‘McTavist: The Making of a Community’, by Lewis McDonald and Lucia McTavist, with added personal details by the authoress: a synopsis.
The authorship of this work is not quite what it appears, but my editor insisted the book be presented thus. In explanation, I was named Lewis McDonald at birth, became Lucia McDonald before I was two and became a McTavist in my early teens. McTavist is my married name too because I married James McTavist. My editor says she is going to use this as promotional material. I didn’t think it to be that interesting.

The consequences of being trans can be quite profound. I was named Lewis at birth but have been Lucia for as far back as my memory goes. However, this is not so much my story as the story of what the consequences of me being trans were for my extended family and my community too. Those consequences came about because, “If you take one of us on you take all of us on.” That could be taken to be the McTavist motto, but it all needs explanation, so I’ll try to explain the events with the benefit of hindsight. However, you must appreciate that for you to make sense of it I’ll be telling you things in chronological order, so occasionally I’ll be telling you things that I couldn’t possibly have known at the time.

I was a trans girl as far back as I can remember, certainly before I was two. It was a shock to me to discover many years later that acceptance of such as I was not the universal experience, and probably not even a common experience. My life was good at home and I grew up as a little girl who like all the other girls became a woman in time. I have five brothers and no sisters. It was nice being the only girl. I had going on for four dozen cousins both girls and boys, and they all considered me to be a girl like all the other girls. Uncle Jimmy describes us a long tailed clan. We all lived near each other, and we were all close. My younger cousins just accepted that some girls had a penis and some didn’t, and were a bit aggrieved that we didn’t have at least one boy in the family with a vagina. Kids eh! I guess they just like symmetry.

My time at primary school was enjoyable. Miss McCallanish my teacher was a nice lady who was a good teacher and treated all children, even the difficult ones which I wasn’t, with respect, and we all knew she cared about us.

The nightmare that was secondary school was a shock. I’d never been bullied before for being trans. It had always been something everyone I knew was aware of and didn’t care about, so I’d never considered hiding it. I was physically assaulted by the boys and verbally bullied by the girls. I wet myself a couple of times because I’d been prevented from using both the girls and the boys lavatories. I think it was Wednesday of the second week when my older brothers and cousins after realising the extent of what was going on decided how to deal with it, which was unfortunate for the bullies. The staff had been unsympathetic as to my plight. So in turn were our parents as to that of the bullies when the boys took direct action and beat the daylights out of every boy who had assaulted me. The girls took their revenge via social media on the girls who had bullied me. Personally I’d rather have been beaten up. That’s what I meant when I said, “If you take one of us on you take all of us on.”

The school suspended all of us, but when my suspension was over I refused to go back to school. My brothers and cousins joined me, and told our parents they wanted to go to another school. All this created a major incident that the local press followed closely. The school didn’t want me, but was bending over backwards to get the rest back because my family included two dozen of their best athletes and cleverest pupils. However, my relatives were adamant they were not going back even if the school changed their mind about me because it would only be on sufferance, and they didn’t believe anything would change for me.

Our fathers are mostly building trade craftsmen, engineers and skilled artisans. Uncle Phil is a draughtsman, but there are none that could claim to be academic in any way. Our mothers are mostly professional women who have always believed they made good choices as regard their husbands. They’d all been friends as girls, and had deliberately looked for men who could maintain a property and look after a family without feeling resentful because they didn’t earn as much money as their wife. They all said their husband’s input into the family could not be measured just in terms of money, and they always made sure we understood that. Their marriages were all strong and based on mutual respect, understanding and care. Our fathers often worked together especially if work was a bit scarce for one of them. None us us were wealthy, but all of us were a long ways from being poor.

Our parents got together any number of times over our education and concluded the kids were right; there was no way the school was going to alter its stance on trans issues. My Auntie Kirsten, who was regarded as a bit of an idealist and a dreamer, said, “If we can’t live with the school then the hell with it. Lets make a new life somehow and start our own school.” That’s where it all started. It took the best part of fifteen months. Fifteen months during which we were home schooled in the local community centre by various aunties with some teachers bought in. Our parents had always known that Miss McCallanish was trans, but we kids only found out when we were told the school governors were making her life difficult, and she was resigning at the school to accept Auntie Kirsten’s offer of a job teaching all the primary school age kids. She was happy at the change and our parents were delighted. Uncle Jimmy said, “The governors must be mental to want to lose a teacher of her quality, but still we’ve got a guaranteed first class primary teacher for a good few years as we’re still adding to the supply of future pupils.” The contacts with the local education authority concerning home schooling were acrimonious, but they had no case, and they knew it because we were getting an education at least as good as we had been getting before.

Most of our dads were self employed and struggling. There was enough work, but they were having a lot of difficulty getting paid for work they had done. Auntie Jane is a solicitor, and Auntie Leslie is an accountant. They had talked and suggested the men formed a company and Auntie Jane would create new contracts for them that all customers would have to sign. Essentially customers would be agreeing that all materials remained company property till the job was fully paid for, and they could be repossessed without a court order if payment were not made in full within thirty days of completion. Any who wouldn’t sign could find another company. She also suggested they would be better off not doing work for the local authority because they paid on ninety day credit terms, and even then they never paid the full amount. All parents were to be shareholders in the new company, and Aunties Jane and Leslie would manage all the paperwork and handle the money. It was soon seen things were getting better and the bills were getting paid, but everyone knew it was only a temporary solution, and all the adults were trying to find a less stressful way of living.

We all lived in Deekdale which at fifty thousand inhabitants is a bit big to be called a town and a bit small to be called a city. Eighteen miles outside the city proper there is a place known as McTavist. It’s a run down housing estate which was the first phase of a new town built around a tiny village that had been there when Doomsday Book was completed in 1086. McTavist was the name of the lord of the manor thereabouts some centuries ago. Built and officially inaugurated just over have a century ago, McTavist has housing for about a thousand families, but has had few inhabitants for three-quarters of a century. Only about twenty houses were inhabited when I was eleven. It was a memorial to the problems of twentieth century inner city blight that had been transferred to a neighbourhood built in the wrong place with inadequate transport links.

McTavist was planned to be a town of fifty thousand people, but once it was realised the Development Corporation couldn’t find enough families willing to fill the houses already built, despite the amenities, the project was abandoned, and what was there was not maintained. It was the ultimate new town failure. It has a large secondary school and three primaries. It also has an Olympic sized swimming pool, a large gymnasium, a football stadium, an athletics ground and a number of other facilities that had suffered from vandalism before being closed. All were built to accommodate the needs of fifty thousand. Once the people moved out the place was left alone because it was too far away for the vandals to bother with.

McTavist is a place that had simply been abandoned by its population and the authorities. Dad and some of my uncles including Uncle Phil went to have a look at the place with a view to living there and using one of the primary schools for all the kids. Dad and Uncle Jake are brick layers and they said the brickwork was solid, high quality work and in far better condition than some they’d seen that was only twenty years old. There was a lot of planning and costing of materials and time along with figuring out what we were all going to live on that went into the financial projections as to the feasibility of the project. Then Auntie Kirsten went really visionary on them and said, “Why don’t we try for the lot? The entire place! Houses, schools, sports facilities everything. You men can do it. You all know it’s a major reason why we married you in the first place. Renovate some houses for us to live in, sell ours here, renovate a few more and find some tenants. There’s got to be decent folk with kids getting bullied like Lucia was who’d leap at it.” The costings and financial projections were back on the drawing board and were vastly more complex and time consuming.

Auntie Jane negotiated on behalf of the company and she thought Deekdale Council was almost glad to be rid of McTavist since any future blame regarding wasted housing stock would not be on its shoulders. She formed the McTavist Housing Association and the ownership of all housing stock and public buildings was transferred to it along with all maintenance liabilities except for the main road that ran through the town. Our parents had refurbishment schedules drawn up, and as a priority enough large houses in the best part of the site were readied for us to move into and to generate enough income in rents for our families to live and to continue with the task. Virtually all of what needed doing our fathers could do, and there was enough money in the kitty to pay for the little they couldn’t.

Part of the deal with Deekdale was the refurbishment would only proceed as fast as properties were let and thus generate the required income. Another clause which had been why the negotiations took so long was Auntie Jane’s insistence that the Housing Association was to be the only determinator of who would be acceptable as a tenant. Deekdale had wanted the right to impose tenants on the Housing Association. In the end Auntie Jane refused outright at a public Council housing subcommittee meeting. The papers loved it, because she’s tiny and some of the Councillors thinking she’d back down had tried to bully her, and she lost it.

With the bit between her teeth Auntie Jane told them, “If you think I and my kin are going to sell our homes to invest in something you have never been able to make work, so you can dump all your problem tenants on us you must be even stupider than I took you for. I’ll be dammed before I have my kids living next to prison scum, junkies, whores and knife wielding pimps. You have a choice to make. I’ll be talking to Wenwath City Council about an alternative venture next Thursday. We’d all prefer McTavist, but not on your bloody terms. Take it or leave it, but Wenwath is looking forward to our meeting and say they are favourably disposed to our ideas. So you probably haven’t got much time to sign the contract which will make us completely free of any and all control by you, and that is not negotiable. You’ve already messed us about for far longer than is reasonable, and I’m all out of reasonableness. I’ll bid ye good day.” At that she walked out on them. Needless to say they signed. Wenwath City Council said they were disappointed.

The schools were to be refurbished later and initially we were all taught in the old library which was in good enough condition to be used immediately. Deekdale Council had done us a favour creating all that fuss because the publicity brought a flood of applicants to assist and live at McTavist. Most were just opportunists on the make, but careful investigation, some of which I’m sure was not strictly legal, winnowed out the grain from the chaff. The papers wanted to know how it all came about, so my time at secondary school became public knowledge. I wasn’t bothered, it wasn’t as if it had ever been a secret, but that brought in a small number of enquiries from various members of the LGBT+ looking for a haven where they or their kids wouldn’t get picked on. That’s how we got ourselves our first doctor, our first dentist and a load of other useful decent folk.

It was all very slow to start with, but it got faster as we gained population. It got even faster when we picked up a married pair of private investigators with a fourteen year old lesbian daughter. They could really separate grain from chaff much faster than it had been done before. The first public building opened was the community centre, then a primary school was opened followed by the newly enlarged McTavist Arms. Miss McCallanish had never thought she’d be a head mistress, but as Auntie Kirsten said, “We want someone we can trust.” I think it was two years after that that she married Joseph, a plasterer with the company. The ceremony and reception were huge. It was our first real celebration and the entire population turned out. A friendly couple of freelance journalists gave it a lot of coverage. Dave and his photographer, William, were a gay couple and friends of McTavist, and when ever anything was happening they were always contacted.

It wasn’t long after that when Uncle Alec joked, “The Housing Association and the company are more like an old fashioned clan than anything else, but I’m damned if I can work out who’s Clan chief.” So it came to be, all our parents decided to be self proclaimed siblings and took the name McTavist. Clan chief was a rotating thing and whoever was chair of the Housing Association that financial year was referred to as Clan chief rather than chairwoman or chairman.

All that was twenty years ago. The entire town has been fully refurbished and McTavist is now considered to be a very desirable place to live. As the houses filled up and more money became available the sports facilities were renovated and brought up to date which generated much more money and publicity as national events and even the odd international event were hosted at McTavist. The new cinema and playhouse are state of the art and popular with residents of all ages as well as bringing trade from outside town. All in all there is enough cash in the coffers to start building the town hall that was originally planned and never started. New residents are still subject to the same vetting procedures and our schools are very safe places for children. There is a clause in the tenancy agreement that says antisocial behaviour, which includes having out of control children and nuisance animals, will result in the tenancy being terminated. As far as I am aware it has only been used once. As a result our children enjoy school and achieve as highly as they are able to.

I’ve been married to James for five years and have a three year old named Douglas after my father. I met James at medical school, and we both work in the McTavist community medical centre. We live in the section of the town that was refurbished last. We chose to live there because it’s near to work and the crèche which Alice one of my cousins opened in what was a mini-market that had been replaced by a newly built moderately sized shopping centre. We are all preparing for the town’s twenty-first birthday celebration next year, which is going to be marked by the official opening of our first completely brand new dwelling places. The eight storey block of one hundred and twenty-eight apartment flats are intended for single residents and students who till now have had to share accommodation or live elsewhere. It is now believed that eventually the town will be built as intended and probably reach sixty thousand inhabitants.

Another group from the other side of Wenwath came to see us and after weeks of talks took over the similarly neglected new town that Wenwath City Council had wished to talk to us about. The concept is spreading and Wenwath is delighted and is offering two other similar areas as potential Housing Association ventures. They still have to deal with the nightmare tenants of course, but since they are no longer having trouble finding decent accommodation for decent tenants they can focus more tightly on what they are left with.

As I said the consequences of one child being trans can be quite profound.