Coming out as transgender can be a nerve-wrecking experience for anybody, given how rampant transphobia is in our society. But imagine doing it with cameras around. That's what at 15 year old in the U.K. named Oliver Fitzsimmons did for the Channel 4 documentary Inside Birmingham Children’s Hospital. In a scene captured by a TV crew that was following the family, Oliver—known at the time as Alex—tells their parents and brother that they don't identify with the gender they were assigned at birth.
"This is where it gets kind of confusing. I am like 98.7 percent male. Wa-hey! There you go," said Oliver, who goes by the pronouns "they/them/theirs," during a family dinner/therapy session.
"It’s something I’ve known for quite a while, but I didn’t really know what was going on until recently. And now I’m like, 'oh, that makes sense,'" they tell the camera.
Thankfully, their parents react supportively. "I can imagine having something bottled up for a long long time and then finally somebody releasing that cork is a good feeling," their dad says. Their mom asks, "How did you work out that percentage?" to which they respond, "I think 99 percent is a bit of a cliché."
At the beginning of the documentary, Oliver was known as Ellie, according to the Birmingham Mail. She struggled with anorexia and self-harm, had attempted suicide, and was on the autism spectrum.
Fitzsimmons told Buzzfeed they began to question their gender identity on the show. "I filmed with a guy called Mark. He’s really cool, and one of the first things he asked me the first time he interviewed me with a camera was, 'Who are you?' And he touched on gender and that made me think, 'Actually, yeah, who am I? What is my gender?' Gender had never been something I thought about. I thought I was born a girl and that was it, and there were no options."
Coming out as trans has helped Fitzsimmons conquer their mental health issues. "It made sense of the past seven years of my life," they told Buzzfeed. "It all fell into place, which is really overwhelming. I can see now that my eating disorder was to prevent the growth of my female body, but at the time, I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t eating, why I self-harmed and why I struggled with anorexia."
Now, they say they haven't self-harmed in a year and are doing better than ever.
Inside Birmingham Children’s Hospital did not immediately return Complex's request for comment.
