I’m a project manager for a team of IT systems, engineering, and infrastructure folks with just over twenty folks and my key purpose on earth is that I take one hour or less of their time once a week and by doing so they never have an email or conversation with anyone else outside of our team. I know enough to talk to any stakeholders and complete monthly status reports by simply knowing what is going on and communicating strategy to them. I’ve been praised heavily which feels very dirty being an individual contributor for so long in my career. I can speak the same language as everyone on my team spanning logistics, networking, systems, and software development but I don’t DO anything. I have major imposter syndrome as I near retirement so the praise is also appreciated greatly from them. It’s a really weird period in my career.
So I work on a military base in a building with less than 5,000 people, of which three have confided to me that they are trans and wanted someone to talk to and I have a niece that is trans. I have a hard time believing only 1 trans person per state has a desire to play sports with my completely anecdotal evidence. I don’t know what the real numbers are and I get that it isn’t the point but I don’t think it’s effective to diminish the number of trans folks that there are. I’m very confident anyone not living under a rock knows and is likely at minimum a friendly acquaintance with at least one trans person, whether they are aware of that fact or not.