For some ex-Texans, Seattle has become a haven. Victoria Scott, a trans woman and freelance writer, lived in Houston working as a programmer at NASA after college in 2018. After coming out as transgender, she said that she found both Houston and Texas hostile. Scott moved around and lived briefly in Reno, Nevada, before settling in Seattle with her wife at the end of 2023. In Seattle, Scott found the foundation she had long needed.
“It’s done more for my day-to-day lived experience and mental health as a trans woman than basically any other thing I’ve ever done,” Scott told Chron.
I saw the writing on the wall seventeen years ago and at 40 moved with my husband (we’re a gay couple) and our then 5 yr old daughter to Northampton, Massachusetts. We had lived in Texas our entire lives (I’m from Ft Worth, he’s from Abilene), so we were no strangers to racism. But the racism that came out during Obama’s first presidential run told me it was time to flee. Texas was certainly no place we wanted to raise our daughter. We wound up moving to Vermont a couple of years later. And eventually we settled in upstate NY in 2016. We prefer the more liberal New England states but cannot afford them. Upstate NY gives us a reasonable cost of living, along with all the lgbtq state protections that put our minds at rest. Well, as ‘at rest’ as one can be with Cankles McTaco Tits in the Oval Office right now.