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