Découverte de la non-binarité : le témoignage de Cami

,Even if you don’t understand
.you can still always support us

.Our identity remains valid, and it exists

.My name is Camille, and I’m 22 years old

I’m non-binary, and I’m here to talk
.to you about non-binary identities

Nonbinary is an umbrella term that

includes all gender identities that are

neither exclusively masculine nor

exclusively feminine, so it can
be agender, meaning a subtraction without

a" gender that is neutral, or it can be"
all fluid identities, as if one

imagined gender as a spectrum with

two poles, masculine and feminine, with
.a slider that moves across

So, all people who are
,.genderfluid, demigender, pangender, etc

.I never really identified with femininity

At 18, I already started to ask myself questions
about my gender identity,

and I have met a trans man with whom
I was with for a while,

and we were able to put my identity into words

which was therefore non-binary, and

I think it's because he had
way more information than I did

that he was able to help me find the words
.regarding my identity

.Gender identity is what we are
,It's the gender we feel, live, and experiment with

.and gender expression is what we show to others

It is the way we express that identity

,So we can have, for example
a gender identity that is masculine

,so a man and we could have a
gender expression that will be feminine

with a lot of markers considered feminine in
, society, such as, for example

.Bassani, who is a man with a feminine gender expression

I announced to my parents that I
was non-binary and that

I wanted to change my name at the same time

I was 20 years old, so it was 2 years ago

and uh, my mom took it very well

She was already very aware of the

gender issues, she was quite
deconstructed and very, very safe

¶
I felt safe

Uh, my dad, it was
a little more delicate

I took a bit more time to talk to him
about it, and I didn't

do it in person, I
sent him a message, actually, because

it was easier for me to manage, and he
.reacted quite well

He said that he
didn't understand everything, but that, in any case

he would be there to support me
,and that it didn't change anything for him

that he loved me the same. As for my grandmother, it was

a little less obvious because
.it was something that was very distant for her

She grew up in the countryside
then she moved to Paris, she lived

.with my grandfather 50 years

She lived in contexts that were very cis and heteronormative

where she had never questioned
her own identity or the identity of others

So, when I told her, she
was a bit taken aback, but she always

looked out and wanted the best for me

She made a lot of effort; she rarely made mistakes
.with my name now

I made a request for a name change
in 2019

I made a request
to the city I was living in

I picked up a file that
I filled out with testimonies from my

family members to say that they used the
name Camille to address me

I asked my school to provide me with a
letter of support, etc. Then I

.submitted my application, and I waited a few months

Actually, it varies depending on the town hall
.and I received approval for the first name change

The act of misgendering someone
is to address that person

,using the wrong pronouns for them
so, gendering a non-binary person who

explicitly said to use
"neutral pronouns, like the pronoun "they

.and to gender it, in feminine or the masculine

Personally, I use feminine pronouns when speaking
and neutral in writing

and it's true that, in general, I have
.a tendency to say right away

I prefer to be addressed
with feminine pronouns in conversation

after, if the person doesn't do it on their own

and you would prefer to be
.sure to address the gender correctly

You can ask them for their pronouns, or
wait for the person to gender themselves in

front of you to follow their gender expression

,in the videos I've already made previously
there were many comments

that invalidated our identities

in fact, ou

identities, nor our expressions of

gender and our gender identities. After, uh

I read very few of those comments

I read very few of those comments

Most of them are malicious or very

very clumsy and will just make me

feel hurt. I have already participated in

a report in which we could

hear that it was just a trend

that it had only appeared a few

years ago in the United States, ten years ago, that

it was really related to the

fashion too, like unisex fashion, etc.

That's completely false, and I think

that it's also a very

very white and very Eurocentric point of view

because in many cultures around the world

we find multiple gender identities that

gender identities that have been completely erased

during colonization, in fact, everything

simply, it's often said that

it's problematic, or it's

embarrassing to recreate categories and still

boxes to identify oneself and

re-identify, etc. But I think that

it's really important to be able to

first identify as something

in order to disidentify from

identity that was assigned to us

arbitrarily. I think that, yeah, it's

necessary to also find ourselves in

community to create connection, to know

that we're not alone, that there is support

that there are other people who are

like us, who understand us, who

listen to us. If I had just one thing to

say, I think it would be that even if you

don't understand, you can always

support and accompany. You can

learn, you can deconstruct

thought patterns, you can

educate yourself, you can help your loved ones

even if you don't fully understand everything

the full scope of what it means, what matters is

their gender identity, a second

thing is that all non-binaries

have a different way

of expressing their identity, that there are

people who will have... who will

undergo medical transitions, who will

take hormones, who will undergo

surgeries, others will not, and that few

regardless of how we might be able to

transition or not, socially

medically, etc., our identity

remains valid and it exists, and we

are very numerous, many