Charlie McDonnell has made her return to YouTube after coming out as trans.
Back in October, the popular Twitch streamer took to Instagram to share a major update regarding her gender identity.
“Gender reveal. Still going by Charlie but the new pronouns are she/they,” Charlie wrote alongside the trans flag.
Since that fateful day, the beloved social media personality has kept a relatively low profile.
However on 19 January, McDonnell surprised fans when she made her highly anticipated return to YouTube.
At the start of her video, the young talent addressed her long absence from the platform before joking about the “elephant in the room.”
“If it has been a while since you last saw me, I will now address the elephant in the room… I got bangs,” she joked.
“I mean, no I’m a woman now. Surprise. So yeah, I’m a transgender woman. My pronouns are she/they, and I’m continuing to use the name Charlie.”
After delivering the “headlines,” McDonnell gave insight into why she decided to return to the YouTube world.
“I have decided that I am interested in, sort of, dipping my toe back into the waters of YouTube, seeing how it feels,” she explained.
“I’ve been gone for quite a while. A lot’s changed, and I felt like maybe if I came back, perhaps I might enjoy doing it again.”
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The Twitch streamer then tackled questions from her Instagram followers, who asked about her transition, old videos and future goals.
When asked if her public persona stopped her from embracing her identity, McDonnell stated: “You really hit the nail on the head with that one. So I stopped making YouTube videos because making them made me feel unhappy.
“When I decided I was gonna leave YouTube, the kind of reason that I gave people was I felt like I came up with this internet persona charlieissocoollike when I was 16 years old.
“And you know clearly I was not that person, and so I felt like it was really beneficial to me to take this big step away from YouTube to be able to really figure out who the hell I am.”
Later in the video, McDonnell revealed that she privated all her old videos due to them not representing her gender identity as a trans woman.
“It was important to me to make sure that any internet presented me as the person I am now,” she explained.
In regards to whether she would ever rerelease her old videos, the screenwriter revealed that she might make them “unlisted.”
Towards the end of the Q&A, McDonnell updated fans on how her hormone therapy treatment was going – which she started four months before filming the video.
“I’ve been having a lot more emotions than I used to, and I’m trying to really see that as a good thing as someone, I think, who was a little emotionally stunted,” she said.
“But my body is changing in ways that I enjoy, so that part of puberty two I am appreciating.”
Check out Charlie McDonnell’s heartwarming YouTube comeback here or below.
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