Is teeny on survivor gay

At a pregame HR presentation, the network showed a slide about respecting people’s gender identity and pronouns. Scrolling for the first time in a month, I dropped into a conversation that transcended usual cast-leak speculations. and that the only one you can truly believe in is yourself.

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That introspective nature of the show, where castaways spend so much of their time with the only person they can truly believe in (themselves!), was certainly a part of it for Teeny.

Back home, as I waited for my season to air, it became clear that the conversation surrounding my pronouns was not going to stop. I had to work at it.

“When I think about my future, there’s a lot of blurriness. I’m thinking about the flinches on my friends’ faces after they slip up and say “she.” I’m thinking about how my mom and dad won’t be able to call me their daughter without the air in the room turning cold.

Increasingly, people decide to use “they,” as my presentation fits that of a Gen Z nonbinary person in an almost comically on-the-nose way. But I know who I am. Social graces, fitting in, making friends — it’s never come naturally to me. That said, it didn't seem to matter.

With no prompting at all, Teeny shared that on day three of the competition, contestant Sol Yi told them in a private conversation, "You know, I wanted to ask you before the game started if you want me to use different pronouns than she/her."

The conversation was happening simply based on how Teeny presented.

And it’s not what anyone is asking of me.

The growing stack of trans memoirs on my nightstand, the packers hidden in a shoebox, the late high school nights of Miles McKenna YouTube videos. And thus began another game of identity I’ve found myself playing almost as if I’m still on that beach. But if I’m being honest, that was never my largest problem!

I gave myself back to my life, and lived my fullest, most substantial year so far.

And to win that game, I thought, I’d conceal the parts that felt too vulnerable for public consumption. Though at the time it felt like an extreme pressure to be this genderfluid representative, what it really did was open the door for everyone in my life to know I’m not cisgender without my having to initiate these conversations. But there’s a lifelong accumulation of artifacts that has pulled my identity into focus, inside the museum of my own transness.

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. When I think about my future, there’s a lot of blurriness. I’m thinking about having to come out in loud bars and on the first days of new jobs.

"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," wrote Teeny.

As the game progressed, Sol's question seemed to echo throughout Teeny's world, from "two to three minutes spent debating what current-day Teeny wanted to go by" on Survivor podcasts to friends "starting to shift the language they used for me, some of them feeling like they'd missed the chapter where I properly came out as nonbinary."

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Unsure himself about what was going to unfold as each episode aired, Teeny said he dropped "she/they/he" pronouns on his Instagram "and watched as people replied back and forth, correcting and then recorrecting, on my behalf."

One moment of clarity that did not come until late into their time on the island, was Teeny coming to understand their aggressive animosity toward fellow contestant Sam Phalen, "which I only realized and owned was dysphoria-induced jealousy in the final stages of the game."

The stresses of the game were impacted Teeny's stresses of personal identity, which carried into the post-game experience of watching it back and trying to interact in the real world -- while not really being able to talk about it.

"I couldn't break my NDA, couldn't speak over a past version of myself, couldn't post a caption that made it all make sense," Teeny lamented in his essay.

And as Teeny's somewhat polarizing TV persona became the conversation while the season was airing, Teeny tried to counter that by becoming more "palatable to everyone," answering with a "whatever" when they tried to be sensitive about his pronoun preferences.

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Gender Identity Inside & Out

It was also a defense mechanism of sorts, to avoid facing the gateway conversation that pronouns often lead to, the "personalized gender studies curriculum that cycles through my head almost constantly."

"The state of my life since Survivor has been full of uncertainty," Teeny admitted, with the unexpected scrutiny about his pronouns pushing him into the recesses of his own mind, where it surprisingly "pulled my identity into focus, inside the museum of my own transness."

Teeny unpacked their own exploration of identity over the years, from a "growing stack of trans memoirs on my nightstand" to "ninth-grade hours spent writing Wattpad stories from the male POV" to "tboys in my phone teaching me how to crop my shirts for a more masculine fit."

Part of that journey saw Teeny solidifying his complicated relationship with his breasts by going through with the top surgery he'd talked about on the island, and looked through before.

He opened up about this procedure with Them back in January, though even at that time, he didn't yet have certainty that he was a transgender man.

I’m thinking about whether passing as a cis man is even something I want. In an effort to open up, I told them about the top surgery consultation I’d had a few days before I left America, about how my boobs were a part of my body that I’d never wanted and how funny it was that my tits’ final act on Earth was running around a jungle lying to people.

The way I described my energy in casting as a mix between a pickpocket from the Oliver Twist universe and the sixth member of One Direction.