Even if you don’t understand,
you can still support and care for us.
Our identity is still valid and it exists.
[TESTIMONIES: Non-binary Identities]
I’m Cami, I’m 22, I’m non-binary
I’m here to talk about being non-binary.
Non-binary is an umbrella term
that covers all gender identities
that are neither exclusively masculine
nor exclusively feminine.
It can include agender, being neutral
or without gender,
or it can include all fluid identities,
imagining gender on a spectrum
with two poles: masculine and feminine.
You may have a gender that shifts.
All people who are gender-fluid,
demigender, pangender, etc. are included.
I never really identified with femininity.
By 18,
I started questioning my gender identity,
and I met a trans man
who I dated for a while.
Together we found words for my identity,
which was non-binary.
I think it’s because of him having a lot
more insight than me that he could help me
find the words surrounding my identity.
Gender identity is who we are; it’s gender
that we feel, live and experiment.
And gender expression,
it’s what we show to others.
It’s the way we express that identity.
You can have a masculine gender identity,
for example: so you’re a man,
and you have a feminine gender expression
with traits deemed feminine by society.
Like Bilal Hassani, for example, is a man
with a feminine gender expression.
I told my parents that I’m non-binary and
I wanted to change my name all at once.
I was 20, so it’s been 2 years now.
My mom took it quite well. She was
already well versed in gender diversity.
She analysed her views and was very safe.
I felt secure.
I was a little more delicate with my dad.
I took a bit longer to talk to him
and I didn’t do it in person.
I messaged him,
since it was easier for me to manage.
He took it well. He said he
couldn’t understand at all, but that he'd
still be there to support me regardless
and that it changed nothing for him.
He didn’t love me any differently.
For my grandma, it was a little trickier
since it wasn’t something she'd heard of.
She grew up in the country-side,
moving to Paris and living
with my grandpa for 50 years.
She was in cis-heteronomative patterns,
never questioning her identity
or anyone else’s.
When I told her, she was taken aback,
but she was always careful to treat me in
the best way she could.
She makes a big effort, she almost never
makes a mistake using my chosen name.
I requested my name change in 2019.
I made a request at city hall in my town.
I made a file, filling it with testimony
from those close to me to note that
they called me by Cami.
I got a letter of support from my school,
and I submitted it. It took a few months,
(the wait depends on the city hall),
and I got an acceptance to change my name.
The act of misgendering someone is when
you address them using the wrong pronouns.
So it's gendering a non-binary person who
explicitly asked for you to use
neutral pronouns, like “they”, by using
feminine or masculine pronouns.
Personally, I use feminine pronouns
verbally and neutral pronouns in writing.
But I tend to say that I prefer feminine
pronouns when speaking right away.
If they don’t tell you their’s in response
and you want to ensure you gender them
correctly, you can ask them their pronouns
or wait for them to refer to their
own gender to follow their gendering.
The videos I made in the past have plenty
of comments invalidating our identities,
denying our gender expressions and
identities. After that, I stopped reading
most comments since I know that, for the
most part, they’re malicious or really
misinformed, and just want to hurt me.
I once took part in a report where
you'd hear that "it's a fad",
"it just popped up in the last 10 years
in the USA", "it's about fashion",
"Unisex fashion", etc.
That is completely untrue.
I think that's a super white and
eurocentric point of view since we see
numerous gender identities in plenty of
other cultures that were totally erased
during colonisation, period.
We often hear that it’s problematic,
it’s uncomfortable having to reshape boxes
and add more boxes, to identify yourself,
reidentify yourself, etc., but I think
the ability to identify with something
in the first place and to disidentify with
an identity that we were assigned
arbitrarily is super important.
I think it’s also necessary
to find yourself in a community to
make connections, to know
you’re not alone, there is support,
there are others like us,
who understand us, who listen to us.
If I could say one thing, I think it would
be that even if you don’t understand,
you can still support and care for us.
You can learn, deconstruct your thought
patterns, re-educate yourself, help those
close to you, even if you don’t understand
the full scope of their gender identity.
A second thing is that each non-binary
person has a different way of expressing
their identity. There are those who will
medically transition, who will use hormone
replacement therapy, who will undergo
gender-affirming surgery, and those
who won’t. Regardless of the way you
decide to transition or not,
socially, medically, etc.,
our identity, it’s still valid, it exists,
and we’re here to stay.