On my first cruise while trans, my own queer community became the problem

Sometimes the challenges that come with traveling while trans are big, scary, and institutional. Do you have a passport that’s safe to use? What will things be like going through airport security? How safe is the country for someone who is openly trans or non-binary?

But sometimes, it’s the small obstacles from our own community falling short that stick with us. They’re disappointing. They’re often unexpected. And they come from people who should know better.

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Last year, I went on a cruise for the first time, embarking on a week-long voyage from New York to Southampton. It was hard not to be excited: I’ve always loved the water; the cruise promised some phenomenal live music; it was my first vacation in a long time; and I was eager not to purchase the wi-fi package so I could be completely disconnected from the chaos of the world right now.

Of course, I did worry about those big, scary, institutional challenges. I’m non-binary, and I was traveling with my spouse and my child. That meant going through port security, getting passports checked, and being on a boat full of people I knew nothing about, with no escape for a full week.

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The cruise was one of those affairs where they expect you to dress in a certain level of formal wear for dinner, or even just when walking around the ship in the evenings. Dress codes for formal wear rarely contain much consideration for what a non-binary person might be comfortable in. It wasn’t a specifically queer cruise, and I wasn’t eager to out myself in that environment, but I also didn’t want to get pulled up on some dress code violation. So, I stressed about it for weeks and ended up wearing something tediously gender-conforming.

Among all of this stress, I did find a moment of solace and joy. I saw that the program included a daily LGBTQ+ social hour. That seemed like a good thing to attend regularly to find like-minded people, to not be judged for this and that, and to find some other trans and non-binary voyagers who might have experienced some of the same stress and the need to tone themselves down by a degree.

What I found at the LGBTQ+ social hour wasn’t that.

We arrived a few minutes early. When we found the space, there was a small paper sign indicating we were in the right place. As we went to take some seats and look at the menu, a waiter stopped us, apologized, and told us that this was for LGBTQ+ people only. Not a great start.

However, I can understand it. Ultimately, we were passing as a potentially non-LGBTQ+ family to the most casual or uninformed eye. To someone outside the community, understanding that there are many ways to be LGBTQ+ and no one way to look queer is more than I would reasonably hope for from random cruise line personnel.

It is what it is.

But when we corrected the waiter, he simply said “oh, okay,” and left us to it.

Shortly after, a gay couple arrived, and we awkwardly struck up a conversation with them while ordering drinks. Aside from the basic social awkwardness, it was quite nice. I was able to explain my pronouns, and we all talked a bit about our travels and what brought us to a cruise ship in the middle of the North Atlantic. Then another gay couple arrived, and we went through it again.

But as time went on, the space filled out, and it was clear that people didn’t know what to make of us. There were multiple conversations going on, but there wasn’t much common ground for us to share. As we looked around, we began to see the problem. Of the thirty or so people that had turned up for the first LGBTQ+ social hour, there was my family, one lesbian couple at the far end, and a sea of gay men.

Demographics might be what they are, and while I was disappointed not to have come across another trans traveler, that was hardly anybody’s fault. The slightly awkward conversation I could put down to simple social dynamics, if I were being generous.

But then one man further along the section loudly exclaimed to those around him, “I thought I was in the wrong place at first, because there was a child here.” It was clear that the whole concept of a child in an LGBTQ+ space was preposterous for him. And those around him laughed, and not one of them provided any pushback on the idea.

My response was simple: “Queer people can have kids, too!” The man reddened a little and apologized, not for his comment or its implications, but for having said it so loudly.

Queer families take many shapes and sizes. Some of them have children. Some of them don’t. Some of them have children by happenstance. And some of them have children because those parents fought tooth and nail to have them. Our community still fights constant battles to have that choice. Careless comments can be more hurtful than one might think. And that comment helped distill the exact discomfort we had been feeling into a single moment, making the whole thing an unpleasant experience.

The LGBTQ+ social hour was advertised as an inclusive event. The people there were all part of the community. And yet, so far from all I knew and with nowhere else to go to find queer community, I still felt excluded in that space.

I ran into one or two of the people from that social hour elsewhere on the ship in the coming days and exchanged pleasantries with them. One evening, I happened to share a late-night drink with someone from the event, and we had a long conversation about life, identities, and how things had changed over the years.

But we didn’t bother going back to the LGBTQ+ social hour, not wanting to repeat the experience of feeling othered in a space intended to be inclusive.

There were things that could have been handled better for the event:

• It could have been advertised with more than just a note in the program and a quick paper sign, so it would have felt more like a prioritized event.
• The cruise line could have provided a community facilitator to help shepherd the event and ensure everyone felt welcome.
• Name tags with a space for pronouns could have been provided to help make shared identities more visible and reduce confusion from those with less knowledge of trans identities.
• Staff who were working in the space where the event was held every day of the cruise could have been educated on what to expect from an LGBTQ+ event, and about the idea that there are more identities than cis gay men and cis lesbian women.

All of those things might have helped at least a little bit.

But the biggest failing here wasn’t really the cruise line’s or the event’s. Those problems exacerbated the situation, and changes could help to prevent it in the future. But the biggest failing came from our own community. From the men (and two women) who had come to that inclusive space and taken it for their own, seemingly reading every initial in LGBTQ+ as simply being synonymous with “gay.”

At a time when our community needs to come together to fight back against the attack on all of our rights (from gender-affirming care to parental and fertility rights to same-sex marriage), we should all be educating ourselves about the diversity that exists within the queer community and ensuring that we take care of our own.

There was no open hostility. I didn’t get slurs or comments on my appearance. But mostly, our presence just felt resented, as if we were intruders in someone else’s world. 

And in that space, at that time, I would have preferred the slurs from hateful people than the resentment from those we should share a community with. At least that would have been expected, rather than feeling like a slap in the face or a knife in the back.

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