Hello! Next week there’s a trans person joining my club for training. Because I´m not trans and don’t have anyone close to me that I know is trans I was wondering if I could get some suggestions on how to support them. We’ve never had a trans person here so this is might be kinda new for lots of people. I know some general stuff like I should probably ask them for their pronouns and which changing room they wanna use (we only got one for men and one for women, so I was thinking if they’re not comfortable they can use the restroom for people with a disability thats right around the corner in the same building). So aside from that, any suggestions?
PS I know this is a transfem community and I don’t know the identity of this person but this was the largest trans community I could find, if theres a better place to ask lemme know!
Edit: I don’t wanna share which sport exactly cus of privacy but its not a team sport so at least at training there won’t be any separation based on gender
Firstly, thank you for being proactively supportive of your new club member!
As said already, most trans folks don’t want any special treatment or attention - we just want to be treated like any other person of the gender we’re serving up to the world.
So if a woman joined your club, you wouldn’t say “Hey, it looks like you’re a woman! The womens’ changing room is over there.” That would be weird and awkward. Instead, you’d probably just say “The changing rooms are over there” and let the person figure out which room to use on their own. So do that. :)
In general, we’re pretty resilient people and can manage ourselves. The most help you can offer is using your magical cis-people powers to keep the people who hate us off our backs.
You are correct to imagine that many trans folks will feel unsure of whether they would be welcome in a given gendered changing room. We never know when we are going to run into an obnoxious crazy person who is ready to make our day more difficult.
One thing that you could do (if you have any sway the with the club’s management or operations), is find ways to broadcast the establishment’s acceptance of gender-diverse folks. Lots of places like putting up pride flags or pride stickers in the shop window for this, but that isn’t always possible. More-so than putting up tacky flags, what I really really like is when businesses use signs like these around their gendered spaces:
In my opinion, this is the best way to signal to everybody “Hey, you might see a trans person in here. The management knows and is cool with it. Don’t be an asshole.” These signs rule. When I see these signs, my blood pressure goes down a few points. It’s how I know I’m among allies.
Before I became involved with the clubs happenings I just trained there, I remember there being some discussion about signing a rainbow agreement (an initiative by the municipalty iirc). One parent of a kid was really against that and that parents kid is still one of the athletes here (theyre performing pretty well too so…). Dont really know the ins and outs but the other staff doesnt wanna step people on their toes (they are anti discrimination of any kind tho so its like they try to keep a certain balance). So i dont think I can get something like that to pass the board