudden visibility, a large part of me has wanted to be palatable to everyone, maybe to counteract my polarizing character on the show,” Chirichillo writes.
Post-“Survivor” has been rocky personally for Chirichillo but he’s been able to examine the, as he writes, “lifelong accumulation of artifacts that has pulled my identity into focus, inside the museum of my own transness.”
He’s constantly absorbing trans media around him and seeing how he will be moving about the world as a trans person. Chirichillo is going to miss the little things of his pre-trans lifestyle. But he’s also considering the trans people who made the same decisions, paving the way for people like him and how he’s now doing the same for others.
Coming out as a trans person now allows for Chirichillo to not live two separate lives.
“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,” Chirichillo writes.
“Now begins the process of bridging the gap between my private and public identities, of surrendering myself to the fact that trying to please everyone as this moldable gender putty isn’t pleasing me. And it’s not what anyone is asking of me.”
Read all of Chirichillo’s oped on Cosmopolitan.
Comments
Outwit, Outplay, Out: Former ‘Survivor’ Player Shares His Trans Journey