Even if you don't understand it,
you can still support us and take care of us.
Our identities continue to be legitimate, and they exist.
[Testimonies: Being non-binary]
[Cami, 22, student] My name is Cami,
I am 22 years old, I am non-binary,
and I'm here to talk to you about being non-binary.
"Non-binary" is an umbrella term
that encompasses all gender identities
that are neither exclusively masculine nor exclusively feminine.
This can represent "agender", "a" meaning subtraction,
without a gender or being neutral
or it can represent all fluid gender identities;
we can imagine gender as a spectrum with two sides,
masculine and feminine,
and we have a cursor that moves.
So we have people who are genderfluid,
demigender, pangender, etc.
I never really identified with femininity.
At 18 years old, I began to ask myself questions about my gender identity,
and I met a transgender man who I was with for some time,
and we were able to put my identity into words,
which was "non-binary".
I think it's because he had a lot more knowledge than me
that he was able to help me find the words regarding my identity.
Gender identity is what we are.
Gender is what we feel, live, and experiment with,
and gender expression is what we show to others.
It's the way we express this identity.
For example, you could have a gender identity,
such as masculinity,
identifying as a man,
and you can have a gender expression that is feminine
using markers that are considered feminine in society.
For example, Bilal Hassani,
who is a man with a feminine gender expression.
I told my parents that I was non-binary
and that I would like to change my name as well.
I was 20 years old, so it's been 2 years.
My mom took it very well.
She was already very aware of topics surrounding gender.
She had dismantled these ideas, and was a safe person.
I felt secure.
With my dad, it was a little more delicate.
I took a little more time to talk to him about it
and I didn't do it in person.
I sent him a message, because it was easier for me to manage.
He reacted pretty well; he said he didn't understand everything,
but regardless, that he would be there to support me,
and that nothing would change for him, that he would love me the same.
With my grandmother, it was a bit trickier
because it was something very foreign to her.
She grew up on the countryside, then she went to Paris.
She lived with my grandfather for 50 years.
She was in cis, heteronormative environments
where she never questioned her own identity
or the identities of others.
When I spoke about it with her, she was a bit stunned,
but she always looked after and cared about me
to behave in the best way possible.
She has made enormous efforts;
she rarely makes mistakes with my name now.
I put in a request to change my name
in 2019.
I sent the request in
to the city hall of the town that I was living in.
I received a form that I filled out
with testimonies of my friends
that say they use the name Cami
to refer to me,
and I asked my school to write a letter of support.
Then, I submitted my case document.
I waited a few months.
This wait varies with city halls.
And then I received an approval for my name change.
Misgendering someone
is when you address someone
using the incorrect pronouns,
so gendering a non-binary person
that has already explicitly stated
that they use neutral pronouns, like "they",
and you gender them as masculine or feminine.
I personally use feminine pronouns when speaking,
and neutral pronouns when writing.
Generally,
I do have the tendency to say right away
that I prefer that I be referred to with feminine pronouns when speaking.
If a person doesn't do that,
and you would like to know for sure how to refer to them,
you can ask them for their pronouns
or wait for the person to refer to themselves
so you can follow suit.
In the videos that I have done previously,
there were a lot of comments
that invalidated our identities,
that denied our gender expressions and our gender identities.
Afterwards, I've read fewer of these comments,
mainly because for the most part,
they're malicious, or very insensitive,
and they're just going to hurt my feelings.
I've participated in a report where we heard that
being non-binary was a result of fashion;
that this just appeared in the past decade
in the US,
that this is closely related to fashion,
like unisex fashion, etc.
This is completely false.
I think that this is a hyper-White, hyper-Eurocentric point of view
because in many cultures, there are many gender identities
that were totally erased by colonization, simply put.
Frequently, we hear that this is problematic
or annoying to create more and more boxes
to self-identify with, to re-identify with, etc,
but I think that it's super important
to even be able to self-identify with something
in order to un-identify with an identity
that was arbitrarily assigned to us.
I think it's necessary 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 and listen to us.
If I had one takeaway for everyone,
I think it would be that even if you don't understand it,
you can still support us and take care of us.
You can learn, you can deconstruct
your current way of thinking.
You can teach yourself, help your friends,
even if you don't understand everything about gender identities.
A second thing would be that all non-binary people
have a different way of expressing their identity.
There are people who are going to
transition medically, take hormones,
undergo operations, and others won't,
and regardless of the way we transition or not,
socially or medically,
our identities continue to be legitimate, and they exist,
and we are a thriving community.
[COSMOPOLITON]