Even if you don't understand,
you can always support and accompany us.
Our identity, it is real and it exists.
[Non-binary stories]
My name is Cami, I am 22, I am non-binary
and I'm here to talk about non-binary identities.
Non-binary, it's an umbrella term
which covers all gender identities
that are not exclusively male
or exclusively female.
It could be agender, so "a", the subtraction
is no gender, which is neutral
or it could be all the fluid identites,
like if we imagine gender as a spectrum with two sides
male and female
We can have a cursor that moves along the spectrum
People who are gender fluid, demigender, pangender, etc.
I never really identified feminine.
At 18, I already started to ask myself questions about my gender identity,
and I met a trans man,
who I was with for some time,
and we were able to put my identity into words together,
which was non-binary
I think it was because he had a lot more information than I did,
so he was able to help me find the words concerning my identity.
Gender identity, it's who we are.
It's the gender we feel, that we live, that we try out.
And the expression of gender,
it's what we're going to show others.
It's how we express this identity.
You can have a gender identity,
for example, male - you are a man, and you'll have a female gender expression
with a lot of markers considered feminine by society.
Like for example, Bilal Hassani, who is a man
with a female gender expression.
I told my parents that I was non-binary
and that I wanted to change my first name at the same time.
I was 20, that was 2 years ago.
My mother took it really well.
She was already well versed in gender issues.
She was deconstructed enough and really safe.
I felt secure.
My father, it was a bit more delicate.
It took me longer to tell him,
and I didn't do it in person.
I sent him a message because it was easier for me to manage.
and uhh
He reacted quite well.
He said he didn't fully understand,
but that in any case he would be there to support me
and that it changed nothing for him,
that he loved me the same.
For my grandmother, it was a bit less clear,
because it was something far removed from her.
She grew up in the country. Then she moved to Paris.
She lived with my grandfather for 50 years.
She was in very cis heteronormative patterns,
where she never questioned her identity or the identity of others.
When I told her about it, she was a bit taken aback,
but she has always been careful to behave in the best possible way with me
She makes a huge effort, she's hardly every wrong
in the use of my chosen name.
I applied for a first name change in 2019.
I applied with the town hall of the city I lived in.
I withdrew a file that I filled out with testimonials from my family and friends
to say they used the first name Cami to address me.
I asked my school to write me a letter of support, etc.
Then I submitted my application.
I waited a few months.
It varies according to the town hall.
And I was accepted to change my first name.
Misgendering someone, means addressing them using the wrong pronouns.
So to gender a non-binary person, who explicitly said
use neutral pronouns, like the pronoun "they",
and to then gender them female or male.
Me personally, I use the pronouns female when spoken to and neutral when written.
But it's true that in general,
I have the tendency to say them immediately,
because I prefer to be addressed with female pronouns when spoken to.
After, if the person doesn't do it back
and that you want to be sure to gender them correctly,
you can ask them their pronouns or wait until they are gendered in front of you
to know their gender.
On the videos that I previously did, there were a lot of comments
that invalidate our identities, that deny our gender expressions and identities
After that, I don't read these comments much.
Precisely because I know for the most part, they are malicious or very, very clumsy,
and they're just going to make me feel bad.
I once took part in a report in which it was suggested
that it was just a trend, that it showed up only a few years ago
in the US, 10 years ago,
that it really had something to do with trends, unisex trends, etc.
That is completely not true, and I also think that it's a
hyper-white and hyper-Eurocentric perspective
because in a lot of cultures, there are multiple gender identities,
that were completely erased, by colonization.
Quite often, we hear that it's problematic,
it's annoying to recreate to boxes and more boxes
to identity yourself, reidentify yourself, etc.,
but I think that it's really important
to be able to identify with something in the first place,
to disidentify from an identity, that was assigned to us arbitrarily.
I think that it's necessary to come together as a community
to create connections, to know we are not alone,
that there is support, that there are other people like us,
who understand us, who listen to us.
If I only had one thing to say,
I think it would be even if you don't understand,
you can always support and accompany us.
You can learn, you can deconstruct patterns of thought.
You can get information, you can help your loved ones,
even if you don't understand the full significance of their gender identity.
A second thing is that all non-binary people
have a different way of expressing their identity,
there will be people who will have medical transitions, take hormones,
who will have operations, others who won't,
and that it doesn't matter whether we can transition or not,
socially, medically, etc.
Our identity is real, it exists
and there are a lot of us.