What it's like to live as a trans person in Scotland

ERIS YOUNG (they/them)

“I’M not being nasty or anything, but are you a male or female?” It’s hard to hear him over the din of the pub – it’s a Saturday night in Sauchiehall Street, post-lockdown – but I realise the man standing at my table actually isn’t being nasty, just patiently waiting for me to answer his question. I tell him I’m non-binary, and that it means “neither”. He offers a fist that I dutifully bump, says “thanks, man,” and goes back to his table.

I’ve only been in two pubs in the last three months and this is the second time a cis person has accosted me about my gender -- not with hostility, but a kind of curiosity that feels like it could only exist in the intimacy peculiar to a crowded Scottish pub after dark.

Last time, a woman gifted my group a tray of tequila shots after having fallen out with her friends. She’d seen me walk by earlier and said: “You’re awesome. You don’t give a f*** what anyone thinks.”

She asked if she could hug me, and in a surprisingly emotional moment, tearfully confessed to a fraught relationship with her queer daughter. I told her it would be alright and she left to go and find her friends.

I texted a photo of the shots to a pal: “Got a free drink for being non-binary. More of this, please!”

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When I was asked to write about being trans in Scotland right now, I struggled to put into words what it’s like. It’s not bad, not by any stretch. But maybe … weird?

While 2020 seemed defined by an explosion of conflict between my community and a distressing profusion of “gender-critical” people embedded in the literary old guard, calls for the SNP to hold its own members accountable, and later watching as those same members made themselves known by flocking to the newly-formed Alba Party, in 2021 the conflict feels more like a banked fire.

The GCs seem quieter, if only because they’d dug in their heels, momentarily turning their attentions elsewhere.

But that might just be because I myself have taken a step back from the fight this year. I’ve dug in my own heels and, as much for my own sanity as because I have a manuscript to finish, mostly stayed away from politics.

So much of being trans online these days feels like self-flagellation, constantly entering places where we have to justify our very existence. But I’ve found it can also be a place of connection and mutual celebration: this year I’ve been able to connect with a huge trans family all over the world.

I’m a writer and editor and developments in live-streaming technology allowed me to host events with my best friend, even when they were shielding. I was given my first guest-editing gig, an all-trans issue of Shoreline of Infinity, Scotland’s first science fiction magazine.

After two years of having only myself for company, these pub exchanges are a jarring reminder that gender actually exists-- something I’d almost managed to forget. But they also remind me that GCs are only a vocal minority.

Ordinary people might not know the right way to ask, but most of them are just curious and trying. Things are looking up.

PURINA ALPHA (she/her)

MY name is Purina Alpha, and I’m a 24-year-old drag performer and dancer living in Glasgow. I am also a trans woman, and while I am the only black drag queen in Scotland I am thankfully far from the only trans one. In a year when we have seen JK Rowling take her vitriolic attacks on the trans community to a new level and when many of us have had to take down transphobic propaganda stickers about self-identification legislation around Glasgow, I find myself at the end of it not dwelling on these downsides all that much.

This has been the best year of my life so far. I smashed all my expectations of myself, achieved dreams I have had since childhood, and finally reached a stage where my external appearance is beginning to fit how I’ve always wished it to be.

At the end of 2020, I finally began private hormones with a clinic in Edinburgh, allowing my health to be monitored and me to continue my transition safely, bringing about changes I’ve been waiting for since I was 14.

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As I began to feel more comfortable in my own skin, I felt more at peace in an internal and spiritual sense. Everything else in my life began to slot into place, and my passion for self-improvement led to a big elevation of my drag and performance practice this year. I opened for a Drag Race queen for the first time, opened Jupiter Rising festival with the dance company I work with, and had two performances exhibited at Tramway. I also started the first year of my degree: I study Gaelic, French and Latin at Glasgow University.

And in the summer, community was given back to us. All my life, I have never known love and fulfilment like what I feel being part of Scotland’s queer community. I am so healed and stimulated by the friendships and creative relationships I have within the drag scene (shows such as Trigger, Suck) and in the queer nightlife scene (events such as Shoot Your Shot, Fast Muzik).

This year also saw the opening of beloved queer bar Bonjour, where so much has happened for me, from parties to performance filming. And coming to the end of this year, the thing that makes me happiest is the confirmation of my own performance night, Omega, taking place at Bonjour on January 7th to raise funds for my transition-related surgeries. Going into 2022, I have hope that for both me and my community it will be even better, building on the achievements and healing that took place in 2021!

KEZ RUSH (they/them)

FOR me, 2021 has been about prioritising close friendships, catching up with my university coursework, and most importantly, taking care of my physical and emotional health.

As I wake each day, I decide what task is most urgent, and some days that task is resting my hard-working body. I’ve been living with Long Covid for 21 months and its effects have decreased my physical and mental capacity to a level where I require a daily carer.

In 2020, when my kidneys failed after I contracted Covid-19, I had no choice but to take a break from the activism and advocacy work I had been intensely involved in.

My work was the main way I connected with the communities to which I belong.

Being forced to step away showed me how much pressure I placed on my mind and body through the heaviness of the anger and despair I had been carrying. Losing my main connection to my communities, especially as a disabled and chronically ill person living alone during the start of a global pandemic was terrifying and lonely.

While most people moved online to attend work, school, or socialise, I was using social media to share my health updates, hoping to find solace from the responses, but this wasn’t always the case, it mostly led to increased feelings of anxiety and loneliness.

I needed to find a less public way to connect with my communities.

As of December 2021, my weekly arts group Saturday Socials has been running for 21 months and we have held 84 socials.

We are a small group that meet on Zoom, where together we continue to nurture a space for LGBT+ disabled and chronically ill people away from the added pressures and obstacles we face in wider society.

Our space is founded on mutual respect and support, and is a place where, amongst other things, we can safely laugh, cry, and learn.

This year has shown me the importance of making informed choices when using the power I do have to engage in activism and advocacy work.

I have learned the difference between spending time within the communities I belong and when I am replicating activism and advocacy work within intended social spaces.

I have used 2021 to honour my commitment to nourishing friendships that offer mutual stability - something vital as someone with unstable and unpredictable health.

I now know how vital it is to allow the joy and laughter of friendship into my life.