Making Space for Trans and Nonbinary Colleagues
Pride Month is a time for celebration—and for taking stock. It’s been a tough year for the trans nonbinary, and gender expansive community. Over 900 anti-trans bills have been introduced across 49 states, each seeking to restrict our rights. The deluge of negative changes can feel debilitating. But as we head into this month of celebration, joy, and inspiration, it's important to remember that we each have a small sphere of influence: people, places and cultures upon which we can each leave our mark. We spend most of our waking hours at work, so it’s important to take a critical look at our workplace culture and ask: How can we make space for trans and nonbinary people?
Taking on the national political climate is daunting, but there are ways that each of us can play our part in ensuring that our workplaces are welcoming and fair to every person.
The Gender Trap of “Professional” Culture
Many workplaces pride themselves on professionalism, but “professional” is too often shorthand for gender conformity. Let’s be honest: many of the ideas we associate with professionalism are gendered. One of the landmark cases that led to federal protections for gender expression involved a plaintiff who was denied a partnership at Price Waterhouse because she was insufficiently stereotypically feminine. Ann Hopkins was told to “walk more femininely, talk more femininely, dress more femininely, wear make-up, have her hair styled, and wear jewelry.”
As an employment lawyer, I saw how these same stereotypes still show up decades later in subtle and explicit ways. It can look like comments about someone’s clothes or hairstyle being distracting, quiet questions about whether a client’s name change is official or their medical history, speculation about a colleague’s surgical plan. Even well-meaning people struggle with gender fluidity or non-conformance. Dress codes still exist in most workplaces and can directly conflict with the wide expanse of gender expression. In formal workspaces, it may be as simple as being unclear on which honorific one should use for a non-binary colleague. Unfortunately, in the aggregate, this culminates in anxiety around and then avoidance of colleagues who don’t conform to pre-conceived notions of gender presentation.
The Law is Not Enough
Under California law, gender identity and gender expression are protected. That means misgendering, denying bathroom access, or enforcing gendered dress codes can cross the line into discrimination. While many workplaces aim to recruit trans colleagues or clients, they lack the scaffolding to facilitate transitions for existing colleagues and clients.
Legal compliance, while important, is also the bare minimum. Just because something isn’t illegal doesn’t mean it’s inclusive. These “minor” things build up—legally the term is hostile workplace, but in practice it looks like a workplace that excludes people based on who they are. Real inclusion that invites authenticity and high performance from everyone is the result of both policy and practice. Most workplaces don’t need more policy—they need more increased awareness, better habits, and real accountability.
Making Space Starts with Small Shifts
An inclusive workplace starts with how we communicate and show up for one another.
In day-to-day work, here’s what it can look like:
Invite information. Intake paperwork, HR documents, and directories often force people into binary boxes. Add a space for chosen name and pronouns where appropriate.
Use names and pronouns correctly. If you’re unsure, ask once—and practice. If you mess up, correct yourself and move on. Over-apologizing can shift focus away from the person harmed.
Rethink “professional dress” There’s no one way to look competent. Create policies and programs for judging people by their work, not how comfortable people are with their gender presentation.
Interrupt bias with care. If someone makes an offhand comment—“I can’t keep up with all these identities”—don’t ignore it, be collaborative and curious. Try, “I’m working on being more mindful too so everyone feels respected. What are you finding challenging?”
Take Action: Move from passive support to active intervention—through relationship building, team accountability, and system-level changes. If you’re unsure how to do this, get help. In my trainings, we focus on these exact skills: how to address harm or bias in real time, without shaming or escalating. It's about protecting relationships and shifting culture.
Keep Trying: Aim for progress not perfection. There’s no perfect way to make space for others, it’s important to try and be accountable when you fail.
Allyship in Action: What Your Teams Can Do
Celebrating Pride isn’t just about being visible—it’s about being safe while being visible.
Being an ally isn’t about having the perfect words—it’s about showing up consistently. As a former employment attorney, I’ve seen and experienced firsthand how these gray areas build up—small slights that escalate into formal complaints or quiet resignations. But I’ve also seen the positive impact of the opposite. When colleagues take the small steps to normalize inclusive practices: updating email signatures to include pronouns, asking how someone wants to be addressed, or pushing back on outdated norms with curiosity instead of judgment, it changes culture for the better.
When we ensure space for trans, and nonbinary and gender expansive people, we build better workplaces for everyone. Workplaces that are more empathetic, collaborative, and less judgmental. In a workplace like this, there’s more room to be human and good at what we do. We may not be able to protect each other from a deluge, but we can create a refuge for each other. It starts small with one email signature, one pronoun request, one short conversation that says, I see you, and you belong here.