Even if you don't understand,
you can still support and stand with us.
Our identities are real and valid
[Testimonies- non-binary identities]
My name is Cami, I'm 22 years old and non-binary
and I'm here to speak about non-binary identities.
Non-binary is an umbrella term
for all gender identities
that are not exclusively masculine or feminine.
So this includes agender: which means the absence of, or neutral gender
or it can include all gender-fluid identities.
If we imagined gender was a spectrum
with two ends: masculine and feminine,
Some people move along the spectrum.
There are people who are gender fluid,
demigender, pangender, etc.
I never really identified with femininity.
At 18, I had already started questioning my gender identity,
and I met a trans man
that I dated for a while
and together we labelled my identity: non-binary.
I think it's because he was more knowledgeable than me,
he was able to help me find the words
for my gender identity.
Gender identity is who we are.
It's what we feel, live and experience.
Gender expression
is what we show to others.
It's how we choose to express that identity.
It's possible to have a gender identity,
for example, masculine: where you are a man,
but your gender expression can be feminine, with many traits
considered stereotypically feminine in society.
For example, Bilal Hassini is a man
with a feminine gender expression.
I told my parents that I was non-binary
and that I wanted to change my name at the same time.
I was 20 years old, this was a couple years ago.
My mother took the news well.
She was already familiar with queerness.
She was progressive and I felt sad with her.
It was a more delicate situation with my dad.
It took me a bit longer to tell him
and I didn't do it in person.
I sent him a message, because it was easier for me to cope with.
He reacted quite well.
He told me that he didn't understand everything
but he would always support me.
It wouldn't change how he viewed me, he would love me the same.
It was harder for my grandmother to understand
because it was a concept she was unfamiliar with.
She grew up in the country then moved to Paris.
She was with my grandfather for 50 years.
She was in a very cis-heteronormative environment,
where she never questioned her identity
or the gender identity of others.
She was a bit taken aback when I told her,
but she always tried to
be respectful around me.
She makes tremendous effort
and rarely messes up and uses my dead name.
I applied for a name change in 2019
I submitted a request to my local city hall.
I filled out a document which included
testimonies of those close to me
confirming they address me by the first name "Cami".
I asked my school for a letter of support.
After submitting all the documents, I waited several months,
- the wait time varies amongst city halls,
and my name change was approved.
Misgendering someone means you're addressing them
using the wrong pronouns.
So you're gendering a non-binary person
who already explicitly stated
that they use neutral pronouns: "they' them"
and you're gendering them as male or female.
Personally, I use female pronouns when speaking,
and neutral pronouns when writing.
But in general, I tend to tell people right away
that I prefer being addressed with
feminine pronouns when speaking.
If someone doesn't tell you themselves
and you want to ensure you're gendering them correctly,
you can ask them their pronouns
or wait for them to gender themselves and follow suit.
On the videos I've made in the past,
there were a lot of comments invalidating our identities,
and not acknowledging our gender expressions and identities.
I rarely read those comments
because I know that they are malicious or insensitive
and they're meant to cause me pain.
I've done a documentary where they
said non-gendered people were following a trend
and they've only been seen in the
United-States within the past 10 years;
that it's related to fashion, unisex fashion.
That's completely false. I think that is
a very white and Eurocentric viewpoint
because in many cultures
we can find many different gender identities
that were completely erased due to colonisation
Often enough, we hear that it's problematic and uncomfortable
using labels to identify and re-identify, etc.
but I think that it is super important
to be able to identify ourselves as something that distances
from the identity that we were assigned arbitrarily.
I think you need to find a community
to create a bond, to know that you're not alone,
that you have support, that there are other people like us,
that understand us, that listen to us.
If I could say one thing,
it would be that even if you don't understand,
you can always support and be an ally.
You can learn, you can unlearn ingrained ways of thinking,
you can educate yourself, you can help your loved ones,
even if you don't understand
everything related to their gender identity.
My last point is that all non-binary people
have different ways of expressing their identity,
there are those who transition medically, that take hormones,
and undergo gender-affirming surgery, or not,
regardless of the way we transition, or not, - socially, medically, etc.
our identity is valid, it exists and our numbers are growing.