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Even if you don’t understand,
you can still support and stand by us.
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Our identity remains valid,
and it exists.
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[Non-binary Testimonials]
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My name is Cami,
I’m 22,
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And I’m here to talk about
my non-binary identity.
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Non-binarity is an umbrella term that
includes all gender identities
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that are neither exclusively masculine
nor exclusively feminine.
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It can mean being agender,
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“a” as in absence,
without gender,
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which is neutral,
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or it can refer to all fluid identities,
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as if we imagined gender
as a spectrum
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with two poles:
masculine and feminine.
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A cursor can move between the two.
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These are people who are gender fluid,
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demigender, pangender, etc.
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I never really identified with femininity.
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At 18, I was already
questioning my gender,
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and I met a trans man I was with
for some time,
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and we were able to put words on
my identity, which is non binary.
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I think that since he had a lot
more information than me,
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he helped me find the words
to describe my identity.
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Gender identity is who we are.
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It’s the gender we feel,
live, and experience.
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Gender expression is
what we show to others.
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It’s the way we express this identity.
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For example, you could have
a masculine gender identity:
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a man,
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with a feminine gender expression,
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with a lot of traits society
considers feminine.
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For example, Bilal Hassani is a man
with a feminine gender expression.
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When I told my parents that
I am non-binary,
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I also told them that
I wanted to change my name.
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I was 20,
so it was 2 years ago.
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My mom took it very well.
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She was already well-informed
about gender identity.
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She was very open minded and
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made me feel safe.
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Telling my dad was a bit trickier.
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I took longer talking to him,
and I didn’t do it in person.
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I sent him a message,
since it felt easier to handle.
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He reacted quite well.
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He said he didn’t understand everything,
but that he’d be there to support me,
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it wouldn’t change anything,
and he loved me the same.
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It was a bit harder for my grandmother,
with it being a very foreign concept.
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She grew up in the countryside
and later moved to Paris.
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She lived with my grandfather
for 50 years.
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She lived within very
cis-heteronormative frameworks,
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where she never questioned her
gender identity, or anyone else's.
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When I told her,
she was quite shocked.
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But she has always tried to act
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as well as possible with me.
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She makes a lot
of effort,
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and rarely gets my name
wrong anymore.
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I filed for a legal name change
request in 2019,
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at a city hall close to where I lived.
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I sent in a file I filled with
statements from people close to me
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confirming that they used the name Cami
to refer to me.
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I asked my school for a letter of support.
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Then, I submitted my application
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and waited for a few months.
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Wait times depends on the
city hall.
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And, I got approval for the name change.
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Misgendering someone
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means referring to them using
the wrong pronouns.
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So, misgendering a non-binary person
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who explicitly requested you to
use neutral, "they/them", pronouns,
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would be to gender them,
to the masculine or feminine.
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Personally, I use so-called
feminine pronouns when speaking
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and neutral pronouns when writing.
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I usually say right away that
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I prefer to be referred to
with feminine pronouns when speaking.
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If someone doesn’t say it unprompted,
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and you’d rather make sure you’re
using the right pronouns,
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you can ask them directly
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or wait for them to gender
themselves in front of you,
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and follow their lead.
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In previous videos I’ve made,
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there were lots of comments
that invalidated our identities,
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that denied our gender expressions
and identities.
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However, I don’t read many of
those comments
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because I know they’re often
hateful or very tactless,
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and they’ll only hurt me.
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I have participated in a previous report
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where people were portraying it
as a trend,
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that it only appeared in the US,
barely 10 years ago,
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that it was just a passing unisex
trend, ect.
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That is completely false.
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I think that it's also a very white
and eurocentric perspective,
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because we can find several gender
identities in many cultures,
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that were completely erased
during colonization.
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We often hear that creating more
and more labels to identify
-
and re-identify ourselves
is problematic.
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But I think it's crucial to first have
something to identify with,
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in order to separate ourselves
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from an arbitrarily imposed identity.
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I think it’s necessary to find
ourselves within a community,
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to build connections,
to know we’re not alone,
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that there’s support
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and that others like us exist,
who understand and hear us.
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If I had just one thing to say, it
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would be that even if you
don’t really understand,
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you can still offer support and
stand by us.
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You can learn,
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and unlearn thought patterns,
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educate yourself,
help your loved ones,
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even if you don’t fully understand
what their gender identity means.
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Secondly, every non-binary person
expresses their identity differently.
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Some go through medical transitions,
take hormones, have surgeries,
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while others won't.
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And regardless of how someone
chooses to transition,
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whether socially, medically,
or not at all,
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our identity remains valid.
It exists. And there are many of us.