-
Even if you don't understand
-
You can can still support and stand with us
-
Our identity is still legitimate
-
And it exists
-
Testimonies: being non binary
-
My name is Cami, I’m 22 years old and I'm non-binary
-
And I’m here to talk about being non-binary
-
It's an umbrella term
-
That groups all gender identities
-
That are neither exclusively masculine
-
Nor exclusively feminine
-
This could be agender, “a” means subtraction
-
Without gender, which is neutral
-
Or it could be all fluid identities
-
Like if we imagine gender as a spectrum with two ends
-
Masculine and feminine
-
We could have a cursor that moves
-
All gender fluid people
-
Demigender, pangender, etc
-
I never identified with femininity
-
At 18, i already started
-
Asking myself questions about my gender identity
-
And I met a trans man
-
Who I was with for a bit
-
And together we could put my identity into words
-
That is non-binary
-
I think it was because he
-
Had much more knowledge than me
-
That he knew how to help me find the words
-
for my identity
-
Gender identity, it’s what we are
-
It's the gender we feel
-
That we feel and experiment with
-
And gender expression
-
It’s what we show to others
-
It's how we will express that identity
-
We can have a gender identity
-
For example, masculine
-
one is a man
-
And we’ll have a gender expression
-
that is feminine, with many indicators
-
that are considered feminine in society
-
like Bilal Hassani, who is a man
-
who has a feminine gender expression
-
I told my parents I was non-binary
-
and that I wanted to change my name
-
at the same time
-
I was 20, this was two years ago
-
My mother took it very well
-
She was very up to date on gender issues
-
She was open-minded et safe
-
I felt safe with her
-
With my father it was a bit more delicate
-
I took more time to talk to him
-
And i didn't do it In person
-
I sent him a text
-
Because it was easier for me to manage
-
He reacted well enough
-
He said he didn’t understand it all
-
But that he would always be there to support me
-
And it didn't change anything for him,
-
he loves me the same
-
For my grandmother it was slightly less obvious
-
Because it was something that was not relevant to her
-
She grew up in the countryside.
Then she came to Paris
-
She lived with my grandfather for 50 years
-
She was in a very cis heteronormative pattern
-
Where she never questioned her identity
-
or others
-
So when i told her
It was like the earth fell from under her
-
But she always did her best to watch over me
-
She made a huge effort
-
She doesn’t really mess up anymore
-
In using my name
-
I applied to change my name in 2019
-
I applied to the city hall in the city where I lived
-
I took out a file that I filled out
-
with statements from my loved ones
-
that said they’d been using the name Cami to address me
-
I asked my school to make me a letter of support, etc
-
Then I dropped off the file
-
I waited a couple months
-
This varies from place to place
-
And they accepted my name change
-
To misgender someone
-
is to address that person
-
using the wrong pronouns
-
So gendering a non-binary person
-
that explicitly said
-
To use neutral pronouns like “they”
-
and to gender them as feminine or masculine
-
Personally i use feminine pronouns out loud and neutral in writing
-
But in general
-
I have the tendency to say right away
-
I’d prefer if you address me
-
With feminine pronouns out loud
-
Afterwards, if the person doesn’t do it themselves
-
and you want to be sure you’re gendering them correctly
-
You can ask them their pronouns
-
Or wait until the person genders themselves in front of you
-
To follow how they do it
-
In my previous videos
-
there were many comments
-
that invalidated our identities
-
denied our gender expression and identities
-
After that, I rarely read those comments
-
because I know for the most part
-
they’re ill-intended or very insensitive
-
and they’ll just hurt me
-
I participated in a report where we could hear
-
that it was a trend,
-
It had only appeared a couple years ago
-
In the States, 10 years ago
-
and it was linked to fashion
-
Unisex fashion, etc
-
That was completely false
I think it’s also
-
a very white, eurocentric perspective
-
because in so many cultures,
-
we find many gender identities
-
that were completely erased
-
during colonization
-
Often we hear that its problematic
-
Or annoying to recreate more and more categories
-
To identity oneself
-
But i think it's very important
-
to identify with something
-
so you can unidentify with an identity
-
that was assigned to you arbitrarily
-
I think it's necessary
-
to find yourself a community
-
to make connections and know you’re not alone
-
that there is support
-
that there are other people like us
-
that understand us and listen to us
-
If I could say just one thing
-
it would be that even if you don't understand,
-
you can still support and stand with us
-
you can learn and deconstruct your way of thinking
-
you can inform yourself, you can help those close to you
-
Even if you don’t understand
-
all that comes with their gender identity
-
A second thing is that all non-binary people
-
have a different way of expressing their identity
-
There will be people
-
Who have medical transitions or take hormones
-
who will have surgeries, others won’t
-
and that no matter how
-
they have the ability to transition or not
-
socially, medically, etc
-
our identity is legitimate, it exists
-
and there are many of us