'But [...] how can you call yourself not binary???': Linguistic self-determination, gatekeeping and trans identities in the French-speaking context.

This article examines the challenges faced by nonbinary French speakers in expressing their identities within a language and sociopolitical context dominated by a grammatical gender binary and conservative institutional resistance. Focusing on two French-language YouTube videos and online forums, it analyzes how nonbinary individuals use linguistic innovations such as neopronouns (e.g., iel) and nonnormative uses of binary grammatical gender to articulate their identities, while these expressions are often reframed or rejected by narrators, institutions like the French Académie, and broader societal discourses that insist on a gender binary. The article situates these linguistic tensions within larger political and colonial dynamics, highlighting how conservative actors portray nonbinary language as foreign or threatening to French linguistic tradition, thereby denying the legitimacy of nonbinary identities. It concludes that nonbinary French remains a contested site of linguistic self-determination, where social and ideological factors shape acceptance and resistance beyond purely linguistic considerations.