Even if you do not understand,
you can still support and assist us.
Our identity remains legitimate and real.
Testimonies: Nonbinary
My name is Cami, I'm 22, and I'm nonbinary
I'm here to talk about nonbinary
Nonbinary is an umbrella term
gathering all gender identities
that are not exclusively masculine
nor feminine
It can be agender with the substration "a"
without a gender, someone neutral
or it can be all fluid identities,
as if we thought of gender
as a spectrum with two poles, a masculine and a feminine one.
It can be like a cursor that moves.
All people that are genderfluid,
demigender, pangender, etc.
I never really identified with feminity
At 18, I already started
to have doubts about my gender identity,
then I met a trans man,
whom I dated for some time
and we could put words on my identity
which is nonbinary
I think it's because
he had more info than I did
that he was able to help me find the words
for my identity.
Gender identity is what we are.
It is the gender we feel,
we live and experiment.
And gender expression,
is what we will show to people.
It's the way we express this identity.
We can have a gender identity,
for instance, masculine:
we are a man,
and we can have a feminine
gender expression with a lot of indicators
considered feminine in society.
For example, RuPaul, who's a man
with a feminine gender expression.
I told my parents that I was nonbinary
and that I wished to change my name
at the same time.
I was 20, it was two years ago.
My mom took it really well.
She was already aware of gender questions.
She was mostly deconstructed and very safe.
I felt safe.
For my father, the subject was a bit more sensitive.
It took me a little longer to tell him
and I didn't tell him face-to-face.
I sent him a text, since it was easier for me.
He reacted pretty well.
He said he didn't understand everything,
but that in any case, he would be there to support me
and that it didn't change anything for him, he still loved me the same.
For my grandmother, it was not easy,
since she was unfamiliar with the subject.
She grew up in the countryside. Then, moved to Paris.
She lived with my grandfather for 50 years.
She was surrounded by cisgender and heteronomous patterns,
where she never questioned her identity
or someone else's.
When I told her, she was dumfounded,
but she always watched over me and cared for me
in the best way possible.
She made many efforts, she rarely makes mistakes anymore
in using my preferred name.
I requested a change of name
in 2019.
I put in a request to the city hall
of the town I used to live in.
I withdrew a record I filled up
with testimonies of my family and friends
saying they called me "Cami".
I asked my school to write a support letter.
Then, I handed in my record.
I waited a few months.
It depends on the city halls
And I received an acceptance to change my name.
Misgendering someone,
is to address that person,
by using the wrong pronouns,
so, gender a nonbinary person
who would have explicitly said
to use neutral pronouns like "they/them",
and gender them as feminine or masculine.
Personally, I use the pronouns
said feminine in speaking but neutral in writing.
It is true usually,
I tend to say it right away,
that I prefer be referred as
feminine pronouns in speaking.
However, if the person doesn't do it by themselves
and you want to be sure not to misgender them
you can ask for their pronouns
or wait for them to gender themselves in front of you
to follow their gendering.
In the videos I previously made,
there are a lot of comments
invalidating our identities,
denying our gender expressions and identities
I rarely read these comments,
especially because I know
that most are mean or extremely clumsy,
and that they will only hurt my feelings.
I have already taken part in a report in which we could hear
that it was a trend,
that it only appeared a few years ago,
10 years ago, in the US,
that it was really linked to a trend,
the unisex trend, etc.
Which is completely false. I believe it is also
an extremely white and Eurocentric perspective,
since in many cultures,
we find several gender identities
that have been erased
during colonization, that's it.
We often hear that it is problematic,
it is embarrassing to keep creating more and more boxes
to identify ourselves again and again, etc.
but I think it is really important
to, first, be able to identify with something
to unidentify from an identity
which was arbitrarily assigned to us.
I believe it is necessary
to gather in a community
to bond and know we are not alone,
that there is support, and others like us,
who understands and listens to us.
If I had to say one thing,
I think it would be that although you do not understand,
you can always support and assist.
You can learn, you can deconstruct
ways of thinking.
You can inform yourselves, help your surroundings,
even if you do not understand
the importance of their gender identity.
Another thing is that each nonbinary person
has a different way of expressing their identity,
some people will have medical transitions,
some will take hormones,
some will undergo surgeries, others won't,
and no matter the way
we transition or not,
socially, medically, etc.
Our identity remains legitimate,
it exists, and we are many.