-
Even if you don't understand,
you can still support and uplift us.
-
Our identities continue to be legitimate
and to exist.
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[Non-binary Stories]
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I'm Cami, I'm 22 years old,
I'm non-binary,
-
and I'm here to talk about my identity.
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Non-binary is an umbrella term
that includes all gender identities
-
that are not exclusively masculine
or exclusively feminine.
-
So, it represents both agender,
"a" meaning subtraction,
-
without gender, which is neutral
and also all the fluid gender identities
-
like if we imagine gender as a spectrum
with two sides, masculine and feminine,
-
and a cursor that moves.
So, all the people who are
-
genderfluid, demigender, pangender, etc.
-
I never really identified with femininity.
-
When I was 18,
I started to ask myself questions
-
about my gender identity
and I met a trans man,
-
who I was with for some time,
and we finally put my identity into words
-
which were non-binary.
-
I think it's because he had
way more info than me,
-
that he knew how to help find
the words for my identity.
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Gender identity is what we are.
-
It's the gender we feel, live,
and experiment with
-
and gender expression
is what we show others.
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It's how we express that identity.
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So, you could have,
for example, a gender identity
-
that is masculine: so, a man,
and you could have
-
a feminine gender expression
and present using markers
-
considered to be feminine.
-
Like Bilal Hassani, who is a man
-
with a feminine gender expression.
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I told my parents I was non-binary
-
and that I also wanted to change my name
at the same time.
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I was 20, so that was 2 years ago,
-
and my mom took the news very well.
-
She was already up to date
with gender issues.
-
She had deconstructed those concepts
and was very safe.
-
I felt secure.
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With my dad,
it was a little more delicate.
-
I took a little more time to talk to him
and I didn't do it in person.
-
I sent him a message
because it was easier for me to handle,
-
and he reacted pretty well.
-
He said he didn't understand everything,
but he would support me
-
and that it changed nothing for him,
that he loved me the same.
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With my grandma, it was a little tricky
because it's something
-
very unfamiliar for her.
-
She grew up in the countryside.
Then, she moved to Paris.
-
She lived with my grandpa for 50 years.
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She lived in contexts that were cis
and heteronormative,
-
she never really asked herself
about her identity or others'.
-
So, when I discussed it with her,
she was shocked,
-
but she's always looked out
and wanted the best for me.
-
She's trying her best;
-
she rarely makes any mistakes
with my name now.
-
I made a request to change my name
in 2019.
-
I submitted the request to the city
I was living in.
-
I obtained a form
that I filled with evidence
-
from my friends that proved they use
the name Cami when referring to me.
-
I asked my school to write
a letter of support.
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Then, I submitted my form.
I waited a couple of months.
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The time varies from city to city.
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And I got my name change accepted.
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The act of misgendering someone,
is to address that person
-
while using the wrong pronouns for them.
-
Using gendered pronouns
for a non-binary person
-
who explicitly said to use
neutral pronouns like "them"
-
and to refer to them
with feminine or masculine pronouns.
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Personally, I use feminine pronouns
-
when speaking
and neutral ones when writing.
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But, in general,
I have a habit of saying right away
-
that I prefer to use
feminine pronouns when speaking.
-
If a person doesn't do that
-
and you want to make sure
you're using the right pronouns,
-
you can ask for them or wait
until the person refers to themselves
-
and follow their lead.
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In the videos I've made previously,
there are a lot of comments
-
invalidating and denying
our gender expression and identity.
-
Personally,
I rarely read those kinds of comments
-
because I know
that most of them are malicious
-
or very insensitive
and will just bother me.
-
I've already participated in a report
where there were comments like:
-
this is just a trend,
that it's only appeared
-
in the last few years in the US,
10 years ago,
-
that it had a connection to fashion,
the unisex fashion trend, etc.
-
Well, that's completely false.
I think that it's also
-
a very white
and very Eurocentric perspective
-
because in a lot of cultures,
we find many gender identities
-
that were fully erased
during colonization, simply put.
-
Frequently, we hear that it's problematic
or that it's annoying to recreate
-
more and more ways to identify
and re-identify etc.,
-
but I think that it's super important
to be able to, primarily,
-
identify as something
so you can un-identify from an identity
-
that was assigned to you randomly.
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I think that it's also necessary
to find yourself a community,
-
to make friends,
know you're not alone,
-
that there's support,
and that there's other people like us,
-
that know and listen to us.
-
If I had only one thing to say,
it would be: even if you don't understand,
-
you can still support and uplift us.
-
You can learn,
you can deconstruct your ways of thinking.
-
You can educate yourself,
-
help your friends,
even if you don't understand everything
-
about their gender identity.
-
A second thing,
-
is that all non-binary people
have different ways
-
of expressing their identity,
there are some
-
who will medically transition,
take hormones,
-
undergo surgery,
while others won't,
-
and no matter the ways
in which we transition or not,
-
socially, medically, etc.,
our identities continue to be legitimate,
-
they exist, and we aren't going anywhere.