Even if you don’t get it
you can still support and
respect our identity.
It’s valid and it exists.
Testimonials: Non-binary Identities
I’m Camille, 22, non-binary
and I’m here to talk about non-binarity.
Non-binary is an umbrella term
for all gender identities
that aren’t strictly male or female.
It could mean being no gender (agender)
or it could be all fluid identities,
as if we were imagining gender as a
spectrum with two poles mas. and fem.
masculine and feminine
We can move on this spectrum like a cursor
So, this includes people who are
gender-fluid, demi-gender, pangender, etc.
I never really identified with femininity.
At 18,
I started questioning my gender identity.
I was dating a trans man.
And he helped me put words to my identity:
non-binary.
I think because he had access to
more information than I did,
he was able to help me to find
the word of my identity.
Gender identity is about who we are
the gender you feel, live and experience.
Gender expression, on the other hand,
is how we present that identity to others.
For example, someone can identify as a man
so he is a man.
He can have a feminine gender expression,
with many makers considered
feminine in society.
Like Bilal Hassani, who is a man
but has a feminine gender expression.
When I came out as non-binary,
I told my parents
I wanted to change my name.
I was 20, so that was two years ago.
My mom was chill,
she was already very aware of gender topic
She is very open-minded,
and made me feel safe.
My dad was a bit trickier.
I waited longer to tell him and
ended up doing it over text.
Because it felt easier that way.
And he responded well.
He said he didn’t fully understand
but reassured me he’d support me
no matter what and
that it didn’t change anything for him.
He still loved me the same
My grandma had a harder time with it.
Because it was just so far from her world.
She grew up in the countryside,
later moved to Paris,
and was married to my grandpa for 50 years.
She was part of a cis-heteronormative way
where she never questioned her own identity
or anyone else’s.
So, when I told her about it,
she was a bit taken back.
But she’s always tried her best
to respect me
She makes a huge effort,
and she hardly ever messes up my name.
I applied to change my name in 2019.
I submitted my request
to the city town hall where I lived.
I picked up a file that I filled out
with statements from friends and family
confirming they used
the name Cami to address me.
I asked my school to write me a letter of
a letter of support and so on.
Then I submitted my application
and waited a few months.
In fact, it varies depending on the city,
and I was accepted for the name change.
Misgendering someone means
using the wrong pronouns for them.
So misgendering a non-binary person
who explicitly said to use neutral pron.
such as “they/them”, but someone refers
to them as “he” or “she” instead
Personally, I use “she/her” when spaeking
and neutral pronouns when writing.
I usually tend to say it straight away.
I prefer to be addressed with
feminine pronouns when speaking.
If the person doesn't say it and
you want to be sure about someone’s pron.
you can always ask,
or just wait and see how they refer to
themselves and follow their lead.
In previous videos, there were a lot of
comments invalidating our identities,
denying our gender expressions
and gender identities.
I don’t read those comments very much,
because I know most of them
come from ignorance or just plain malice
and they’d only upset me.
I once participated in a documentary
where you could hear people say that
non-binary was just a trend,
that it only appeared in the U.S. about ten years ago.
It was tied to fashion, unisex, etc.
But that’s completely false.
And I think it’s also a very white,
Eurocentric point of view,
because in many cultures,
many gender identities were totally
erased during colonization, quite simply.
Quite often, we hear that it's problematic
or awkward to keep creating
new gender labels to identify
and re-identify ourselves, etc.
But I think it's really important to
be able to identify with something,
even if we reject the one
we were assigned at birth.
It’s also necessary to get together
in a community to create a bond.
To know that you're not alone.
There's support.
There are other people who are like us,
who understand us, who listen to us.
If I had just one thing to say,
it would be this: .
Even if you don't get it,
you can still support and respect people.
You can learn yourself,
challenge old ways of thinking,
you can educate yourself,
and help those around you.
Even if you don’t fully grasp
what their gender identity means to them.
One last thing,
every non-binary people
express their identity differently.
Some will undergo medical transitions,
take hormones, have surgeries,
while others will not.
Someone transitions socially, medically,
or not at all.
Our identity remains legitimate
and it exists. And there are many of us.