Guest CEO Blog: Transgender Awareness Week 2024 by Samuel Bailey, Marketing Analyst
This week marks Transgender Awareness Week. A time dedicated to shining the light on our Trans+ friends, family and peers, understanding their unique struggles and respecting their value in society.
In our current political and social landscape, attitudes towards the transgender community have turned extremely critical, so it’s more important than ever to show support for those that are feeling isolated and victimised. The Transgender community is something to be celebrated and loved, not feared.
My experience
From my personal experience, my friends and family had very mixed emotions about my transition, with many close family members taking years to understand and support me. What got me through the earlier years was understanding that no malice was intended and that everyone had the best intentions, but that these situations are nuanced and complicated. This is the attitude we should be bringing to Trans Awareness Week.
Many of us may not be familiar with trans experiences, have trans friends or family, or know how to support the community. However, no trans individual is expecting you to have it all figured out, all the community needs is respect and compassion. We are very lucky to be part of an organisation that supports individuals from every background, and I know I speak for other queer employees when I say that Nash Squared has never failed to show support and respect to our community in everything we do.
Find out more
For anyone that feels misinformed or wants to learn more about the Transgender community, here are a few tips you can introduce in your day-to-day to show that education can be fun and seamless:
Follow Trans+ creators on social media - hearing from the community directly is the best way to learn compassion and understanding (I recommend @daddyspencer, @thegravelbro and @jvn)
Transition into more inclusive language - we find ourselves adopting ‘he or she’ pronouns when addressing the general public where a gender neutral they/them functions much better.
Engage with trans and queer posts on LinkedIn and follow charities and organisations looking to better the lives of queer people in the workplace (some great accounts to follow are @TransintheCity, @PrideinLondon and @CharlieMartin)