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Even if you don’t understand,
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You can always support and accompany.
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Our identity stays legitimate
and it exists
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My name is Cami, I’m 22, I’m nonbinary
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And I’m here to talk about nonbinarity.
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“Nonbinary” is an umbrella term
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That groups together all gender identities
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That are neither exclusively masculine
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Or exclusively feminine.
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It can be agender so “a”,
the subtraction,
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Without gender, that is neutral,
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Or it can be all of the fluid identities
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Like if we imagined gender as
a spectrum with two poles
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The masculine and the feminine.
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We can have a moving cursor.
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All the people who are genderfluid,
demigender, pangender, etc
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I never really identified with femininity.
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At 18 I was already starting
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To ask myself questions
on my gender identity
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And I met a trans man
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With whom I was with for a little while
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And together we were able
to place a label on my identity
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Which was nonbinary.
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And I think it’s because
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He had a lot more information than I did
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That he knew how to help me find
the words concerning my identity
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Gender identity is what we are,
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The gender we feel,
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That we live and experiment with,
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And gender expression
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Is what others see,
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It’s the way we express this identity.
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We can have a gender identity
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For example, masculine:
A man,
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With a gender expression
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That is feminine, with a lot of traits
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Considered feminine in society.
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For example Jeffree Star, who is a man
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With a feminine gender expression.
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I told my parents I was nonbinary
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And that I wanted to change my name
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At the same time.
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I was 20, so that was 2 years ago,
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And my mom took it well.
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She was already very up to date
with gender questioning topics
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She was pretty deconstructed
and safe to talk to.
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I felt safe.
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It was slightly more delicate with my dad.
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It took me a little longer to tell him.
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And I didn’t do it
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Face to face,
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I sent him a message
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Because it was easier for me
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And he reacted pretty well.
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He said he didn’t understand everything
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But that he’ll be there for me
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And that it won’t change anything for him,
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That he still loves me.
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For my grandmother,
it was a little harder.
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Because it was something less familiar
to her
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She grew up in the country,
then moved to Paris
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She lived with my grandfather for 50 years
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She was in very
cis heteronormative contexts
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Where different gender identities
had never crossed her mind
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Same goes for others’ identities
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So when I told her,
it’s safe to say she was confused
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But she always made sure
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To behave
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In the best way possible with me
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She made a lot of efforts
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Now, she rarely makes mistakes
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With my chosen name
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I applied for a name change
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In 2019
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I applied
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At the city hall in my town
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I filled out a form
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With witness statements
from my close ones
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To say they used “Cami”
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When talking to and about me
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I asked my school for a letter as well
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Then I gave them the form
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And waited a few months
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It depends on the cities
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Then I got a confirmation
for my name change.
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Misgendering someone
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Is when you talk to them
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Using the wrong pronouns.
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So gendering a nonbinary person
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Who would’ve explicitly said
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To use neutral pronouns, like “they”,
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And gendering them with feminine
or masculine pronouns.
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Personally I use the pronouns
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Considered feminine when speaking,
and the neutral ones on paper
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And it’s true that in general,
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I tend to say it right away
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That I prefer getting addressed
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With feminine pronouns out loud
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Then if the person doesn’t do it
themselves
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And you want to make sure,
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You can ask them their pronouns
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Or wait for them to gender themselves
in front of you
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To respect their identity .
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In previous videos I’ve made,
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There were a lot of comments
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Invalidating our identities,
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Denying our gender expression
and identity.
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I don’t really read those ones
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Just cause I know that for the most part,
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They don’t mean well,
or are very, very insensitive
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And will just hurt me.
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One time I participated in a report
where they said
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It was a trend.
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That it had only appeared a few years ago,
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In the States, 10 years ago,
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That it was related to fashion,
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Unisex fashion, etc.
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That’s completely false.
I think it’s also
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A really white and eurocentric
point of view
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Because in a lot of cultures,
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You can find many gender identities
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That were fully erased
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During colonisation.
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We often hear it’s problematic,
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It’s embarrassing to recreate
cases and cases
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To identify and re-identify with
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But I think it’s really important
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To be able to identify with something
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To de-identify from an identity
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That was arbitrarily assigned.
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I think it’s necessary
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To find yourself in a community
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To make links, know you are not alone,
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That there’s support,
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That there’s others that are like us
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That listen and understand.
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If there was one thing I’d wanna say,
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I think that even if you don’t understand,
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You can always support and accompany
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You can learn, deconstruct
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Old-fashion mindsets.
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You can seek information,
help your loved ones,
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Even if you don’t understand
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Whatever comes with their gender identity.
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A second thing is that
all nonbinary people
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Express themselves differently,
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That there are people that will go through
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Medical transitions,
that will take hormones,
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That will get surgery,
and some others won’t.
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And whatever way
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One will transition, or not,
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Socially, medically, etc,
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Our identity stays legitimate
and it exists,
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And there are many of us.