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My name is Camille, I'm 22 years old.
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I'm non-binary and I'm here to talk to
you about nonbinarity.
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Nonbinarity is an umbrella term that
includes all the gender identities
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that are neither completely male
nor completely female.
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It could be agender, where "a" means
without, which is neutral,
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or it could be all the gender fluid
identities, including those
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who are gender fluid, demigendered,
pangendered , and so on.
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If you imagine gender as a spectrum
with two poles - male and female -
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and a cursor that could move
anywhere between them,
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it would include all of
those gender identities.
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I never really identified with femininity
and when I was 18,
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I'd aleady started to question my own
gender identity.
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I met a trans man I was with for awhile
and together, we found the words
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for my identity, which was non-binary.
Because he knew more about it than I did,
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he helped me find the words for
my gender identity.
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Gender identity, it's who you are, the
gender that you feel, that you try out.
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And gender expression is what you
show to others.
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It's the way you express your identity.
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So you can have, for example, a male
gender identity, so you're a man.
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But your gender expression could
be feminine
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with lots of markers that our society
considers to be feminine.
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For example Bilal Hissani, who is a man
with a feminine gender expression.
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I told my parents I was non-binary and at
the same time,
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that I also wanted to change
my first name.
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I was 20 years old so it was 2 years
ago and my mom took it very well.
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She was already totally up to speed
about questions of gender.
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She had thought through the issues and
I felt very safe, very secure with her.
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My dad, it was a little more delicate.
I took more time to talk to him about it.
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And in fact I didn't actually do that -
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I sent him a message as it was easier
for me to handle. And he reacted well.
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He said he didn't understand everything
but he'd always be there to support me,
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and it that it didn't change anything
for him, he loved me just as much.
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For my grandma, it was more complicated
since the concept was so foreign to her.
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She grew up in the country,
then went to Paris.
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She was with my grandfather for 50 years
and was very much cis-heteronormative,
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where she never questioned her
identity or that of others.
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So when I talked to her about it, she was
kind of thrown for a loop
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but she always did the best she
could with me.
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She tried really hard and almost always
got my first name right.
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I made a request to change
my name in 2019.
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I made the request through
my town's city hall.
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I filled out an application form with
statements from my family and friends
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saying that they called me Cami
when they talked to me.
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I asked my school to write a letter
of support, and so on.
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Next, I submitted the application,
and waited a few months.
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The time varies from city to city,
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but my request to change
my name was accepted.
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To misgender someone is to refer
to them using the wrong pronouns,
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and this assigns a gender
to a non-binary person,
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who would have explicitly said
to use neutral pronouns like "iel".
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And instead people use pronouns that
identify that person as female or male.
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Personally, I use female pronouns in
speaking and neutral pronouns in writing.
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l usually tell people up front that
I prefer they use female pronouns
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when they speak to me.
If they don't do that on their own
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and you want to be sure that you
identify their gender correctly,
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you can ask them their pronouns or
wait until they identify their gender
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themselves so you can follow their lead.
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In the videos I made earlier,
there were a lot of comments
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that invalidated our identities, that
denied our gender expressions
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and our gender identities. After, I read
very few comments because I know
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they're usually malicious or very
insensitive. And they really hurt me.
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I've already taken part in a report where
you could hear that it's just a fad,
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that it appeared a few years ago.
In the United States, about 10 years ago.
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It was related to fashion, like
unisex fashion and so on.
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That's completely false and I also think
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it's a point of view that's totally
white and absolutely Eurocentric.
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Because in so many cultures, there are
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several gender identities that were
completely erased during colonisation.
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We hear it's problematic or awkward
to create more and more categories
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for people to self identify and re-self
identify. But I think it's so important,
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in the first place, to be able to self
identify with something in order to
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de-self identify with an identity
that was arbitrarily assigned.
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And I think it's also necessary to find a
community, to create a link,
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to know we're not alone, that there's
support, that there are other people
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who are like us, who understand us,
who listen to us.
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If I have only one thing to say, it would
be that even if you don't understand,
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you can always support us and be with us.
You can learn.
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You can deconstruct your patterns
of thought. You can inform yourself.
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You can help your friends and family,
even if you don't entirely understand
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the impact of what their gender
means to them.
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A second thing is that all non-binary
people have different ways
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of expressing their identity.
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Some will have medical transitions,
some will take hormones,
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have operations, other things. And
no matter how they transition or not,
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socially, medically and so on,
our identity is legitimate and it exists.
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And there are many of us.