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Even if you don't understand,
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You can always support and stand with us.
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Our identity is still legitimate
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and exists.
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My name is Cami, I am 22 years old,
I am non-binary
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and I am here to talk about it.
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Non-binary is an umbrella term
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which emcompasses all gender identities
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who are neither exclusively masculine
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nor exclusively feminine.
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It can be agender, 'a' being an absence
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of gender, which means neutral
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or it can be genderfluid,
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like if we imagined gender
being on a spectrum with two polarities,
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masculine and feminine.
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We can have a slider that moves for
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everyone that is genderfluid,
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demigender, pangender, etc.
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I never really identified as feminine.
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At 18 years old, I already started
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questioning my gender identity
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and I met a trans man,
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whom I was with for some time,
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and we were able to come up
with a group of words on my identity,
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which was non-binary.
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I think that it was because of him
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asking many questions about me,
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that he knew how to help find the words
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surrounding my identity.
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Gender identity is what defines us.
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It is the gender we feel,
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the way we live,
the way we experiment.
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Gender expression
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is what we show to others.
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It's the way we will express our identity.
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We can have a gender identity,
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for example, masculine:
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we are a man,
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and we will have a gender expression
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like feminine, with many indicators
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that society would consider as feminine.
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For example, Bilal Hassani,
who is a man
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with a gender expression as feminine.
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I told my parents I was non-binary
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and I wanted to change my first name
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at the same time.
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I was 20 years old, it has been 2 years.
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My mother took it well.
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She was already knowledgeable
on questions of gender.
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She had already broken it down and was safe.
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I felt like I was safe.
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My father was a little more delicate.
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I had to take more time talking about it
with him
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and I did not end up doing it
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in the end.
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I sent him a message,
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because it was easier for me
to manage.
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He reacted kind of well.
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He said he didn't understand it all,
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but in all scenarios,
he would be there to support me
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and that it changes nothing for him,
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that he loves me the same.
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For my grandmother, it was
a little less obvious,
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because it was a strange thing for her.
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She grew up on the countryside.
Then she moved to Paris.
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She lived with my grandfather for 50 years.
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She existed in a place that
was very cis heteronormative
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where she never had to question her identity
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or the identity of otheres.
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When I talked to her about it,
she was dumbfounded,
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but she always stayed by me
and kept
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her composure
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in the best way she could with me.
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She made huge efforts,
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almost never making mistakes
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in the use of my preferred name.
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I filed a request for a first name change
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in 2019.
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I made the request
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next to city hall in the place I lived.
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I pulled out a file that I filled
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with the witness of my loved ones
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to say I was using the preferred name,
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Cami,
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to address myself.
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I asked my school to draw up
a support letter.
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After, I dropped off my file.
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I waited a few months.
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It depends on the city hall,
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but I got my approval to change
my first name.
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The fact of misgendering someone,
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it's to address someone
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using the wrong pronouns,
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so to identify someone as
non-binary
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who has already explicitly said
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to use neutral pronouns like,
'iel',
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and to accord it to feminine or masculine.
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Me, I personaly use the pronouns that are
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said to be feminine orally,
but written neutrally.
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But it is true in general,
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I typically say right away,
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that I preferrred to be addressed as
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feminine orally.
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After, if the person doesn't do the same
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and you want to identify someone right,
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you can ask them their pronouns
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or wait for them to identify themselves
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to follow their usage.
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In the videos I made previously,
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there were a lot of comments
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that invalidates our identity,
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that deny our gender expressions
and identities.
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After, I'm taken aback on these comments,
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because I know for the most part,
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they are malevolent or very insensitive,
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and they just want to hurt me.
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I already took part in a report
in which we heard
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that it was a fad,
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that it only appeared
in the past few years
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in the U.S., it's been 10 years,
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that it was very related to fashion,
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unisex fashion, etc.
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That is completely false.
I also believe that
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it is a super white and euro-centric
point of view,
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because in many cultures,
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we find many gender identities
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that were completely erased
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during colonisation basically.
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Often, we hear that it is problematic,
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it's awkward to recreate cases
and more cases on
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identifying oneself or to reidentify, etc.
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But I think it's also super important
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to be able to identify
in the first place
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to get rid of an identity
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that was arbitrarily assigned to us.
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I think it is necessary
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to find ourselves a community
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to create relationships,
to know we are not alone,
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that there is support,
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that there are other people like us,
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that understand and hear us.
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If I had one point to make,
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it would be that
even if you don't understand,
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you can always support and stand with us.
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You can learn and
deconstruct
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old ideologies.
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You can inform yourself and
help your loved ones,
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even if you don't understand it,
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what matters is their gender identity.
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Another point, is that
all non-binary people
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have a different way of
expressing their identity,
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where some would
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undergo medical procedures,
take hormones,
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have a surgery,
others not,
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and that despite the way
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that we transition or not,
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socially, medically, etc.
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our identity is still real, it exists,
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we are numerous.