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, 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

uh.. that invalidated our identities, that
denied our gender expressions

and our gender identities. After, I read
very few of those comments because I know

Most of them are malicious or very
.insensitive and would just hurt my feelings

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 10 years ago, that
,it was also related to fashion

.like unisex fashion, etc

That's completely false, and I think
that it's also a

very white and very Eurocentric point of view

because in many cultures around the world
we can find several gender identities that were

.in fact, completely erased during colonisation

,We often hear that it's problematic
or it's embarrassing to create

more and more categories for people
,.to self-identify and re-self-identify, etc

But I think that it's really important

in the first place, to be able to self
identify with something in order to

de-self-identify with an identity
.that was arbitrarily assigned

And I think, yeah, it's also necessary to find a
community, to create connections

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 us and be with us

You can learn, you can deconstruct your
, patterns of thought, you can educate yourself

you can help your loved ones
even if you don't fully understand

.what matters is their gender identity

Secondly, all non-binary people
.have a different way of expressing their identity

There are people who
,will undergo medical transitions

,who will take hormones
,who will undergo surgeries

others will not, and that
,regardless of how we might transition or not

,.socially, medically, etc
our identity remains valid, and it exists

.And there are many of us