Découverte de la non-binarité : le témoignage de Cami

Even if you don't understand,

You can always support and stand with us.

Our identity is still real

and exists.

My name is Cami, I am 22 years old,
I am non-binary

and I am here to talk about it.

Non-binary is an umbrella term

which emcompasses all gender identities

who are neither exclusively masculine

nor feminine.

It can be agender, 'a' being an absence

of gender, which means neutral

or it can be genderfluid,

like if we imagined gender
being on a spectrum with two polarities,

masculine and feminine.

We can have a slider that moves for

everyone that is genderfluid,

demigender, pangender, etc.

I never really identified as feminine.

At 18 years old, I already started

questioning my gender identity

and I met a trans man,

whom I was with for some time,

and we were able to come up
with a group of words on my identity,

which was non-binary.

I think that it was because of him

being more informed than me,

that he knew how to help find the words

surrounding my identity.

Gender identity is what defines us.

It is the gender we feel,

the way we live,
the way we experiment.

Gender expression

is what we show to others.

It's the way we will express our identity.

We can have a gender identity,

for example, masculine:

we are a man,

and we will have a gender expression

like feminine, with many indicators

that society would consider as feminine.

For example, Bilal Hassani,
who is a man

with a gender expression as feminine.

I told my parents I was non-binary

and I wanted to change my first name

at the same time.

I was 20 years old, it has been 2 years.

My mother took it very well.

She was already knowledgeable
on questions of gender.

She had already broken it down
and was safe.

I felt like I was safe.

My father was a little more delicate.

I had to take more time talking about it
with him

and I did not end up doing it

for real.

I sent him a message,

because it was easier for me
to manage.

He reacted kind of well.

He said he didn't understand it all,

but in all scenarios,
he would be there to support me

and that it changes nothing for him,

that he loves me the same.

For my grandmother, it was
a little less obvious,

because it was a strange thing for her.

She grew up on the countryside.
Then she moved to Paris.

She lived with my grandfather for 50 years.

She existed in a place that
was very cis heteronormative

where she never had to question her identity

or the identity of others.

When I talked to her about it,
she was dumbfounded,

but she always stayed by me
and kept

her composure

in the best way she could with me.

She made huge efforts,

almost never making mistakes

in the use of my preferred name.

I filed a request for a first name change

in 2019.

I made the request

next to city hall in the place I lived.

I pulled out a file that I filled

with the witness of my loved ones

to say I was using the preferred name,

Cami,

to address myself.

I asked my school to draw up
a support letter.

After, I dropped off my file.

I waited a few months.

It depends on the city hall,

but I got my approval to change
my first name.

The fact of misgendering someone,

it's to address someone

using the wrong pronouns,

so to identify someone as
non-binary

who has already explicitly said

to use neutral pronouns like,
they/them,

and to instead use feminine or masculine.

Me, I personally use the pronouns that are

said to be feminine orally,
but written neutrally.

But it is true in general,

I typically say right away,

that I preferrred to be addressed as

feminine orally.

After, if the person doesn't do the same

and you want to identify someone right,

you can ask them their pronouns

or wait for them to identify themselves

to follow their usage.

In the videos I made previously,

there were a lot of comments

that invalidates our identity,

that deny our gender expressions
and identities.

After, I'm taken aback on these comments,

because I know for the most part,

they are malevolent or very insensitive,

and they just want to hurt me.

I already took part in a report
in which we heard

that it was a fad,

that it only appeared
in the past few years

in the U.S., it's been 10 years,

that it was very related to fashion,

unisex fashion, etc.

That is completely false.
I also believe that

it is a super white and euro-centric
point of view,

because in many cultures,

we find many gender identities

that were completely erased

during colonisation basically.

Often, we hear that it is problematic,

it's awkward to recreate cases
and more cases on

identifying oneself or to reidentify, etc.

But I think it's also super important

to be able to identify
in the first place

to get rid of an identity

that was arbitrarily assigned to us.

I think it is necessary

to find ourselves a community

to create relationships,
to know we are not alone,

that there is support,

that there are other people like us,

that understand and hear us.

If I had one point to make,

it would be that
even if you don't understand,

you can always support and stand with us.

You can learn and
deconstruct

old ideologies.

You can inform yourself and
help your loved ones,

even if you don't understand it,

what matters is their gender identity.

Another point, is that
all non-binary people

have a different way of
expressing their identity,

where some would

undergo medical procedures,
take hormones,

have a surgery,
others not,

and that despite the way

that we transition or not,

socially, medically, etc.

our identity is still real, it exists,

and we are very numerous.