Terf Island Is Still My Home

The childhood I experienced was one where I was taught to love my country.  I was a member of the Scout Association for nearly all of my childhood and teen years, only leaving the youth section of the organisation when I was 16 in order to pursue a Naval career.  When I got to University, I was an assistant leader for a local Scout Section for about 18 months during my undergraduate years, and I look back on that with a lot of fondness.  Combine the drummed-in words of “Do my duty to God and the Queen” of the last line of the Scouting Promise with my military background, and you have someone who could well have found themselves on the fast-track to the Conservative Party.  My upbringing was of a system that had experienced consistent investment through the Blair-Brown Labour years, and I had never seriously wanted for anything growing up.  I never experienced hardship that less fortunate individuals would have.

In 2022, when I came out as a trans woman having wrestled with my gender for most of my life, I found a lot of my preconceived notions of a caring and compassionate Britain to be thrown into question. My health was never a problem, I grew up very healthy and active, and when I did need medical treatment, I got it quickly and somewhat easily. I took the NHS for granted because it worked very well for me. When I came out, it felt at first like stepping fully into the person I was always meant to be. But it didn’t take long for the cracks to show - not in me, but in the country I’d always assumed would catch me.

Until then, I’d never really questioned whether I belonged here.  I’d never needed to.  As a boy who joined the Scouts, wore a uniform, did my duty and never asked for much, I was exactly the kind of citizen Britain likes to claim.  I was the sort of boy who was proud of our nations achievements of defeating fascism in the 1940s, and, somewhat naively, regarded Britain’s early 21^st Century anti-terror foreign policy in Afghanistan and Iraq as a morally good action that was saving lives.  I believed all the stories I’d been told — about fairness, about equal opportunity, about strength through diversity, about this being a country that looks after people - no matter where they're from.

However, coming out made it clear that all of that care and compassion I’d taken for granted came with unspoken conditions.  Coming out to my Navy doctor was a process that was immediately preceded with me writing a page of notes to ensure that I got my point across properly, to ensure that I was not dismissed or not taken seriously.  I treated that initial appointment like it was a board interview, not as a friendly appointment with my doctor. This is reflective of many trans people’s dealings with the NHS.  The same institution that patched up my scrapes as a kid now treated my needs as a political nuisance rather than a medical reality. I’d grown up believing the NHS was there for everyone — but what they really meant was everyone who fit neatly into the boxes they preferred.

As I have moved beyond that initial step, I’ve realised it wasn’t just the NHS. The press, the government, the Supreme Court, even people I once trusted — all of them seemed suddenly to feel entitled to weigh in on whether people like me even deserved to exist. Every day brought another headline about “the trans debate,” another politician invoking “British values” as if those values didn’t include me.

This all has hurt in a way I hadn’t expected. I’d served this country, in my own small way. I’d believed in it. I’d loved it. And here it was telling me, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways, that my love was unrequited.

For some time now, I have wondered if I can still call myself patriotic.  Whether I can still claim to love the Country that has earned the pejorative nickname “Terf Island” in the British trans community.  If patriotism means turning a blind eye to cruelty, I don’t want it anymore. If it means waving a flag while people like me were stripped of dignity, I want nothing to do with it.  If it means treating people fleeing poverty, genocide and war as an invading contagion, then it can get in the bin.

My counterpoint to all of this is that I’ve come to believe that my patriotism just looks different now. It’s no longer about loyalty to a flag or a monarch or a government.  It’s about loyalty to the people who live here.  Every person who lives in Scotland, England, Northern Ireland, Wales. My patriotism is now to the idea of what this country could be if we lived up to our own promises.  I love this country enough to want it to be better, and I refuse to believe that criticism and accountability is disloyal.

Patriotism, to me, isn’t submission. It’s not silence.  It’s definitely not the same as nationalism.  It’s standing up and saying: we can do better than this.  Britain deserves better.  It’s seeing all the people Britain has pushed to the margins — trans people, disabled people, migrants, the poor — and saying: this is your home too.

So yes, I am still patriotic. But my patriotism is no longer naïve. It’s not a love that asks nothing. It’s a love that demands accountability. Because that’s the only kind of love worth having — and the only kind of country worth building.