Even if you don't understand,
You can always support and stand with us.
Our identity is still real
and exists.
My name is Cami, I am 22 years old, I am non-binary
and I am here to talk about it.
Non-binary is an umbrella term
which emcompasses all gender identities
who are neither exclusively masculine
nor feminine.
It can be agender, 'a' being an absence
of gender, which means neutral
or it can be genderfluid,
like if we imagined gender being on a spectrum with two polarities,
masculine and feminine.
We can have a slider that moves for
everyone that is genderfluid,
demigender, pangender, etc.
I never really identified as feminine.
At 18 years old, I already started
questioning my gender identity
and I met a trans man,
whom I was with for some time,
and we were able to come up with a group of words on my identity,
which was non-binary.
I think that it was because of him
being more informed than me,
that he knew how to help find the words
surrounding my identity.
Gender identity is what defines us.
It is the gender we feel,
the way we live, the way we experiment.
Gender expression
is what we show to others.
It's the way we will express our identity.
We can have a gender identity,
for example, masculine:
we are a man,
and we will have a gender expression
like feminine, with many indicators
that society would consider as feminine.
For example, Bilal Hassani, who is a man
with a gender expression as feminine.
I told my parents I was non-binary
and I wanted to change my first name
at the same time.
I was 20 years old, it has been 2 years.
My mother took it very well.
She was already knowledgeable on questions of gender.
She had already broken it down and was safe.
I felt like I was safe.
My father was a little more delicate.
I had to take more time talking about it with him
and I did not end up doing it
for real.
I sent him a message,
because it was easier for me to manage.
He reacted kind of well.
He said he didn't understand it all,
but in all scenarios, he would be there to support me
and that it changes nothing for him,
that he loves me the same.
For my grandmother, it was a little less obvious,
because it was a strange thing for her.
She grew up on the countryside. Then she moved to Paris.
She lived with my grandfather for 50 years.
She existed in a place that was very cis heteronormative
where she never had to question her identity
or the identity of others.
When I talked to her about it, she was dumbfounded,
but she always stayed by me and kept
her composure
in the best way she could with me.
She made huge efforts,
almost never making mistakes
in the use of my preferred name.
I filed a request for a first name change
in 2019.
I made the request
next to city hall in the place I lived.
I pulled out a file that I filled
with the witness of my loved ones
to say I was using the preferred name,
Cami,
to address myself.
I asked my school to draw up a support letter.
After, I dropped off my file.
I waited a few months.
It depends on the city hall,
but I got my approval to change my first name.
The fact of misgendering someone,
it's to address someone
using the wrong pronouns,
so to identify someone as non-binary
who has already explicitly said
to use neutral pronouns like, they/them,
and to instead use feminine or masculine.
Me, I personally use the pronouns that are
said to be feminine orally, but written neutrally.
But it is true in general,
I typically say right away,
that I preferrred to be addressed as
feminine orally.
After, if the person doesn't do the same
and you want to identify someone right,
you can ask them their pronouns
or wait for them to identify themselves
to follow their usage.
In the videos I made previously,
there were a lot of comments
that invalidates our identity,
that deny our gender expressions and identities.
After, I'm taken aback on these comments,
because I know for the most part,
they are malevolent or very insensitive,
and they just want to hurt me.
I already took part in a report in which we heard
that it was a fad,
that it only appeared in the past few years
in the U.S., it's been 10 years,
that it was very related to fashion,
unisex fashion, etc.
That is completely false. I also believe that
it is a super white and euro-centric point of view,
because in many cultures,
we find many gender identities
that were completely erased
during colonisation basically.
Often, we hear that it is problematic,
it's awkward to recreate cases and more cases on
identifying oneself or to reidentify, etc.
But I think it's also super important
to be able to identify in the first place
to get rid of an identity
that was arbitrarily assigned to us.
I think it is necessary
to find ourselves a community
to create relationships, to know we are not alone,
that there is support,
that there are other people like us,
that understand and hear us.
If I had one point to make,
it would be that even if you don't understand,
you can always support and stand with us.
You can learn and deconstruct
old ideologies.
You can inform yourself and help your loved ones,
even if you don't understand it,
what matters is their gender identity.
Another point, is that all non-binary people
have a different way of expressing their identity,
where some would
undergo medical procedures, take hormones,
have a surgery, others not,
and that despite the way
that we transition or not,
socially, medically, etc.
our identity is still real, it exists,
and we are very numerous.