Even if you are unfamiliar
you can always follow along and support us
Our identity and existence remains legitimate
Non-Binarity Cami's Testimony
My name is Cami, I am 22 years old and non-binary
and I'm here to discuss non-binary identity
Non-binary is an umbrella term
that includes many genre identities
that are neither exclusively masculine
nor exclusively feminine.
Including, for instance, agender
"A" meaning subtraction, without gender or gender neutral
Or, this can include gender fluid identities.
If we imagine gender as a spectrum with two poles
the masculine and the feminine.
We can imagine a sliding scale.
Including all the people who are genderfluid
demi-gender, pangender, etc.
I never really identified with femininity.
By 18 I had already begun to question
regarding my gender identity
then I met a trans man
who I was with for some time
and we began to put my identity into words,
which ended up being non-binary
I think it was because
he had much more information than me
that he helped me identify my identity in words.
Gender identity is who we are
It's the gender we feel,
that we live and that we experiment
Gender expression is what we show others
It is how we express our identity.
We can have a gender identity
for example: masculine
So, we are a man,
we will have an expression of gender
that will be feminine
with many signifiers considered feminine in society.
Like, for example, Balil Hassani, who is a man
with a feminine gender expression
I came out to my parents as non-binary
and that I wanted to change my name
at the same time.
I was 20 years old, it was two years ago
My mother took it very well
She was already very up-to-date on the idea of gender
She was understanding enough, and very safe
It made me feel secure.
My father was a different story
I put a little more time into talking with him
and I didn't
in reality.
I sent time a message in the end because it was easier for me
He received it well enough
He said that he didn't fully understand
but he would still be there to support me
and it didn't change anything for him.
For my grandmother, it wasn't as clear
because it was very foreign to her.
She grew up in the countryside, before moving to Paris.
She lived with my grandfather for 50 years.
She lived in very cis hetero-normative regime
where she never posed questions about identity
or the identity of others.
So when I told her, she was a little taken aback,
but she had always tried to act in a way
that was best for me.
She puts in enormous effort
she doesn't struggle as much with my preferred pronouns
I filled a request to change my first name
in 2019.
I filed a request
with the city hall in my town
I took a dossier which I had to fill
with testimonies from my close friends and familly
stating they use the name Cami
to address me.
I asked my school for a reference letter.
Then I returned my dossier.
I had to wait several months.
It varies by city.
And, I received an acceptation of name change.
Improperly gendering a person is
addressing a person
using the wrong pronouns,
thus, gendering a non-binary person
who has explicitly said
use neutral pronouns like they
and or gendering as masculine or feminine
Me, personally, I use feminine pronouns when spoken out loud
and neutral when in writing.
In practice, I have a tendency to say
more often than not
that I prefer to be addressed with feminine pronouns
That being said, if a person doesn't say it themselves
and you want to gender them correctly
you can ask for their pronouns
or wait for them to say it themselves
to reflect their preferred gender
On my previous videos
there were many comments
which invalidated our identities,
which deny our gender expressions, and our gender identities
I read very few of these comments
simply because I know, for the most part,
they are malicious or very, very misconstrued,
and just want to cause me greif.
I previously participated in an exposé where it was said that
it was a trending fad,
that it appeared out of nowhere,
in the United States, in the last decade,
that it was tied, really, to the fashion
the unisex fashion, etc.
This was completely false. And I think it was also
a super white point of view, Eurocentric point of view,
because, in numerous cultures
we find many gender identities
that were completely erased
during colonialism, straight up.
All to often, we hear that it's problematic,
or that it's annoying to recreate more and more ways to identify, reidentify, etc.,
but I think it's super important
to be able to choose in the first place how we identify,
not the identity that was given to us arbitrarily.
I think it is also important to have a community,
to create connection, to know we're not alone,
that there is support,
that there are other people that are like us,
that understand us, that listen to us.
If I have one thing to say
I think it would be that, even if you don't understand,
you can always support and stay open-minded.
You can learn,
you can deconstruct regimes of thought.
You can relearn, you can hep those close to you,
even if you don't fully understand
everything that encompasses their gender identity.
Secondly, it's that everyone who is non-binary
has their own way of expressing their identity,
that there are people who will have medical transitions,
who will take hormones, who will get operations elsewhere
and that, no matter how someone chooses to transition,
whether that's socially, medically, etc.
Our identities remain legitimate, they exist,
and we're here to stay.