SAILING ALONE AROUND MY GENDER

Sisterhood

She assured me that Women Who Sail was diverse and accepting, and I have found a home here. With this group, I feel that I have received a gift beyond price, just as I have among women in society at large, the gift of sisterhood.

By Arwen Ailbhe

I suspect the old Joshua would be taken aback, and put on his beam ends were he to meet me…

What is it like, being a trans-woman in the sailing world? I imagine it is like being any woman in the sailing world, but with a few added complexities. With a certain attitude coming from my former white male privilege, it can be easier.

I am forty-seven, a retired Navy Chief, and divorced from my first marriage. I just remarried this past April, having met the love of my life about four and a half years ago. I am a transgender woman, in a same sex marriage. My wife is a wonderful woman with the biggest heart. She found the ‘man of her dreams’ in me, a guy who trains horses, and has a certain touch, a salty old sailor with stories behind his eyes, and a constant vague pain that seemed undefinable. She saw he had some idiosyncrasies that he kept secret, even hiding them from himself. It was not very long before she had that pain and those complexities figured out. He wasn’t ‘he;’ not by a long shot. 

She pestered me until I was willing to explore, and ask questions. She reassured me all along that it would be ok, and that she would not abandon me, come what may.  So, I tentatively began to seek answers to the pain that I had experienced for those 40 some odd years. Like many trans folks, I discovered that the roots of this pain were laid down very early in my life. Finally, after an agonizing few months, I was able to let go.  I was able to admit that I was indeed transgender, and that it was killing me to keep fighting who I really was meant to be. I set out to find me. It was remarkably easy. She was right there, just inside, hair blown back in the breeze, skirt billowing, as she stood on the strand, waiting for her chance to be free. 

The change was instantaneous--within days. Even though I was not out to anyone outside a small circle, people who had known me for years later told me that I became a completely different person almost overnight. I had simply relaxed, and dropped an old worn out role that I was never suited for. Sailors know this feeling. When you motor out of the dock, put her head to wind, raise the sails, and fall her off to put the wind abeam. Then you smartly heave around the sheets, the boat shudders, and you feel her leap joyously to life as she becomes that which she was made for--a fair creature, free of her bonds. That is exactly what it felt like. I was here. I was me. There was no going back. 

Arwen and her wife with their newly purchased O’Day in February 2021.

I have been involved with sailing off and on for years, but until recently, never as a trans woman. I had owned one keelboat, a Tanzer 28,  that I dearly loved, but life imploded and I had to part from her. Fresh out of the Navy, weary and broken from life’s tribulations, I ran from everything. Fast forward a few years and enter COVID 19. Enforced isolation for months and months, missing my active and varied social life: sailing, and the deep blue sea bit me right in the seat of the pants once again. I went hunting for a boat that would not put my new wife off, and bought a Hobie sixteen. I was rusty, but our first sail together was a success, and I began to teach her to crew the stays’ls. I kept a weather eye out for the bigger boat, you all know the one…it has a cabin top, and a coffee-maker, among other appurtenance. Finally, I found her in Ohio from another gay couple who wanted to keep her in a queer family as they buy a bigger boat to circumnavigate. We are excited to have this new to us 1977 Oday 25, SV Davalka,

The sailing community has actually been pretty accepting of me, but I notice a lot of parallels with other women, whether in society or in the world of sailing. I get the same flak that women get with crude comments, and condescension. Sometimes, I get out and out discrimination from men from the visible ravages of testosterone poisoning, and a voice that makes Johnny Cash sound like Patsy Cline. Discrimination comes from women too, but not nearly as badly, nor as often. By and large, both in and out of the sailing world, women are more understanding and accepting, and honestly realistic. There are painful exceptions.  

I have found that people tend to react to trans-women based on their own preconceived notions of us. These are usually the ideas that Hollywood, and the media have planted in their minds over the decades. These images are misconceptions. You see, we are just people. People who happened to have been born with a medical condition, one that exposed their bodies and minds to the wrong hormones at the wrong times of their development. This is a pretty decent nuts and bolts description of the current state of science on the subject. We come from all walks of life, in every culture on earth. We are just like everybody else in that we have the same basic needs, probably the most important of which is acceptance. 

We are living now, in a time of our own revolution. We are more visible, we are better understood, we are making strides in every strata of society; and we have always been here. I focus here on trans-women, as it is my own lived experience. I feel it is not my place to speak for nonbinary folks, I do not seek to exclude them here, nor do I speak for all trans-women.  

In my search for myself I recognized that when I transitioned the place I would change most significantly was in the social strata. I would basically be moved from the top with white male privilege, to near the bottom as a white trans-woman. But there was a certain privilege that carries on from my male role, and from my career as a Navy Chief. There is a certain air of “Maybe you better not try me,” that even when I am in my (stereotypically) “feminine best” I will never leave behind.  I decided that it was incumbent upon me to use that voice to speak for those who feel they have none. Gay and trans-youth, those who are oppressed by an often heartless society, and as I became more sure of my place, for all my sisters everywhere

I asked Charlotte Kaufman, the founder of Women Who Sail, before I applied to join the group, about whether I would be accepted. I always do something of this nature, when I insert myself into women’s spaces. I think that it is ill befitting the new girl to march in and hoist her pennant. I also do it out of apprehension, never quite knowing how I will fit, just as it has been my whole life. She assured me that Women Who Sail was diverse and accepting, and I have found a home here. With this group, I feel that I have received a gift beyond price, just as I have among women in society at large, the gift of sisterhood. There is nothing in the world like it. At the end of the day, it turns out I am more Mary Reade, or Anne Bonny, than Joshua Slocum…always have been.

FROM WOMEN WHO SAIL NEWSLETTER | ISSUE 6. | FEBRUARY 2021.

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Arwen aibhe

Arwen is a 48 year old woman of trans experience, whose major claim to fame is a smart mouth and the fact that she survived a 20 year sentence in Uncle Sam's Canoe Club. She learned the basics of sailing on a Hobie 18 on El Vado Lake, in Northern New Mexico in about 1987. She joined the Navy in 1991 as an escape from the desert, and fell hard for the large blue wet thing we are always on about. It wasn't until retirement from the Navy that she acquired her first keel boat, a Tanzer 28. Fast forward many years, with a shiny new wife in tow, a pandemic underway, and a certain desperation to get out of the house, she bought a 1985 Hobie 16, and was soon bombing up and down the James River and annoying the more lubberly of the "Salon on a Stick" owners in Willoughby bay, mostly by laughing at their silly hats as she zipped by. Now, she is back in business with a new-to-her '77 Oday 25, yclept SV Davalka, right at the end of a refit, coming soon to a nearby mudhole. It is expected that a good time will be had by all, with the possible exception of the general public and anyone dumb enough to get between the Pirate Princess of Hampton Roads and the galley coffee pot. Don't mess with the old Chief's coffee.