Découverte de la non-binarité : le témoignage de Cami

Even if you don’t understand,

You can always support and accompany.

Our identity stays legitimate
and it exists

My name is Cami, I’m 22, I’m nonbinary

And I’m here to talk about nonbinarity.

“Nonbinary” is an umbrella term

That groups together all gender identities

That are neither exclusively masculine

Or exclusively feminine.

It can be agender so “a”,
the subtraction,

Without gender, that is neutral,

Or it can be all of the fluid identities

Like if we imagined gender as
a spectrum with two poles

The masculine and the feminine.

We can have a moving cursor.

All the people who are genderfluid,
demigender, pangender, etc

I never really identified with femininity.

At 18 I was already starting

To ask myself questions
on my gender identity

And I met a trans man

With whom I was with for a little while

And together we were able
to place a label on my identity

Which was nonbinary.

And I think it’s because

He had a lot more information than I did

That he knew how to help me find
the words concerning my identity

Gender identity is what we are,

The gender we feel,

That we live and experiment with,

And gender expression

Is what others see,

It’s the way we express this identity.

We can have a gender identity

For example, masculine:
A man,

With a gender expression

That is feminine, with a lot of traits

Considered feminine in society.

For example Bilal Hassani, who is a man

With a feminine gender expression.

I told my parents I was nonbinary

And that I wanted to change my name

At the same time.

I was 20, so that was 2 years ago,

And my mom took it well.

She was already very up to date
with gender questioning topics

She was pretty deconstructed
and safe to talk to.

I felt safe.

It was slightly more delicate with my dad.

It took me a little longer to tell him.

And I didn’t do it

Face to face,

I sent him a message

Because it was easier for me

And he reacted pretty well.

He said he didn’t understand everything

But that he’ll be there for me

And that it won’t change anything for him,

That he still loves me.

For my grandmother,
it was a little harder.

Because it was something less familiar
to her

She grew up in the country,
then moved to Paris

She lived with my grandfather for 50 years

She was in very
cis heteronormative contexts

Where different gender identities
had never crossed her mind

Same goes for others’ identities

So when I told her,
it’s safe to say she was confused

But she always made sure

To behave

In the best way possible with me

She made a lot of efforts

Now, she rarely makes mistakes

With my chosen name

I applied for a name change

In 2019

I applied

At the city hall in my town

I filled out a form

With witness statements
from my close ones

To say they used “Cami”

When talking to and about me

I asked my school for a letter as well

Then I gave them the form

And waited a few months

It depends on the cities

Then I got a confirmation
for my name change.

Misgendering someone

Is when you talk to them

Using the wrong pronouns.

So gendering a nonbinary person

Who would’ve explicitly said

To use neutral pronouns, like “they”,

And gendering them with feminine
or masculine pronouns.

Personally I use the pronouns

Considered feminine when speaking,
and the neutral ones on paper

And it’s true that in general,

I tend to say it right away

That I prefer getting addressed

With feminine pronouns out loud

Then if the person doesn’t do it
themselves

And you want to make sure,

You can ask them their pronouns

Or wait for them to gender themselves
in front of you

To respect their identity .

In previous videos I’ve made,

There were a lot of comments

Invalidating our identities,

Denying our gender expression
and identity.

I don’t really read those ones

Just cause I know that for the most part,

They don’t mean well,
or are very, very insensitive

And will just hurt me.

One time I participated in a report
where they said

It was a trend.

That it had only appeared a few years ago,

In the States, 10 years ago,

That it was related to fashion,

Unisex fashion, etc.

That’s completely false.
I think it’s also

A really white and eurocentric
point of view

Because in a lot of cultures,

You can find many gender identities

That were fully erased

During colonisation.

We often hear it’s problematic,

It’s embarrassing to recreate
cases and cases

To identify and re-identify with

But I think it’s really important

To be able to identify with something

To de-identify from an identity

That was arbitrarily assigned.

I think it’s necessary

To find yourself in a community

To make links, know you are not alone,

That there’s support,

That there’s others that are like us

That listen and understand.

If there was one thing I’d wanna say,

I think that even if you don’t understand,

You can always support and accompany

You can learn, deconstruct

Old-fashion mindsets.

You can seek information,
help your loved ones,

Even if you don’t understand

Whatever comes with their gender identity.

A second thing is that
all nonbinary people

Express themselves differently,

That there are people that will go through

Medical transitions,
that will take hormones,

That will get surgery,
and some others won’t.

And whatever way

One will transition, or not,

Socially, medically, etc,

Our identity stays legitimate
and it exists,

And there are many of us.