Découverte de la non-binarité : le témoignage de Cami

My name is Camille, I'm 22 years old.

I'm non-binary and I'm here to talk to
you about that.

Nonbinarity is an umbrella term that
includes all the gender identities

that are neither completely male
nor completely female.

It could be agender, where "a" means
without, which is neutral,

or it could be all the gender fluid
identities, including those

who are demigendered,
pangendered , and so on.

If you imagine gender as a spectrum
with two poles - male and female -

and a cursor that could move
anywhere between them,

it would include all of
those gender identities.

I never really identified with femininity
and when I was 18,

I'd aleady started to question my own
gender identity.

I met a trans man I was with for awhile
and together, we found the words

for my identity, which was non-binary.
Because he knew more about it than I did,

he helped me find the words for
my gender identity.

Gender identity, it's who you are, the
gender that you feel, that you try out.

And gender expression is what you
show to others.

It's the way you express your identity.

So you can have, for example, a male
gender identity, so you're a man.

But your gender expression could
be feminine

with lots of markers that our society
considers to be feminine.

For example Bilal Hissani, who is a man
with a feminine gender expression.

I told my parents I was non-binary and at
the same time,

that I also wanted to change
my first name.

I was 20 years old so it was 2 years
ago and my mom took it very well.

She was already totally up to speed
about questions of gender.

She had thought through the issues and
I felt very safe, very secure with her.

My dad, it was a little more delicate.
I took more time to talk to him about it.

And in fact I didn't actually do that -

I sent him a message as it was easier
for me to handle. And he reacted well.

He said he didn't understand everything
but he'd always be there to support me,

and it that it didn't change anything
for him, he loved me just as much.

For my grandma, it was more complicated
since the concept was so foreign to her.

She grew up in the country,
then went to Paris.

She was with my grandfather for 50 years
and was very much cis-heteronormative,

where she never questioned her
identity or that of others.

So when I talked to her about it, she was
kind of thrown for a loop

but she always did the best she
could with me.

She tried really hard and almost always
got my first name right.

I made a request to change
my name in 2019.

I made the request through
my town's city hall.

I filled out an application form with
statements from my family and friends

saying that they called me Cami
when they talked to me.

I asked my school to write a letter
of support, and so on.

Next, I submitted the application,
and waited a few months.

The time varies from city to city,

but my request to change
my name was accepted.

To misgender someone is to refer
to them using the wrong pronouns,

and this assigns a gender
to a non-binary person,

who would have explicitly said
to use neutral pronouns like "iel".

And instead people use pronouns that
identify that person as female or male.

Personally, I use female pronouns in
speaking and neutral pronouns in writing.

l usually tell people up front that
I prefer they use female pronouns

when they speak to me.
If they don't do that on their own

and you want to be sure that you
identify their gender correctly,

you can ask them their pronouns or
wait until they identify their gender

themselves so you can follow their lead.

In the videos I made earlier,
there were a lot of comments

that invalidated our identities, that
denied our gender expressions

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

they're usually malicious or very
insensitive. And they really hurt me.

I've already taken part in a report where
you could hear that it's just a fad,

that it appeared a few years ago.
In the United States, about 10 years ago.

It was related to fashion, like
unisex fashion and so on.

That's completely false and I also think

it's a point of view that's totally
white and absolutely Eurocentric.

Because in so many cultures, there are

several gender identities that were
completely erased during colonisation.

We hear it's problematic or awkward
to create more and more categories

for people to self identify and re-self
identify. But I think it's so 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 it's also necessary to find a
community, to create a link,

to know we're not alone, that there's
support, that there are other people

who are like us, who understand us,
who listen to us.

If I have only one thing to say, 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 inform yourself.

You can help your friends and family,
even if you don't entirely understand

the impact of what their gender
means to them.

A second thing is that all non-binary
people have different ways

of expressing their identity.

Some will have medical transitions,
some will take hormones,

have operations, other things. And
no matter how they transition or not,

socially, medically and so on,
our identity is legitimate and it exists.

And there are many of us.