Work Text:
“Hi, I’m Fiona; welcome to my video blog…”
The first video is titled, “Fiona’s Video Blog – 27th March 2006.”
There are few comments, and Fiona mostly rambles about things. She says she’ll talk to everyone later at the end, and smiles and covers the camera.
Within a few months the AmazingFiona channel has many subscribers. You log onto your YouTube, and search AmazingFiona, just like you do every week or so in search of new content.
You click her most recent vlog, ‘Worst Day Ever.’ There’s something majorly different. Fiona seems to have cut her hair short, like a boy’s, with a fringe swept off to the side. She’s wearing a suit and a tie.
She starts off her video by saying, “Hi, so today’s not been a very good day so far…” She goes on to explain her day, being overdramatic and making wild gestures with her arms. The haircut is not mentioned once in the video, but there are comments about the haircut, along with the suit and tie.
‘Hey, she got a haircut!’
‘What’s with the suit?’
‘She looks like a boy with the haircut… she looked better with longer hair.’
You frown and type in your own, positive comment, ‘I hope your day gets better!’
Throughout the next couple of videos, you notice that Fiona is wearing traditionally boy clothes. Gone are the bright blouses and clips, and the T-Shirts and hoodies are what replaces them. And it’s almost like she has been practicing on trying to get her voice deepened. She still doesn’t mention the haircut, voice, or the change of clothes. It’s almost forgotten.
On October 25th, 2009, she has her first collab with danisnotonfire. That is not the first thing you notice about the video, though – the first thing you notice is the title: ‘phil is not on fire’. You’re curious and click on the video. You’ve never heard of Phil, maybe he’ll be introduced in the video.
But no, there is no new people. It is Fiona and the boy from danisnotonfire. You pause the video seven seconds in and scroll down in confusion. There are a few confused comments as well, but you scroll up back to the video.
The new boy, Dan, has brown hair that is much lighter than Fiona’s dyed hair, with brown eyes. He has a similar hairstyle to Fiona, but with the fringe on the other side.
Twenty-three seconds in, there’s an annotation, a speech bubble near the stuffed lion on Dan’s shoulder: ‘Dan is comfier than Phil’. At fifty-eight seconds in, Dan refers to Fiona as Phil. It happens again one minute and forty-three seconds in, and two minutes and twenty seconds in.
Two minutes and twenty-eight seconds in, Fiona even refers to herself a ‘Philippe’.
About a minute and fifty seconds in, they joke about being ‘manly’.
You scroll back down to the comments. There are other comments besides the confusion. There are some negative ones, some positive ones, and others that are quite neutral and refer to the video instead of the people in it.
‘What the hell?’
‘Fiona, what’s up with you?’
‘Is Fiona a tranny?’
‘Hey, Phil! I like your name :)'
You hover over the comment box for a few moments and click. ‘Great video!’
By the next ‘Phil is not on fire’ video, you can hear that Fiona doesn’t strain so hard to sound deep. She sounds naturally deep, and her face structure has evolved.
His, you tell yourself. And it’s Phil, you remind yourself, as you watch the video.
Fiona – no, Phil – seems so happy. Much happier than the first video you remember ever seeing. You can’t help but smile a little, until you look at the comments.
There’s still many negative ones, so you often click ‘hide’ on the said comments. There are others demanding explanations, and more wanting Phil to just come out and say it.
You shake your head and just leave one of your positive comments, before clicking a bit more through the land of YouTube.
After another week, you notice the channel name change to AmazingPhil.
The next video isn’t Phil. It’s a live show, actually. “Hey guys,” Dan says, waving at the camera. “Phil isn’t… feeling up to it, to make a video right now. He’s felt like this for about a week but he wants you guys to have new content, so here we go.”
He held up his phone, and typed as he spoke. “I’m in Phil’s new video – what should I do?”
There are the noises noticifations of replies. Dan glances down at his phone. “’What’s wrong with Phil? Why isn’t he doing a video?’” he reads. “Um.” Dan glanced around. “He’s feeling a bit… dysphoric. It doesn’t happen as much as it used to,” he added. “But… it does happen every other month or so.”
You type a quick comment, ‘I hope he feels better soon!’
He’s looking down at the comments, scanning them before the leave. He smiles. “Thanks,” he says, like he saw your comment. “I hope he feels better soon too.”
It’s been a year since the first ‘Phil is not on fire’ video. You click the most recent video, titled, ‘It’s Time’.
It’s time for what, you wonder. The video loads and you watch the rectangle with the video. Phil is not in his room. In fact, it looks more like he’s in a hospital. You start to worry.
“Hey guys,” Phil says, waving and sounding rather tired. Phil yawns. “I’m at the hospital. Don’t worry, I’m fine. I just had some surgery.”
Phil struggles to sit up, and you can hear background noise and rustling. He winces and holds his chest.
“I guess it’s time to talk. I know you guys have been asking about this for the past… year and a half, I think?”
He looks down at his hands, fidgety and acting nervous.
“Hi, I’m Phil, and I was assigned female at birth. Um, my parents named me Fiona. I always felt… off. I didn’t feel right being a girl. But I didn’t know there was a thing to describe how I felt. And I was focused on fitting in. I didn’t want to let anyone know something felt wrong.”
He looks away from the camera, scanning the hospital walls. He looks up at the ceiling, sighs, and continues.
“When I turned eighteen, I allowed myself to explore. Talking to people on the internet helped. I found a term to describe myself. Transgender. I didn’t like it, though. I didn’t like the idea of being different or not being in the right body. So I lied to myself a bit more.”
“After a while,” he says, playing with his fringe, “I started to accept myself. Some of my online friends helped. I gave myself a haircut and I wore a suit and tie to that meeting with my university. I started wearing different clothes. I hadn’t changed my name, and I didn’t tell people to refer to me as ‘he’ or ‘him’, even though female pronouns and the name Fiona felt wrong.”
“Then I met Dan. He had, like the rest of you, noticed the changes in the videos I posted. When we met in person, he asked me what my preferred pronouns were. It shocked me, really. If I’m being truthful, I started to cry.” Phil smiles, obviously feeling a little embarrassed. “I told him my preferred pronouns. He asked me if I had a new name picked out, and I told him Phil. When we started recording our first video together, he asked me if he was to use Phil or Fiona. I told him he could use Phil.”
“Your reaction was… interesting. Some were confused, some were rather rude about it, but I’m happy to say I found a lot of positive comments. You all called me ‘Phil’ and said ‘he’ when explaining something I said to another person. It made me… so happy.” Phil grins.
“I didn’t say anything about the changes. I didn’t want to have to. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to make a big deal out of some things. I want a world where you can just be who you are without having say why, or explain who you are. I’m a man. I know that.”
Phil started to yawn, but then he smiled. “Today I had top surgery.” He looks down at his chest, which is covered by bandages. “It’ll take a while to heal, and I have to be careful for a few months, but I’m glad to be working towards my goal. I didn’t feel right. But I’m going to be okay.”
He sticks his tongue out and says, “Byeeee!” while covering the camera.