It was only in March of 2024 that F1nn5ter came out as genderfluid, but the streamer has been defying expectations since the start of his career.
The 24-year-old first brought his e-girl persona Rose to Twitch in 2020, letting fans send donations to earn a “Girl Month,” during which — as the name suggests — he’d dress in feminine clothing and makeup for a month. Since then, F1nn5ter’s amassed more than 700,000 followers on Twitch and 600,000 subscribers on YouTube. In his Twitch bio, F1nn5ter calls himself the “most popular ‘woman’ of all time” — but after posting a coming-out video with 2.6 million views earlier this year, those quotation marks might be getting scratched.
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In the video, F1nn5ter revealed that he’d recently started hormone replacement therapy.
“I crossdressed on Twitch for years. After doing it for a meme, I wanted to explore my gender a bit more,” he said. “People have been making egg jokes or saying I’m on HRT for years, and kind of because of that, a lot of the trans community started popping into streams or seeing my videos or interacting with me, and that had never happened to me before.”
“I learned a lot, and some of it seemed a little bit too interesting,” he continued. “It felt a bit like I uncovered a part of myself that I’d been purposefully just shutting down for as long as I can remember and never questioned why.”
So, does F1nn5ter identify as trans? Yes and no. He explained that he’s pretty averse to labels, but if he had to choose one, it would be genderfluid, and that though he still prefers he/him pronouns, any pronouns are fine by him. In practice, though, F1nn5ter recommends that everyone play by their own rules, just like he does.
“Whenever I tell people about this in real life, what I say is, ‘I just don’t care.’ And if you’re gonna be playing around with your expression or gender, you shouldn’t either,” he said. “In 10 years, there’s no way people are gonna be making coming-out videos. But I get this has been a pretty big part of my content over the years as I slowly figured stuff out, so it’s worth saying.”
“Also, I’m bi! I like dudes,” he added.
F1nn5ter’s shown support for trans folks since long before his own coming-out went viral. In May of 2023, F1nn5ter and his viewer TenMuses donated $50,000 to GenderGP, a private for-profit healthcare organization that provides gender-affirming care to trans folks in the U.K.
“A year ago I was told about the insane things going on with trans healthcare in the U.K. We’re talking 20-year waitlists to get sometimes life-saving medication. How can we help solve it?” F1nn5ter said of the donation at the time.
Nearly a full year later in late March of 2024, F1nn5ter’s donation came under fire from British newspaper The Times after puberty blockers were banned in the U.K., also doxxing his full legal name and location in the article.
“I made this donation without fundraising to help trans adults in the UK who couldn’t afford healthcare. Having said that, I have no problem with puberty blockers being prescribed to give people a better life,” F1nn5ter wrote on X. “I’ll happily pledge the entire donation amount again plus what was matched by my viewer at the time.”
But F1nn5ter later learned that GenderGP’s business model didn’t quite align with his intentions, as he revealed in a video titled “I Got Doxxed.” Instead, F1nn5ter said he was putting his next $50,000 donation toward a new non-profit charity of his own creation, though he couldn’t give any more details yet beyond providing an email address for inquiries in that video’s description.
“Could you imagine if F1nn5ter is your f*cking estrogen provider?” he said to close out the video. “I’m working on that!”
Since coming out, F1nn5ter’s kept the world updated on his transition, sharing the details of what it’s like to be on HRT in videos with titles like “Estrogen is making me shorter” and “The stages of HRT.” He’s also been connecting with trans fans online and in real life (including signing one fan’s estrogen).
i signed someone’s estrogen today chat https://t.co/ObA1jNP8qV
— F1NN5TER (@F1NN5TER) March 30, 2024
F1nn5ter proves that rigid labels and queerness simply don’t go hand-in-hand. He exemplifies what it looks like to live by your own rules, and what it means to give back to your community in the process.
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