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Even if you don't understand, you can 
always support us and be with us.

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Our identity is real and it exists.

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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 masculine 
nor completely feminine.

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So that can be "ungendered" or without
gender which is neutral,

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or it can be all the gender fluid
identities, including those

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who are gender fluid, demigendered, 
pangendered , etcetera.

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If you imagine gender as a spectrum 
with two poles - masculine and feminine -

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and a cursor that could be anywhere 
between them, it would include everyone

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who is gender fluid, demigender, 
pangender and so on.

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I never really identified with femininity
and when I was 18,

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I'd aleady started to ask myself 
questions about my 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. And
because he knew more about it than I did,

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he could help 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 explain your identity.

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So you can have a gender identity, for
example masculine, so you're a man.

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But your gender identity 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 female 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 wanted to change my first name.

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I was 20 years old so it was 2 years 
ago and my 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 was sufficiently deconstructed and
I felt very safe, very secure with her.

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My dad, that 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 really do that -

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I sent him a message because 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, that he loved me just as much.

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For my grandmother, it was loss obvious
because it was a foreign concept for her.

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She grew up in the country, 
then went toParis.

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She was with my grandfather for 50 years
and was very much cis-heteronormative,

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where she neve questioned her 
identity or that of others.

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So when I talked to her about it, 
she was a bit surprised,

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but she always tried to behave in the 
best way she could with me.

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She tried really hard. She almost never 
made mistakes in my first name.

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I'd made a request to change my fist name
in 2019, through my town's city hall.

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I got an application form that I filled
with testimonies from my family and

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friends to say that they used the first 
name Cami to talk 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.
I waited a few months.

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In fact, that 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 speak to them
using the wrong pronouns,

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which thus genders a non-binary person
who would have explicitly said

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to use neutral pronouns like iel.

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And instead people use pronouns that 
identify them as feminine or masculine.

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Personally, I use feminine pronouns in 
speaking and neutral pronouns to writing.

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It's true that in general I tend to 
say up front that I prefer people to use

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feminine pronouns 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
indentify their gender correctly,

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you can ask them their pronouns or 
wait until they identify their gender

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so you can follow their gendering.

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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 of those comments because I know

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that for the most part they're malicious 
or very insensitive.

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And they just bring me pain.

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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 year ago

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it was related to fashion, like 
unisex fashion and so on.

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That 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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Often enough, 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 that 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 it 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 the 
patterns of thought.

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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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There are those who will have medical
transitions, who have take hormones,

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who will have operations, other things.

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And no matter how they are 
going to 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.