Even if you don't understand,
you can still support and help.
Our identity, it is valid
and it exists.
My name is Cami, I am 22 years old, I am non-binary,
and I'm here to talk about being non-binary.
Non-binary is an umbrella term
that includes all gender identities
that are neither exclusively masculine
nor exclusively feminine.
It can be agender, so "a" is the lack of gender,
genderless, which is neutral
or it can be all fluid identities
as if we imagined gender as a spectrum with two poles,
masculine and feminine.
We can have a curser that moves.
All gender fluid people,
demigender, pangender, etc.
I have never really identified with femininity.
At the age of 18, I already started questioning
my gender identity,
and I met a trans man, who I was dating
for some time,
and together we put my identity into words
that was non-binary.
I believe that he had more info than me,
which is why he knew how to help me find words about my identity.
Gender identity is what we are.
It is the gender that we feel, live, and experiment with.
And gender expression is what we show to others.
It is how we express this identity.
For example, you can have a gender identity
that is masculine: being a man,
and having a gender expression of a woman
with a lot of qualities considered feminine in a society.
Like, for example, Bilal Hassani, who is a man
with a feminine gender expression.
I told my parents I was non-binary,
and that I wanted to change my name at the same time.
It happened two years ago, I was 20 back then.
My mom took it well.
By then, she was up to date with gender issues.
She was already woke on such issues and super safe.
I felt safe.
With my dad, it was a bit trickier.
It took me a little bit longer to talk to him about it,
and I did not do it in person.
I sent him a text,
because it was easier for me to handle.
He took it quite well.
He said he didn't fully get it, but he would be there for me,
that it changed nothing for him, and he loved me the same.
For my grandma, it was a bit of a challenge
because it was something she was not very familiar with.
She grew up in the countryside. Later, she moved to Paris.
She was with my grandpa for 50 years.
She had very cisnormative beliefs,
which never made her question her own identity
or the identity of others.
When I talked to her about it, her mind was a bit blown,
but she always stayed put and held herself together
in the best way possible with me.
She puts in a lot of effort,
and she almost never makes mistakes in using the preferred name.
I requested a name change in 2019.
I submitted a request
to the town hall of the city where I lived.
I obtained a form that I filled out
with testimonies from my loved ones
saying that they would use the name Cami
when talking to me.
I asked my school to write me a letter of support.
I then submitted my application and waited for a few months.
Time varies, depending on the town hall.
And my request of the name change was accepted.
Misgendering a person means to address them
with the wrong pronouns,
so to gender a non-binary person that would have specifically said
to use neutral pronouns, like ‘they/them’
and to gender him or her by using feminine or masculine pronouns.
I, personally, use the pronouns that are considered feminine
when speaking and neutral ones when writing.
But it is true that in general, I tend to say it right away,
that I prefer people to address me with feminine pronouns when talking to me.
But if a person doesn't do it themselves,
and you want to make sure you are using the right pronouns,
you can ask them their pronouns or wait for that person
to address themselves in front of you, so you can follow suit.
Under the previous videos I made,
there were a lot of comments that invalidate our identities,
that don’t acknowledge our gender expressions and identities.
But to be honest, I rarely read those comments
simply because I know that for the most part,
they are either malicious or very, very insensitive,
and that they will just hurt my feelings.
I've already participated in a report where you could hear
that it was only a trend
and it only appeared a few years ago, 10, to be precise, in the US,
that it really had something to do with the trend,
the unisex culture, etc.
Well, that is completely false. I think it is also a very white
and very Eurocentric point of view,
because in many cultures, there are multiple gender identities
that were completely erased by colonisation, to put it simply.
Quite often, we hear that it is problematic,
that it is a pain to recreate more and more cases
to identify, re-identify, etc.
But I think it is super important
to be able to, in the first place, identify as something
in order to unidentify from an identity
that was imposed on us arbitrarily.
I think it is essential to surround yourself with a community,
to build a rapport, to know you are not alone
and there is support out there, and that there are other people like us
that get us and listen to us.
If there was one thing I could say, it would be this:
even if you don't get it, you can still support and help.
You can learn, you can think outside the box.
You can get informed and help your loved ones,
even if you do not get everything
about their gender identity.
Another thing to add is that all non-binary people
have a different way of expressing their identity.
There are people who will medically transition,
who will take hormones,
who will get a gender-affirming surgery, while others won't.
Regardless of the way in which we chose to transition or not,
socially, medically, etc.,
our identity, it is always valid and it does exist.
We are many.