My guest – whom I’ll call F – asked to remain anonymous and said I could use masculine forms when referring to him, though feminine forms would not bother him either. In French, this goes beyond pronouns: adjectives and many words used to describe people also take masculine or feminine forms, making gender difficult to avoid in everyday conversation. To F, gender doesn’t really make sense. Yet in his interactions with others, he constantly has to navigate a distinction that both French language and society impose on him. That pressure was the starting point for our conversation.
F told me about the mental strain of living in a society that expects everyone to fit into one of two categories: man or woman. He describes the constant need to adapt as disabling: he cannot be himself everywhere and has to follow social conventions that don’t reflect who he is.
His experience reminded me of neurodivergent people, forced to adapt to a framework that doesn’t account for them. It prompted me, once again, to question the norms that make some people’s lives harder than others.
In Réflexions crip, Charlotte Puiseux explores the connections between disability and queerness, particularly how crip theory draws on it to challenge norms that position the non-disabled body as the standard. Her work offered me a perspective through which to listen to F and understand the effort society demands of people who do not fit those norms.
As our conversation unfolded, F also told me how finding people like him online had helped him understand himself better. This space of discovery and freedom now raises concerns for him about data exploitation and the use of AI. The question of how much of himself he wants to share runs through our conversation, including the choices he makes to protect his family.
This interview moves a little beyond digital accessibility as I usually approach it. But it continues to explore the same question: how can we design environments that make room for different ways of being and living?
Gender, society and being non-binary
How would you like me to refer to you?
That’s always a difficult question, both for the person asking and for the person answering. I’ll try to make it less awkward by adding another complication! Personally, I don’t mind. If society sees me as a man, it’s easier to stick with masculine forms.
Some people have preferred pronouns: in French, that might be il (he), elle (she) or the gender-neutral iel (il + elle = iel – or they). I don’t have a preference myself, but I really like it when writing intended for the public uses gender-neutral language to include everyone.
That said, French doesn’t make things easy for us. It’s a very gendered language: we assign gender to people and objects alike. That makes things even harder. And on top of that, we’ve come up with inclusive writing!
So I’ll make things simple for you: you can use masculine forms for me in this interview.
Would you describe yourself as non-binary?
That’s the million-dollar question. I don’t know. I don’t even understand why we need to play that game. Why do people need to present themselves to others in a particular way?
In French society, you dress according to your gender. You see men always wearing the same sort of trousers. Your job also influences how you dress. Even anthropologists and philosophers have their own style. I can tell by their shoes! I think people like fitting into categories.
Well, I’m the complete opposite. Whatever I do, I stand out, if only because of my height. So I might as well make the most of it and be even more extraordinary. I’m more drawn to feminine things; I feel more comfortable with them. But how people look at me or perceive me doesn’t matter to me.
Can you feel misgendered?
I don’t understand what gender means, so being called “she” or “he” doesn’t bother me.
But someone who has transitioned may be upset if they’re misgendered, meaning someone uses the wrong pronoun for them. It can feel deeply disrespectful and be very hurtful.
Is there a connection between being non-binary and being trans?
Being non-binary is a way of being trans: your gender doesn’t match the sex you were assigned at birth. For example, if your birth certificate says female but you present yourself as a man, you might consider yourself trans or transgender.
We don’t use the word “transsexual” any more, by the way. That’s a consensus within the trans community. First of all, it’s not about what someone has between their legs. Especially since that doesn’t necessarily fit into two categories either. Some people are born intersex, for example, with sex characteristics that don’t fit neatly into male or female categories. Sometimes families are made to feel they have to assign a sex. Newborn babies undergo surgery; it’s an extreme form of violence. People are campaigning to stop this, so children can grow up and decide for themselves. And beyond surgery, assigning a gender to a child doesn’t really make much sense anyway.
Why do we say gender is a social construct?
We’ve invented all sorts of codes and concepts and built our society around them. The most obvious problem with dividing everyone into men and women is the roles we assign to each: housework, jobs, the groups we join, leisure activities and so on.
It all starts very early, before birth. A foetus is assigned a gender, and from birth it shapes clothes, toys, how people speak to the child, TV programmes, sports… Everything becomes gendered.
What do you think of inclusive language?
I think inclusive language needs to be better thought through. We’re a long way from having a system that works. For example, when someone gets on stage and says “bonjour à tous et à toutes” – addressing men and women separately – I want to hide. I want to crawl into a hole and never come out!
When you do that, you leave out non-binary people, people questioning their gender and so on. There’s a huge spectrum, and above all, there’s no need to make that distinction. When you start a speech, you can just say hello, or hello everyone.
It’s even harder in writing, of course. In French, for example, people sometimes use a middle dot to combine masculine and feminine word endings. That makes things more complicated, particularly for deaf and hard-of-hearing people or people who use a screen reader. Often, screen readers don’t handle it properly.
Sometimes, especially when most of the people I’m speaking to are women, I use feminine forms throughout. I find it funny watching the men in the room look uncomfortable.
Disability and being non-binary
Why do you use the word “disability” to describe your experience?
Yes, that’s where this conversation started. I experience it as a disability because of the pressure society puts on me. There’s what it considers normal, and then there’s everything else. I can’t be myself everywhere; I have to follow other people’s rules. That’s what makes it disabling.
I’m lucky because I can get adjustments, particularly at work. Tech companies are generally more open-minded than others, though unfortunately that’s not always the case.
Simply being part of a conversation where people speak openly with me and accept me – where I’m seen as a person rather than an aberration – makes me feel safe. I feel so much better. I get a little taste of an ordinary human life, where I can express my feelings and be myself. I think Disabled people experience something similar, or at least that’s what I’ve been told.
I have a degree of visual impairment, I’m so tall that I struggle to fit into a plane seat, I have back problems and so on. Those things are much closer to what people usually think of as disability. But ultimately, I find them easier to manage than being non-binary.
When someone gets on stage and says “bonjour à tous et à toutes” – addressing men and women separately – I want to hide. I want to crawl into a hole and never come out!
The reason I talk about disability in relation to questioning my gender is that it adds to my mental load. It’s something I have to deal with all the time.
People are always asking me how they should refer to me in terms of gender. But it shouldn’t have to be so complicated. We make the conversation more complicated by saying that some people want to identify one way or another. It makes life more complicated for everyone.
In Réflexions crip, Charlotte Puiseux explores how queer movements have inspired disability justice. Does that resonate with you?
That’s going straight on my reading list. I hadn’t heard of it!
But I had read a little about crip theory, and I have personal experience of this, so yes. Some of the organisations I’ve had the chance to speak with often make that connection.
Recognising those intersections as crip theory encourages us to do, gives us all more strength to fight. There are shared experiences, such as being invalidated by non-disabled people, which happens to both queer and Disabled people. And of course, there are queer people who are also Disabled.
Making sense of disability through an understanding of queer experiences seems entirely logical to me. It’s what makes this very conversation possible.
What do you need?
I need allies, people like you to do an interview that, really, shouldn’t need to happen. I need to feel safe in places where I’m afraid, to be anonymous when I want to be, and to be recognised when I deserve it, for who I am and what I love. I need to be free from having to adapt all the time.
Someone on a panel about inclusion once said: “It’s a shame we still need this – conferences, people speaking out and so on. But as long as we need it, we’ll keep going.” That’s one of the most powerful things I’ve ever heard.
Simply being part of a conversation where people speak openly with me and accept me – where I’m seen as a person rather than an aberration – makes me feel safe.
Have you found places where you feel safe?
At work, most of my colleagues make me feel welcome. I don’t need everyone’s approval. It’s normal for some people not to agree with how I live, just as I don’t agree with how everyone else lives. What matters to me is respect. I’m a person with flaws, like everyone else. All I’m asking for is to be respected.
I’ve always struggled to find somewhere my voice is taken seriously. But at Compositech, I felt heard. It’s an organisation campaigning for women and non-binary people in tech.
Whatever I say, I can add: “That’s my opinion, and I’m sorry if it bothers you.” I haven’t had confrontational conversations there. Quite the opposite: people have responded very constructively. In my life, constructive feedback is rarer than destructive feedback, so I appreciate it.
I also really like Magali Milbergue, who co-founded the organisation, and the work she does. There are people who play a very important role in our society, and people who are struggling and looking for support. People are hugely different, and that’s a positive thing.
What would you like to make simpler about conversations around gender?
My question is more: what direction do we want to move in? The simplest thing, from my point of view, would be to get rid of the conversation altogether.
Everyone sees things differently. There’s no point trying to categorise everything when we don’t define things in the same way. It’s a bit like cultural differences. We’re in similar territory when we talk about gender.
I think this subject will become less taboo over time. In the meantime, we keep explaining, showing that it’s human, celebrating difference and diversity, and letting those who don’t want to understand get on with their lives.
What design can change
As a designer, what can I do to include non-binary people?
Don’t ask about gender. I’d also like us to take inclusive language further. And by that, I mean campaigning for it, right up to the Académie française, the institution that sets standards for the French language. Because it helps non-binary people feel represented.
On most forms, there’s no need to ask about gender, except perhaps in healthcare. And even then, that might be open to discussion. But when I’m buying a television, whether I’m addressed as Madame or Monsieur is completely irrelevant. I’d like people to just use my first name. Even if it’s a masculine name. It’s the name I was given, and I like it.
But this goes much deeper. It’s about conventions of politeness. Someone who identifies as a man or a woman might take real offence at being addressed by their first name. Formal ways of addressing people are deeply ingrained in written French. So I think it’s hard to move away from that completely.
What do you think of the “other” option that sometimes appears alongside “man” and “woman” on a form?
I see it as an imperfect step forward. It’s better than nothing. Working in tech myself, I know how much of a fight it took to get that option added.
For the overwhelming majority of people, society operates on the basis that everyone is either a man or a woman. We can’t ignore that either. I’m not going to condemn the whole of society for who I am. Some people feel very angry about these issues though. Of course discrimination exists, but we need to distinguish it from what people are simply used to doing.
That said, I can expect more from the people around me. We have a right to be respected, too.
Freedom and privacy online
Did the internet play a part in helping you explore your identity?
In the early 2000s, when search engines were starting to appear, I began looking for people out of curiosity. At the time, I was in complete denial. I didn’t know what I was. To be honest, I’m still not sure.
But when you reach adulthood, you feel free to do your own research and start looking into things. You begin to understand who you are. The internet back then made that possible. Things were much more open for people on the margins of society. It offered a degree of anonymity that allowed people to speak freely. I found people like me around the world, and that helped me move forward, because I no longer felt like an alien or thought there was something wrong with my mind. I began to realise that I, too, had a right to live.
That’s why I’m a tech activist. When I look at how the internet was designed, it was a space for freedom, where people could communicate freely with one another.
Today, I find it harder. Everything is controlled by big corporations. I know very few people who still have a blog, apart from you! I work for a large French tech company. There must be 500 or 600 people who are obsessed with video games, but nobody knows what a blog is.
What do you think about how our data is used online?
I think we’ve got it completely wrong. The GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) is a bit of sticky tape over a hole that shouldn’t exist in the first place. Companies are collecting data left, right and centre. There are all these cookie policies… At the moment, I’m getting a flood of emails about tracking pixels. Those things are appalling.
Big companies quickly worked out how to make money from our metadata. They don’t care about our personal details. They don’t need to know how many Tamaras there are in the world. What they want to know is whether someone like you, your age, living in your area, likes buying candles, for example. That’s where the money is, because it lets them target adverts. It’s worth far more than having your phone number or surname.
The danger is that someone asks AI a question and relies on its answer to guide their thinking, particularly given the biases that can creep into that answer.
How do you feel about the way generative AI is being used today?
I’m very pessimistic about it. There was a lot of talk about big data. Search engines became capable of finding any information. AI is the same thing, only more powerful. It can process huge amounts of data much faster. Unfortunately, I think it can be misused in dangerous ways.
At the same time, it could also lead to some really positive developments, particularly in science or medicine.
What worries me is AI for the general public, where things have gotten completely out of hand. The danger is that someone asks AI a question and relies on its answer to guide their thinking, particularly given the biases that can creep into that answer.
People using AI today are looking to other sources of information less and less. They’re creating a new reality for themselves.
The other thing that bothers me isn’t that we use AI, but that it generates things by scraping someone’s work without crediting them.
Have you ever shared sensitive information with an AI?
No, that’s not something I’m willing to share. When I talk to an AI, I don’t ask it what I should do because I’m this or that kind of person. I’m careful about what I share about myself.
My metadata can be shared, but not my personal data. That’s private. It’s also why I wanted this interview to be anonymous.
Can we really protect our personal data if we want to use the full range of digital services?
I do make compromises in my life, particularly for convenience reasons. I have a Google account and keep private data in my Google Drive. That’s a compromise I’ve made simply to get on with my life.
I know someone who has removed Google from their phone entirely. They installed their own operating system, but now all sorts of apps no longer work. And these are everyday things, like their local parking app.
If you stop using Google, too much stops working. So I make compromises. That’s another conversation, of course, but why do we, as a society, allow companies to control our lives?
Family and anonymity
Why was it important for you to remain anonymous in this interview?
Coming out is a gradual process for me, as it is for many people like me. I have a responsibility to protect my family. I’m married, my children go to school, I live in a neighbourhood and so on. So I’m not quite as open locally, because I want to protect my family.
If it were just about me, I might be more open. But for now, I’m holding back. At work or in the organisations I’m involved with, it’s less of an issue.
How do you talk about it with your children?
I waited until my children were teenagers before coming out to them. But they’re extraordinary. You hardly need to explain anything. All I had to say was, “I like dressing this way”, and that was that. They understood straight away. They’re much more flexible in their thinking than adults, who are very set in their ways.
My children’s generation has access to information through the internet. They’ve grown up with it. It’s much easier for them to understand these things.
For me, that process started very late in life. I had to break free from the pressure of my parents and the friends I’d had as a teenager and young adult. They would never have understood; they were very homophobic. So I started late, once I felt safe.
Additional resources
- Self-defined: Inclusive, holistic, and fluid definitions to reflect the diverse perspectives of the modern world.
- Diversify tech: Connecting underrepresented folks in tech with career opportunities.
- Pronouns.org: Resources on personal pronouns
- Surveillance self-defense: Tips, tools and how-tos for safer online communications
- Gendered intelligence: Resources for professionals to improve their trans inclusive practices