I was an educator for 31 years.  Yes, I had trans students.  Yes, I knew trans parents.  Yes, today, there are trans people who sing in my church choir and are in my "orbit".  

Much of the dialog around trans people doesn't include trans people.  Much of the vitriol around trans people comes from people who insist they don't know any trans people, and yet have a deep fear of trans people.  

Let me tell you a story (well two ...).  One young person I knew.  From sixth grade on, it was clear this person was not comfortable in their own skin.  By ninth grade, the student began to bind their breasts.  Supportive parents worked with their child to see health care professionals and explore what was going on.

By the end of 10th grade, the student was on hormones and presenting male.  But he struggled.  State law prevented name changes in the records so that any new teacher, any substitute, would call him out by a female name.  Field trips presented a specific challenge.  Would there be a place for him to go to the bathroom?  He often skipped these activities out of fear of not being able to perform a basic human function.  The Principal had given him access to a private bathroom in the school but that would not help him beyond our doors.  He couldn't use a women's bathroom -- he had begun to grow facial hair and didn't "look" female.  He looked male.  If he had used the bathroom which coincided with the gender he was born with, he would be subject to a dangerous situation -- perceived as a male using a female bathroom.

A year after he graduated and went to college, I bumped into him.  The transformation was complete.  Not just physically -- emotionally.  I had never seen him so happy, so much "himself".  He was confident, smiling, and had taken up some leadership positions at college.  He was doing very well.  There was no question in my mind that this man in front of me was the person he was always supposed to be.  

All of this contrasts, strongly, with a young man I was friends with when I was in high school.  There was no question that he was female presenting.  But back then, there was no understanding, only teasing and bullying and insistence that he "butch up".  He killed himself.

Create space for these people.  These human beings.  Individual stalls in bathrooms (in many places of the world, not to mention on planes and trains, bathrooms are "all genders").  Individual stalls in locker rooms.  An understanding that the issue may be more complicated in highly competitive sports, but not in local or school sports where kids just need to play, and to belong, and to be appreciated for who they are and how they can contribute.  

Learn more about trans people.  Look up pictures of famous trans people.  Which bathroom should they use?  Which sports teams should they play on?  Have a conversation with someone who is trans, or has been the parent of a trans child.  Listen.