Even if you don't understand, you can still support and uplift us.
Our identities continue to be legitimate and to exist.
[Non-binary Stories]
I'm Cami, I'm 22 years old, I'm non-binary,
and I'm here to talk about my identity.
Non-binary is an umbrella term that includes all gender identities
that are not exclusively masculine or exclusively feminine.
So, it represents both agender, "a" meaning subtraction,
without gender, which is neutral and also all the fluid gender identities
like if we imagine gender as a spectrum with two sides, masculine and feminine,
and a cursor that moves. So, all the people who are
genderfluid, demigender, pangender, etc.
I never really identified with femininity.
When I was 18, I started to ask myself questions
about my gender identity and I met a trans man,
who I was with for some time, and we finally put my identity into words
which were non-binary.
I think it's because he had way more info than me,
that he knew how to help find the words for my identity.
Gender identity is what we are.
It's the gender we feel, live, and experiment with
and gender expression is what we show others.
It's how we express that identity.
So, you could have, for example, a gender identity
that is masculine: so, a man, and you could have
a feminine gender expression and present using markers
considered to be feminine.
Like Bilal Hassani, who is a man
with a feminine gender expression.
I told my parents I was non-binary
and that I also wanted to change my name at the same time.
I was 20, so that was 2 years ago,
and my mom took the news very well.
She was already up to date with gender issues.
She had deconstructed those concepts and was very safe.
I felt secure.
With my dad, it was a little more delicate.
I took a little more time to talk to him and I didn't do it in person.
I sent him a message because it was easier for me to handle,
and he reacted pretty well.
He said he didn't understand everything, but he would support me
and that it changed nothing for him, that he loved me the same.
With my grandma, it was a little tricky because it's something
very unfamiliar for her.
She grew up in the countryside. Then, she moved to Paris.
She lived with my grandpa for 50 years.
She lived in contexts that were cis and heteronormative,
she never really asked herself about her identity or others'.
So, when I discussed it with her, she was shocked,
but she's always looked out and wanted the best for me.
She's trying her best;
she rarely makes any mistakes with my name now.
I made a request to change my name in 2019.
I submitted the request to the city I was living in.
I obtained a form that I filled with evidence
from my friends that proved they use the name Cami when referring to me.
I asked my school to write a letter of support.
Then, I submitted my form. I waited a couple of months.
The time varies from city to city.
And I got my name change accepted.
The act of misgendering someone, is to address that person
while using the wrong pronouns for them.
Using gendered pronouns for a non-binary person
who explicitly said to use neutral pronouns like "them"
and to refer to them with feminine or masculine pronouns.
Personally, I use feminine pronouns
when speaking and neutral ones when writing.
But, in general, I have a habit of saying right away
that I prefer to use feminine pronouns when speaking.
If a person doesn't do that
and you want to make sure you're using the right pronouns,
you can ask for them or wait until the person refers to themselves
and follow their lead.
In the videos I've made previously, there are a lot of comments
invalidating and denying our gender expression and identity.
Personally, I rarely read those kinds of comments
because I know that most of them are malicious
or very insensitive and will just bother me.
I've already participated in a report where there were comments like:
this is just a trend, that it's only appeared
in the last few years in the US, 10 years ago,
that it had a connection to fashion, the unisex fashion trend, etc.
Well, that's completely false. I think that it's also
a very white and very Eurocentric perspective
because in a lot of cultures, we find many gender identities
that were fully erased during colonization, simply put.
Frequently, we hear that it's problematic or that it's annoying to recreate
more and more ways to identify and re-identify etc.,
but I think that it's super important to be able to, primarily,
identify as something so you can un-identify from an identity
that was assigned to you randomly.
I think that it's also necessary to find yourself a community,
to make friends, know you're not alone,
that there's support, and that there's other people like us,
that know and listen to us.
If I had only one thing to say, it would be: even if you don't understand,
you can still support and uplift us.
You can learn, you can deconstruct your ways of thinking.
You can educate yourself,
help your friends, even if you don't understand everything
about their gender identity.
A second thing,
is that all non-binary people have different ways
of expressing their identity, there are some
who will medically transition, take hormones,
undergo surgery, while others won't,
and no matter the ways in which we transition or not,
socially, medically, etc., our identities continue to be legitimate,
they exist, and we aren't going anywhere.