Even if you don't understand
You can can still support and stand with us
Our identity is still legitimate
And it exists
Testimonies: being non binary
My name is Cami, I’m 22 years old and I'm non-binary
And I’m here to talk about being non-binary
It's an umbrella term
That groups all gender identities
That are neither exclusively masculine
Nor exclusively feminine
This could be agender, “a” means subtraction
Without gender, which is neutral
Or it could be all fluid identities
Like if we imagine gender as a spectrum with two ends
Masculine and feminine
We could have a cursor that moves
All gender fluid people
Demigender, pangender, etc
I never identified with femininity
At 18, i already started
Asking myself questions about my gender identity
And I met a trans man
Who I was with for a bit
And together we could put my identity into words
That is non-binary
I think it was because he
Had much more knowledge than me
That he knew how to help me find the words
for my identity
Gender identity, it’s what we are
It's the gender we feel
That we feel and experiment with
And gender expression
It’s what we show to others
It's how we will express that identity
We can have a gender identity
For example, masculine
one is a man
And we’ll have a gender expression
that is feminine, with many indicators
that are considered feminine in society
like Bilal Hassani, who is a man
who has a feminine gender expression
I told my parents I was non-binary
and that I wanted to change my name
at the same time
I was 20, this was two years ago
My mother took it very well
She was very up to date on gender issues
She was open-minded et safe
I felt safe with her
With my father it was a bit more delicate
I took more time to talk to him
And i didn't do it In person
I sent him a text
Because it was easier for me to manage
He reacted well enough
He said he didn’t understand it all
But that he would always be there to support me
And it didn't change anything for him,
he loves me the same
For my grandmother it was slightly less obvious
Because it was something that was not relevant to her
She grew up in the countryside. Then she came to Paris
She lived with my grandfather for 50 years
She was in a very cis heteronormative pattern
Where she never questioned her identity
or others
So when i told her It was like the earth fell from under her
But she always did her best to watch over me
She made a huge effort
She doesn’t really mess up anymore
In using my name
I applied to change my name in 2019
I applied to the city hall in the city where I lived
I took out a file that I filled out
with statements from my loved ones
that said they’d been using the name Cami to address me
I asked my school to make me a letter of support, etc
Then I dropped off the file
I waited a couple months
This varies from place to place
And they accepted my name change
To misgender someone
is to address that person
using the wrong pronouns
So gendering a non-binary person
that explicitly said
To use neutral pronouns like “they”
and to gender them as feminine or masculine
Personally i use feminine pronouns out loud and neutral in writing
But in general
I have the tendency to say right away
I’d prefer if you address me
With feminine pronouns out loud
Afterwards, if the person doesn’t do it themselves
and you want to be sure you’re gendering them correctly
You can ask them their pronouns
Or wait until the person genders themselves in front of you
To follow how they do it
In my previous videos
there were many comments
that invalidated our identities
denied our gender expression and identities
After that, I rarely read those comments
because I know for the most part
they’re ill-intended or very insensitive
and they’ll just hurt me
I participated in a report where we could hear
that it was a trend,
It had only appeared a couple years ago
In the States, 10 years ago
and it was linked to fashion
Unisex fashion, etc
That was completely false I think it’s also
a very white, eurocentric perspective
because in so many cultures,
we find many gender identities
that were completely erased
during colonization
Often we hear that its problematic
Or annoying to recreate more and more categories
To identity oneself
But i think it's very important
to identify with something
so you can unidentify with an identity
that was assigned to you arbitrarily
I think it's necessary
to find yourself a community
to make connections and know you’re not alone
that there is support
that there are other people like us
that understand us and listen to us
If I could say just one thing
it would be that even if you don't understand,
you can still support and stand with us
you can learn and deconstruct your way of thinking
you can inform yourself, you can help those close to you
Even if you don’t understand
all that comes with 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 have medical transitions or take hormones
who will have surgeries, others won’t
and that no matter how
they have the ability to transition or not
socially, medically, etc
our identity is legitimate, it exists
and there are many of us