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Just like YouTube’s NikkieTutorials, I was outed as transgender before I was ready


I was so proud of Nikkie (Picture: @Nikkietutorials)

It was late in the afternoon when I saw a post on Facebook about NikkieTutorials coming out.

I assumed the beauty vlogger was revealing she was bisexual, but the post explained she was transgender.

My heart sunk. I was fearful it was going to be another video similar to the one YouTuber Trisha Paytas posted last year, in which she claimed to be a trans man, but was still going to use female pronouns and her birth name.

Trisha had added that while she thinks she’s transgender, she identifies with her ‘natural born gender’ and doesn’t plan on transitioning.

I couldn’t help but worry that, like Trisha, Nikkie would end up disappointing me with another ill-informed video about what being trans actually means. 

Nikkie was always someone I idolised because of how she challenged what people had come to expect of beauty YouTubers: thin types, or those who just needed mascara and gloss to feel confident. She had a similar body shape to me and spoke, at length, about the power of makeup. 

So, with bated breath, I loaded the video, curious to see what she had to say at least. By the end, I couldn’t have been prouder of Nikkie. 

She opened by saying she had some news to share – something she’d intend to tell her fans one day when she felt ready – and had been forced into coming out because she was being blackmailed.  

Nikkie explained that the blackmailers threatened to leak her story to the press. She was frightened by it and also called those responsible ‘evil’ and ‘vile.’ 

As she shared her truth, her voice cracked with emotion, I could tell that as happy as Nikkie was to be able to tell the world about herself, she was fuming she wasn’t able to do it at a time of her choosing. 

I knew just how she felt. Just like me, Nikkie wasn’t allowed to come out on her own terms. And we deserved so much better. 

Growing up in the Bible Belt of the US, I’d know from a very young age that I wasn’t a girl. It felt like pieces of myself hadn’t fallen into place the way they were supposed to and it took me many years to discover what this meant. 

I wasn’t very popular in school, nor was I good at talking to people. But a family member had become my best friend during that time. She was someone I could confide almost anything in.  

So when the word ‘transgender’ became part of my vocabulary after seeing it on tumblr in 2011, I told her who I really was. 

I am Oliver – a name that people I’d been speaking to on Reddit had given me, which I really liked – and I am a boy. 

It was liberating to have a word that made sense. It told me that I wasn’t all by myself. 

Fast forward a few years and my family member and her husband are in the midst of a divorce. He’s taking it pretty hard and often asks me to watch their young children while he works. The divorce grows messy. 

I told the person I trusted more than anyone else (Picture: Oliver Vance)

Suddenly, I’m 13 and my family member has said to a courtroom full of familiar faces that her husband should not have custody because he leaves his children with someone who is mentally unstable because they ‘think they are a boy’. 

I had never been so hurt or confused – I thought she was my friend

From that moment on I felt that my transness, my authentic self, was something that needed to be hidden and something that I needed to be ashamed of. 

It was difficult. My mom told the family that it wasn’t true. The older generations especially didn’t like the news and were calmed by mom’s assurances it was made up. 

I knew that I had wanted to come out, at least to my parents and grandma, but I hadn’t really planned on how to do it. All I knew was that I’d wanted to sit down with them, break the news and talk it through – but that had now been taken away from me. 

It was heartbreaking. I felt like I was an exposed nerve and each time I moved, or even breathed, it was being touched. 

I closed up about my identity. As puberty hit I found that I passed as male less and less – and not being able to do this really heightened my gender dysphoria. 

I wasn’t, and still am not, in a place where I can transition. Hormones and surgery aren’t an option as long as I live here – it wouldn’t be particularly safe for me to do so. 

While the conversation about what it means to be trans has gotten better and people support me, parts of my family and strangers don’t.  

Luckily, I could turn to allies online and I would sit and watch YouTubers like Nikkie. I had a love of makeup and found her prom makeup tutorial video, where a beautiful woman showed me how to blend into my crease. 

Through Nikkie, I learned that makeup is an artform, not a gendered thing. I learned about self-acceptance and love. 

I found Nikkie at a point in my life where I was trying to find a way to express that I was queer, which would still make me feel safe and whole at the same time. 

In a way, she gave me a chance to come out again, on my own terms, because she gave me a renewed love for myself. 

I was just getting into high school, where it can be hard to be a trans man who wears makeup, and her videos encouraged me to be my authentic self. 

Nikkie has constantly been a positive and happy face on my YouTube feed, so when her story resonated with my own, I felt sick. 

She deserved to share her story on her own terms. 

It was comforting, however, to see that people received her news positively. I know that as I watched the video I had proud tears in my eyes that Nikkie was able to take control of her situation and reclaim it in the fierce way that she has always handled things, something I haven’t been able to do. 

The worst comments she received were from people saying they ‘knew all along’ or ‘would have never known.’ In my opinion, these are just as bad misgendering her. 

Phrases like that make being trans all about passing and not passing, about ideas of what we should look like. But gender and gender expression are vast spectrums. 

I am proud of Nikkie because she is strong. I am proud of her for building her empire as a beautiful transgender woman. 

My only advice to her is that she takes the time to be gentle with herself and to celebrate the person she has become and the person she has been. 

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