How Survivor Helped Contestant Teeny Discover His True Trans Identity

If there's one thing Survivor is not known for, it's clarity. With deception and manipulation lurking around every corner, good players quickly learn not to trust or believe anything ... and that the only one you can truly believe in is yourself.

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. But also part of it was how much their presence impacted the viewing audience -- and then vice-versa.

In a new essay penned for Cosmopolitan, Teeny is putting an end to a lot of the questions and speculations fans had about their time on the island, and an exclamation point on answers they didn't even know at the time -- including if they were, in fact, nonbinary.

The 24-year-old reality star -- who now uses he/they pronouns -- is stepping into the next chapter of his life as a trans man, and he has the show, its fans, and the general public's curiosity about his journey, to thank in large part for that clarity he didn't even fully know he needed at the time.

For Teeny, it started as an avalanche even before he'd returned from his time in Fiji, where Survivor is filmed. He was still in flight when the first promo for Season 47 aired. When he finally landed, and was able to reconnect with the digital world, he was immediately overwhelmed.

"I opened my phone to find hundreds of people talking about my five-second cameo in the promo," Teeny wrote, sharing that people were beside themselves speculating on everything from how he would be gendered as a nonbinary contestant to "how the producers were going to adapt, within the parameters of historically gendered tribe divisions."

"During the 11-hour flight, 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," he added.

Teeny said that it wasn't the "invasive questions about my biology" that hit hardest, but rather "the pressure for me to represent as the first openly nonbinary Survivor player."

The problem was that Teeny "never declared anything [to producers] that would indicate I wasn't a cisgender girl."

Sure, Teeny on the show was androgynous in their style, and had even talked about having a consultation for top surgery before flying out to compete, but they'd never really defined their identity. 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. As a planned microcosm of society, the social experiment that is Survivor almost made this inevitable, as it's natural for people to be curious, and in the best cases, to want to be respectful about it.

The problem was that while Sol was ready to have that conversation, he was doing so on the assumption that Teeny would have an answer to his question. But Teeny wasn't there yet in their own life.

"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," Teeny admitted in his essay. In fact, not going there was part of their pre-game strategy.

"I knew I'd enter Survivor playing a social game. Trying to ride the middle, to keep all my alliances open, to be myself (or an edited version of it)," he explained. "And to win that game, I thought, I'd conceal the parts that felt too vulnerable for public consumption."

And the reality was that "an intense game of social politics and millions of viewers worldwide felt like a scary time to come out as…I didn't even know what."

He even admitted that if he were to ask his tribe to use any pronoun other than she/her on the island, it could "cause people to panic about messing up." And on Survivor, that could be enough for them to just send Teeny home, because it would all just be easier then.

Teeny did open to her tribe on the island a bit about where they were at in their life journey when it came to their relationship with their breasts, sharing "how my boobs were a part of my body that I'd never wanted," and they'd worn a chest binder for the past two years.

In his essay, he wrote that he talked about "how funny it was that my tits' final act on Earth was running around a jungle lying to people," while joking that he was "giving my boobs one last treat before I put them down by wearing a sports bra ... Chest binding on a deserted island for 25 days is a no-go."

The bigger reality, though, was that Teeny wasn't really given much of a choice. Simply by being there, they invited the conversation, whether they were ready for it or not. And if not on the island, certainly among the viewers after returning stateside.

After grappling with their gender identity on the island -- among much more pressing concerns along their way to a Top 4 finish -- Teeny said that the conversation was only getting louder after he returned home and waited for the season to air.

"And thus began another game of identity I've found myself playing almost as if I’' still on that beach," he wrote. "At least on Survivor, there's a million-dollar prize."

The problem was that while the season began airing, everyone at home started having questions and wanting to know what was going on with this nonbinary contestant. "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."

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.

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. While he knew he had a surgery date while on the island, "there was also this weirdness where I wasn't out fully as nonbinary," Teeny told the outlet.

Like much of his journey to that point, Teeny was just kind of flying by the seat of his pants, doing what felt right and not worrying about labels or what it meant on a deeper level.

As that clarity solidified inside, Teeny continued to "whatever" on the outside, but how long was that sustainable? And what did it really mean?

"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," Teeny wrote of that realization.

But even that comes with its own fears, the fears of coming out publicly, at new jobs, "grandma reading this and her wondering if it means I’ll have a mustache next Christmas."

From small things like wondering if his friends will "flinch" when they inevitably use the wrong pronoun, to more serious issues like "how much testosterone will cost, even with health insurance."

And then, there's the world of 2025. "I’m thinking about how much I'll miss the girls' bathroom if I start to pass," Teeny wrote, before adding, "I'm thinking about whether passing as a cis man is even something I want."

"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 continued. "I'm thinking and I'll likely never stop."

But with that thinking has come a decision to stop "whatever"-ing through life. Stop trying to appease others as he's realized "trying to please everyone as this moldable gender putty isn't pleasing me."

More importantly, Teeny realized, "it’s not what anyone is asking of me." And with no one watching him on TV anymore, he can only look back and thank the show for helping him find his way, and making it a little easier to get here.

"Though at the time it felt like an extreme pressure to be this genderfluid representative," Teeny wrote, "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."

"There is no promo coming this spring to show me sitting on a rock with some beard stubble growing in and a deeper voice," he added. "There is nobody who can be the architect of this outing besides me."