How to Support Transgender People?


Educate yourself. The first thing you need to do if you want to support your transgender friends is that educating yourself about knowledge related. Be the master of yourself. It is also important to talk to some transgender people in your life and search for useful information. Here are some issues you should know:

What are non-binary people? What are transgender people? How to interact with transgender people? Here are some things you should know if you want to help transgender people in your life.

Use their language. There are no identical transgender people. Different transgender people may use different words to describe themselves. You should follow their lead and use the language they feel comfortable with. If you don't know what pronouns you should use, you can ask. One simple way to know this is to wait and see if the answer will naturally turn up. If you still don't have an answer, please ask with polite and respect and do not make a big deal of it. There is another good way to find out. When you introduce yourself, you can say: Hi, I'm Lisa, please refer to me as she or her. How about you? If you accidentally use the wrong pronouns, please apologize and continue your conversation. However, please try your best to avoid such mistakes, because using the wrong pronouns could cause unnecessary attention to transgender people.

Be careful with questions you are going to ask. There are many questions you might be interested in while transgender people do not wish to be asked in trans dating, such as medical transition, life before transitioning, sexual activities and etc. When I said ask questions, I did not mean that you should get all your questions cleared in your mind. Many questions are not proper and respectful. No one wants to share life details with some random person unless they know you very well. Try to ask questions that are necessary. For example, names and pronouns. You have to call their name and refer to them as something. It is always proper to ask their name and pronouns, but except their old names. As for matters that you don't need to know or matters that you are curious about, there is no need to ask them, such as medical surgeries.

If you still have no idea of what kind of questions you are allowed to ask, you can know it by asking yourself. "Do I feel comfortable is I am asked by these questions or the same kind?" For example, what if your colleague asks you something about your genitals, how do you feel? What you feel is exactly the same as that of transgender people, or even stronger.

Here are some tips I would like to offer you in regard to help transgender people. You don’t necessarily have to do something to help them. Some times just refer to them with the right pronouns and prevent yourself and other people from asking some awkward questions will be more than enough.